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part 3 IDENTITY &
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See below for:

• Changing Conceptions of Identity: Who are we?
• Collective Identity
• Crisis of Identity
• Postmodernity and Identity
• Identity and the Internet

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CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF IDENTITY: WHO ARE WE?

Put at its simplest, identity is a very personal concept for each of us. It defines who or what we think we are. Easily said, but often we feel like we don't know who we or what we're doing. This isn't strange, although it is a little worrying. Much of the reason we feel like we're unsure of our identity lies with the rapidly changing nature of society around us. The things that used to help us define who we are -- church, family, community, nation, school, and so on -- have been undermined or debased. This is a prime reason behind the crisis of identity felt by many of us. (See below)

Of course, not all of these aspects of identity were necessarily good. Strong feelings of association with a particular country, political belief, or racial group can lead to very negative feelings about members of other groups. This can lead to racism, excessive nationalism, xenophobia, and so on. All the same, human beings seem to need some sort of strong identification with a particular group or collective culture. So if the old collective identities are being broken down, new ones must be forming in different places, and one of these places may well be in cyberspace. (See also below.)

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Concepts of Collective Identity:
So how do we see ourselves and each other? Here are some ideas:
a) People band themselves together imaginatively in groups; you may as a person have a number of identities (national, gender, local/city, race) and different aspects of your collective identity are important to you than others.
b) Identity is therefore not fixed or given; this fights against dominant Western notion of the fixed, autonomous self.
c) Identity is constantly reconsituted and in constant flux; you are being reconstituted as are the collectives you define yourself against.

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SOCIAL IDENTITY (THEORY)
One approach toward identity that is grounded in psychology has gained academic currency in recent years. Known broadly as social identity theory, the focus here is on the centrality of social identity as a factor in individuals' sense of self-identity.

This social identity is essentially a categorization framework made up of sets of comparisons and contrasts used to emphasize distinctions among groups. It suggests an active process whereby collectives proactively form "in-groups" by setting themselves apart from others; in so doing, the group cements relationships among members of the in-group while providing individuals with a sense of belonging within the collective (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Hogg & Abrams, 1988).

A crucial aspect of this theory is the fluctuating nature of identity. While people tend to identify with many social groups, based on various factors such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, national origin, and so on, these factors become salient at different times and in different ways. According to social identity theory, if and when a particular group identity becomes salient at a particular time - for whatever reason - the sentiments, emotions, and behaviors of any given member of the salient group will tend to be affected and guided by the norms and aspirations of that group. (See also the Special Topics section on national identity.)

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Crisis of Identity
Because the things that used to help us define who we are -- family, community, etc. -- have been undermined in recent decades, people talk about a crisis of identity we are all supposed to be suffering from. This is primarily a poststructuralist concept, since its effects seem to have been arisen with the changes in society brought about by poststructuralism and postmodernism. Here's how:

• From 1960s onwards dominant structuralism began to be replaced by micropolitics, lobby groups, localism, nationalism, etc., interms of group identity. The breakdown of the old order led to crises of identity and representation, and a loss of old identities at the collective level. So Jameson, for example, argues that the subject in a postmodern world is not alienated, but rather fragmented.
• "Alientation presumes a central, unitary self . . . [b]ut if, as a postmodernist sees it, the self is decentered and multiple, the concept of alienation breaks down. All that is left is the anxiety of identity" (Turkle, 1995: 49).

So how did this happen?

• 1) Two things were happening at the same time in the 1960s:
  a) This was the beginning of the end of the modernist dominant theory thesis and traditional ideas about hegemony. Micropolitics arrives.
  b) Lacan begins writing about the decentered self, attacking the notion of an embedded self.

• 2) By beginning of the 1970s, the question "Who am I?" becomes harder to answer at both an individual and collective level. By the 1970s-80s, you see the beginnings of new collectives being formed (Yuppies, DINKies, etc.)

• Now, instead of experiencing, achieving or learning we're more likely to buy and consume our identity. Consumer culture was around earlier but now it has intensified, almost taken over. How do you get an authentic identity? Is it possible at all or is identity being undercut by the postmodern phenomenon?

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Postmodernity and Identity:

a) Modernity changed the sense of identity through urban revolution.
b) In postmodernity, although the city experience is still important, the mass media are more important in changing sense of individual and cultural identity.
c) People who are positive about postmodernism point to crushing of individual identity in modern city design to show how postmodernity supposedly brings back importance (this argument works best in architecture).
d) Globalization started as an economic phenomenon and ends as a phenomenom of identity. (E.g., Scottish nationalists might be lumped in with the problems in Bosnia and the Basque country).

Identity and New Media

As Sherry Turkle puts it: "Many of the institutions that used to bring us together -- a main street, a union hall, a town meeting -- no longer work as before. Most people spend most of their day alone at a screen of a television or a computer. Meanwhile, social beings that we are, we are trying (as Marshall McLuhan said) to retribalize. And the computer [and new media] is playing a central role."

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WHITHER MODERNITY?