Identity

What is identity? Is it something we born with? Is it changeable?

Holland’s et al. (1998) defines Identity as a concept that figuratively combines the intimate or personal world with the collective space of cultural forms and social relations. Our identity is what we are, what we believe in, how we talk, how we feel, how we treat others, and the list goes on. Some parts of our identity are things that we are born with such as our color and biological sex. Other parts of our identity are things that we gain from the culture we grow up in such as the language we speak. Other identities we acquire while interacting with others and exploring different spaces.  

The concept of identity is so complicated yet so simple. I am aware that identity is the features the person owns, practice, and believe in. however, those features are changeable. In other words, our identities are not fixed. Even at the same time, they can take different shapes in different places. 

Space for you to reflect:

How do you identify yourself? What are the factors that affected that?

Now, let us think of the things that made us what we become. In Holland’s et al. (1998) book they talked about many factors that shape our identities, in this post I want to focus on three main factors: Culture, figured worlds, and position:

Culture:

The affects that culture has on us cannot be denied, it has a huge part in shaping what we believe in and how we perceive the world. Cultural identities are what Holland et al., 1998 called the parts of identity we gain through our cultures. They define it as “Identities that form in relation to major structural features of society: ethnicity, gender, race, nationality and sexual orientation” (Holland et al., 1998, p. 7).

We gain a lot from our culture. Some identities we grow up proud of and try to hold and keep no matter what. For example, I am Muslim, and I wear a hijab. Wearing a hijab is part of my identity and I am proud of it. However, in 2017 when I move to the USA to fulfill my master’s degree, I was confused and not sure if wearing a hijab in a western country is the best choice to make. But my hijab represents who I am, and I don’t want to lose that. It is more than a piece of fabric to me. Choosing to continue wearing the hijab was not an easy decision for me to make. I love dark clothes, but I start wearing only bright colors because I did not want people to think of me as a threat because of my hijab. I had to change a part in my identity (wearing only dark colors) to still be able to keep another (wearing hijab). I was not forced to only wear bright colors it was just my way to feeling safer while wearing hijab.

Beside cultural identities that we are proud of there are cultural identities that we grow against and resist. I grew up in Saudi Arabia where women were not allowed to drive until the law was changed in 2017. As a child, I always thought that driving is for men only because I grew up seeing only my dad in the driver seat. After watching women driving in movies and tv shows I started questioning if driving is really for men only. And here I started to refuse and resist what my culture sees as a norm.

This is just a simple example of the identities we shape from our culture and how we sometimes realize that they are not the right things and that we need them to be changed.

Space for you to reflect:

What are some cultural identities that you are proud of? And were there any cultural identities that you were against?

Figured worlds:

As in Holland’s et al. (1998) a figured world is a ‘‘socially and culturally constructed Realm of interpretation in which a particular set of characters and actors are recognized, significance is assigned to certain acts and particular outcomes are valued over others’’ (, p. 52)

The concept of a figured world was not clear to me until I once read that figured world is the way people “figure” who they are through “worlds” they are participating in.

School is a figure world where students and teachers go through a lot to learn and teach each others and gain new knowledge about different things in life.

Home is a figured world where families live together and try their best to establish a comfortable and warm place to live in.

Position:

As in Holland’s et al. (1998) a positional identity is a “person's apprehension of her social position in a lived world that is depending on the others present of her greater or lesser access to spaces, activities, genres, and through those genres authoritative voices, or any voice at all”(p. 127-128)

School, home, supermarkets, bans, etc. those are all figured worlds where we act differently based on the position we are taking on those places.

Each place we are in is a figured world that requires a certain way of acting based on who we are in that place. At home, I will be a wife while at school I will be a student. I do not need to use my student identity at home. This goes back to the idea that our identities are not fixed, we use the part of the identity that we need based on the place and situation we are in. Language is a huge part of our identities, the language we use with our friends differs from the language we use in the work environment.

An inspirational space:

Our identity is our superpower. We might encounter people who will dislike us just because of who we are, we might lose job chances for the same reason. However, do not let that affect the way you see yourselves because being yourself is not a mistake. Here is a video of the actress America Ferrera who played the main character in Ugly betty talking about her struggle to become an actor in a community that does not value who she was.
My identity is a superpower -- not an obstacle | America Ferrera


References:
Holland D., Lachicotte W., Skinner D., & Cain C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.