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Tom Abbotts book review
'Social Identity' was a great book to read, although i found it not an easy read, it was very interesting to look at what makes up a persons identity. The book tells us that social identity must be seen as both individual and collective. Jenkins highlights works from Mead, Goffman and Barthes to explore the experience of identity in everyday life. The major concepts covered are; embodiment, social groups and social categories, difference and community, categorisation and resistance.
The book talks the reader through various scenarios to exemplify social identity in everyday life. Using these scenarios i found it relatively easy to understand the connections Jenkins was making, and the importance of identity and what it means. Jenkins continues to show throughout that without social identity there is no society, makes sense.
"Mead suggests that we cannot see ourselves at all without also seeing ourselves as other people see us" pg21
The book looks at the difference and similarities between individual identity and social identity, and argues that one cannot exist without the other. Jenkins central thesis is that the internal-external dialectic is the fundamental link between individual and collective identities. I recommend this book if you want to know the difference between fact and historic fiction of what it is to be human and how this implies in modern society. This book was far more informative than any other 'identity' text I have come across. I have found this books readings very true in everyday life analysing it in new social community sites like 'Facebook', it has been a great learning tool.
Some interesting parts i remember from the book are like; the meanings of the word self, parallel the meanings of identity, core features of similarity, difference, reflexivity and process
Also my favorite and most memorable quote by far, and my opening line for my essay based on identity is;
"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence but their social existence that determines their consciousness"
Tags: anthropology barthes goffman identity mead social sociology
Story as a way of understanding the world
Here are some key points from the chapter on 'Narrative Knowing':
* Narrative is a window onto the story-teller’s landscape of consciousness
* We all have a kind of personal myth
* We are made up of a community of selves
* Narrative has sequentiality which implies a future
* Narratives help us to reconcile the ‘exceptional’ and the ‘expected’
* The re-telling of stories is a problem-solving technique
* Narratives have morals
* Narratives are always socially constructed
* Narratives are liminal
* Narratives are ambiguous
* Narrative is cathartic
* Our ongoing personal narratives are co-constructed
* Narratives often arise around sites of social conflict
Tags: catharsis identity liminoid narrative narratives-5 social story storytelling therapy
Flaneur vs Anti-flaneur
An interesting note about how 'touristic' travel is not quite so 'free-floating' and 'voyueristic' as social sciences often make out. The 'flaneur' of Benjamin is often shown up as the model for understanding the playful gaze of the tourist / consumer, as though they are abstracted non-committal players. Actually, people are often rushed, breathless, purposeful, preoccupied, and stressed, and want either to seek out - or avoid - family and friends.
Tags: communication flaneur gaze imagination place social space virtual
The banality of communicative travel?
On page 5 the authors refer to the importance of physical co-presence. Here is where I start to detect banality, padding and bullshit. I mean, it is really quite banal to say that physical co-presence (i.e. people meeting) is important and takes primacy over other forms of communication. Perhaps if the authors mean to imply that drawing attention to this is a way of estranging the reliance we place on communicative travel, then it may be justified, but are we really at a place where we think sending emails is equivalent to 'meeting'?
Actually, maybe we are :-(
Tags: alienation communication physicality social space travel virtual
Book Summary for Media & Identity
I found this book very useful for my identity essay – It contains many useful analogies and explorations of identity theories and structures.
I was gonna talk about David Gauntlett because I do love his books on Gender and Identity, and he is also a very close friend of my best friend’s stepmum, but that’s besides the point I guess ☺
Woodward’s book advances on old concepts (such as Judith Butlers and Michel Foucaults) of identity and difference.
I like the ideas she put forward about essentialist and non-essentialist views on identity, essentialist being the idea that one solid identity is essential really, therefore non-essentialist exploring the concept of fluid identities and unfixed essences.
It is well laid out and divided into structured chapters with each one being written by a specialist in the field, and at the end of each chapter there are extra readings to back up or give another viewpoint to what was just written in the previous chapter.
She talks about being an other or outsider, and about social dispositions and changes can (or convince people to) determine their identity group by ones own sexuality, race, age, gender, class and embodiment.
While discussing topics of changeable identities, she also talks about classificatory systems by which people define themselves, and also about the subjectivity of identity issues – conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions which constitute our sense of who we are – and ultimately questions why we actually invest in identities in the first place.
Jack Kennerley x
Tags: cultural differences gender identities identity media sexuality social subjectivity
Small Overview
Having only started reading a small section of this book the main concepts which I can find Woodward focuses upon are the changing of identities a person may go through during their life due to the change in their personal gain of cultural knowledge and what is going on in their life to have an impact upon their opinion. Due to this change Woodward continues to argue that there may be a 'crisis of identity', where we struggle to form our own identities because of the confliction between others.
The book also discusses how our identities are constructed as opposites e.g. man/woman, black/white, creating groups where people recognise themselves as either insiders or outsiders.
This book is good to reference upon if looking at how social aspects effect a person's identity and how other people and belong to social groups can change identity to add to this it also discusses how a member's identity would change if put under different social restraints.
overview
Suffering from bad structure the book seems to lack any kind of new insight into Britsh social realism. Her style of academic writing often isolates the reader and the uneccessray use of complex diction can stall the flow of reading. However, the chronological assesment of the development of social realism in Britain is very interesting especially as she charts its relationship to the British documentary movement.
Sexuality and Social Construction
This book is an essential text for those interested in sexual identity and social construction. Here we find a coherent and understandable text which traces not only an historical account but provides important pathways within thoery
Tags: construction queer sexuality social