Sociological Accounts on Individuals Acquiring Their Identities

Identity is what makes a person unique. It is the soul and the essence of a human being. People are not born with a fixed identity. Identity is inherently dynamic; it changes and evolves over time. A person’s identity is ultimately shaped by their decisions. My identity is different from those who surround me. I create my own identity.

As society proceeds through time, thoughts and positions in relation to gender generated several discussions among sociologists, as there are several angles that it can be approached. In that sense, functionalism perceives gender inequality and sex roles as a beneficial way to reinforce the division of labor within society. On the other hand, symbolic interactionism can be portrayed as a critique, on a way that it perceives gender as something comprehended by the individual self.

Identity is determined by how individuals perceive themselves, how society perceives them, and how they view themselves in Society. Indeed, individual identities can be affected by different holds including community and pressure to conform to the various societal institutions such as school or work environments. Additionally, life balances in schools or work as well as propaganda can influence how an individual’s identity can be modeled. Other mundane aspects including purchase tendencies and instant gratification are influential in the formation of identities. Besides these influential societal aspects that model individual identities, there exist social ills that further play a role in the formation of identities. In fact, a social ill, problem, or conflict fundamentally refers to a matter that influences and simultaneously faces opposition from a sizeable number of the individual members of society. More often than not, a social problem involves societal issues that make it hard for individuals to achieve their full potential. Some of the prominent examples of social ills include unemployment, poverty, malnutrition, inequality, and racism. However, other usual societal aspects such as schooling, social control, conformity and social resistance also influence the formation of identities. Accordingly, social ills shape individuals by being embedded into their societal

The issue of whether identity is socially constructed or an innate characteristic remains a contested one. For some, identity is a product of the society, interactions, influence, and practices while for others, it is biological or rather primordial. At the very basic, identity is an essential personal characteristics as it encompasses the membership to different groups, including religion, gender, and ethnicity, the traits people show and what others ascribe to them (Newman 126). Identity locates people in the social world and influences all their actions, thoughts, and feelings. Several renowned thinkers and philosophers offer their

Symbolic interactionism is the process by which individuals form their own interpretations of the world based on their interactions with other people. This branch of sociology proposes that people make decisions, act, and develop judgments and opinions based on their various social interactions.

Social structure and social interaction are integral in evaluating a person’s identity. Identities are the sets of meanings people hold for themselves that define “what it means” to be who they are as persons, as role occupants and as group members (PJB article) People are generally influenced by the norms and beliefs of society. A person’s identity is formed through a combination of factors derived from social structure (macrosociology) and social interaction (microsociology). The self influences society through the actions

The notion of identity is an enduring subject that sociologists have been analyzing for a period of time. Richard Jenkins connotes that ‘identity is our understanding of who we are and of who other people are, and, reciprocally, other people’s understanding of themselves and of others’ (Jenkins 2004, p5) Our identity dictates the manner in which humans interact with one another and by doing so, people create relationships with one another. Thus, human relationships are molded by two, or more, individual identities uniting. There are various ways one can be identified, such as race, religion or sexuality. These terms, or labels, can determine how society interprets an individual and influence their behavior towards the one person, thus their relationship with one another. For example, the

Identity consists roughly of what makes us unique as an individual and different from others. In other words, it is the way we see and define ourselves, or the network of values and convictions that structure our life. To an extensive degree, it is simpler to change our identity than controlling it in terms of fashion and social media aspects. Identity is an ever-changing process that begins as soon as we are born. Erikson (1980) stated that the social life begins with each individual’s beginnings. When we are born, we enter to a world with statuses that are already attached to us and are clearly defined by gender and race. As we grow older the decision we make, the people we keep close to, and the way we spend our time decides how we will be judged. Around adolescence, we develop an identity by trying to associate ourselves with different social groups. Adolescences’ self-consciousness will allow them to take on several identities, but they do it to be popular with certain social groups instead of trying to find an identity that is most suited for them. They eventually comes to an end through the experimentation with different identities never stops. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2002), we might have had a different identity from the one we in fact have. Identity is also a human

During adolescence and sometimes even to late adulthood, people are searching for their identity, a relatively clear and stable sense of who one is and what one stands for (Weiten & Lloyd, 2006). Identity formation is the central task of adolescence, according to Erik Eriksons’s theory of psychosocial development (Bernstein, 2008). Erikson believed that identity emerges from an identity crisis, which is the phase when one attempts to develop a self-image as a unique person by using knowledge from childhood. Based off of Erikson’s work, James Marcia formed the four identity statuses of identity development: identity diffusion, identity foreclosure, identity moratorium, and identity achievement

Further elaborating on the connection between formative years of discovering one’s self, we will find that our society has a desire to place designators and identifiers on people. This acts as a quick and easy way to categorize an individual and assess a slew of presumed things in categories ranging from economic status, religious affiliation, sex, criminality, intelligence, physical capabilities, social standing to many more. Regardless of the reasons for boxing people into a specific category, the dominant signifiers seem to greatly influence the trajectory of one’s identifiable categories. When humans are forming their self-identity they tend to place themselves in a box that society has deemed as

Within this paper, I will be focusing on the subject area of the self and identity, and will critically analyze this topic through both a Symbolic Interactionist and a Group Processes perspective. More specifically, through the Symbolic Interactionist (SI) lens, I will be approaching the topic of the self and identity using Charles Horton Cooley’s idea of the Looking Glass Self, and Erving Goffman’s concept of Dramaturgy. Under the Group Processes (GP) perspective, the theory I will be implementing to approach the self and identity is the Social Identity Theory. The first section of this paper will focus on providing a brief overview of both Symbolic Interactionist and Group Processes perspectives. This includes a short discussion of the key theorists tied to these perspectives, along with the key concepts that will be applied to this paper. Following this theoretical overview will be the application section, which is where I will outline the topic of the self and identity in a more detailed layout. Furthermore, I will be providing an organized outline of how the Looking Glass Self, Dramaturgy, and the Social Identity Theory approach the study of the self and identity. A comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the three theories will also be articulated. The conclusion will both summarize the contents of each branch of this paper and outline how this critical comparison paper has aided in solidifying my understanding of the self and identity.

In Racial and Ethnic Relations, Feagin and Feagin explore important matters of Culture and Ethnic groups to better understand the presence of discrimination and prejudices that we see in modern society. It is through their specific analysis of prejudice and stereotypes that we are introduced to this term called ethnocentrism. As they reference the definition of ethnocentrism made available by William G. Sumner, it is described as believing the group that you culturally or socially identify with to be central in society and all the other groups are only seen as something relative to the group that you belong in (11.) This term can be further investigated with the introduction of a psychology theory called the social identity theory. It proposes that discrimination is used to strengthen one’s social identity and improve one’s self-image. Basically, it further concretes the “us” and “them” (or in-group and out-group) mentalities through the attribution of negative qualities to the out-group. It is the presence of ethnocentrism – and the negative implications of the social identity theory that it relates to – that we can best understand and evaluate the structure and social experiences of those who are forced into the out-group positions. This term can be further investigated through the analysis of text from M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang. It is through his parody of the opera Madama Buterfly in which Puccini pushes racial stereotypes through the actions of the character Cio

Social identity plays a large role in our own independence; it’s the aspect of self concept. Social individualism can be drastically different in each country. Picture yourself in a basic high school classroom, it’s eight twelve and the bell rings for first block. You take your seat as the announcements overcome the school’s intercom. Now you stand up for the pledge of allegiance, not everyone says the pledge, but everyone does stand with their right hand over their heart while looking at the American flag. The difference is with our country anyone has the right to sit down as an individual during the Pledge if they choose to. In most other countries if you sit down during a National anthem or pledge you will face ramification. In today’s society, especially in the U.S; it is more of an open environment to speak your mind because it is promoted to be yourself and voice your opinion. The part of the answer to “ who am I?” The answer comes from our group memberships and our individualism within ourselves and how we fit into society around us.

To begin with, symbolic interactionism is the study of interactions in everyday life, or what people do. Moreover, it rejects the claims that the moral dimensions of social life can be studied scientifically, while emphasizing that people are “free agents” not determined by our social system; rather we make our own decisions (Reynolds, 2016, Lecture on Symbolic Interactionism). Furthermore, it “views reality as socially constructed” and “as a symbolic order” in which language is vital (Reynolds, 2016, Lecture on Symbolic Interactionism); for instance, sharing the same meaning of words. Therefore, symbolic interactionism views that starting at birth we begin to develop a self through socialization (that also involves interaction), by learning the culture, values of our social environment, and developing an identity (Reynolds, 2016, Lecture on Symbolic Interactionism).

Castells (2011) give a overview of this inherent motivation in his The power of identity: The information age: Economy, society, and culture. A series of social movement, such as Sexual liberation, LGBT social movements, African-American Civil Rights Movement etc, deconstructed the social system of the industrial society. A patriarchalism world was destroyed, while the cathedrals cannot provide spiritual comfort and emotional place for hope. People lost their identity to survive under the pressures from employment, globalisation and the deconstruction of the nation-state. (Giddens 1992) In the information age, the social network becomes the source of identity, because Giddens’s theoretical characterisation of identity-building in the period of “late modernity” pointed out the self-identity becomes a reflexive project in the context of post-traditional order. (Giddens 1991, p. 53, p. 35, p. 32) It relies the building of intimacy on a basis of trust. Castells (2011, p. 175, p. 31) thinks this kind of intimacy is built on a redefinition of identity fully autonomous without any dominant institutions and