Identity

Identity is a social process involving perception and differentiation. It can be defined as the ways in which individuals and groups regard themselves as similar to, or different from, each other. These perceptions can change over time, so identity is a fluid construct rather than a static one. Identity has both individual and collective dimensions; people identify as unique in certain respects and as members of social groups in other contexts.

Some people are more willing to openly disclose an identity than are others, particularly if the identity is subject to prejudice or negative stereotypes and may result in discrimination. The process of disclosing a previously hidden identity is known as “coming out,” whereas the process of hiding such an identity is called “passing.” However, the danger with these terms is that they tend to imply that identities characterized by ambivalences, fluctuations, contradictions, hybridities, and in-between affiliations are in some ways less developed, or less politically sophisticated, than those with clear-cut affiliations. Qualitative researchers seeking to understand such complex identities disagree with the idea that particular identities must be expressed in certain ways.

Different methodological approaches may be suited to demonstrating particular aspects of identity. For instance, researchers who are interested in the ways in which people change their identities over time, or change the weight they place on particular aspects of their identities, might adopt a longitudinal approach. Qualitative researchers may also adopt a life course approach toward identity to study the impact of both individual agency and social structure. On the other hand, researchers who use narrative methods to study identity often seek to understand how individuals make sense of their world as well as what incentives, constraints, and values influence their choices and how their identities change over time.

People have multiple identities framed around characteristics such as gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, age, disability, nationality, and so on. Qualitative researchers adopting a focus on intersectionality and identity examine how these factors interact and under what conditions particular identities become salient. They may focus, for instance, on the contexts in which some identities are privileged while others are marginalized. By focusing on one particular identity, researchers may be able to gather detailed information that helps them to discover similarities and differences among a group's members. Such studies may illustrate the forms of power that influence particular identities.

Some social movements, such as feminism, have been criticized for assuming that identities (e.g., the identity of “woman”) are stable and clear-cut. Spawned in part by Judith Butler's influential critique of “identity politics,” there has been a massive increase in the study of the ways in which identity is performatively produced; that is, discursively constructed in a social environment. Butler's approach focuses on the ways in which identity is performed, produced, cited, and reiterated—raising questions of power, subjectivity, and politics. Because identity always involves a sense of “us” and “them,” this approach highlights the forms of exclusion inherent in any particular identity.

Another approach to the study of identity has been associated with psychoanalysis and has focused on the fantasies, excesses, projections, hesitations, attractions, and other psychic responses to particular individual and collective identities. Psychoanalytic approaches may examine the conscious and unconscious assumptions underpinning conceptions of particular groups or individuals.

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