In an accessible style, Lawler maintains that identities are "… forged, not within the individual, but in networks of relations with others, some of whom we shall encounter and some of whom we shall not. In this, we are both made and unmade by each other." This means that identity is not a ‘given’, but something produced through the narratives people use to explain and understand their lives. Her focus on narrative challenges the notion of the atomized individual and replaces it with a concept of a person enmeshed in – and produced within – webs of social relations. Lawler’s perspective on the nature and dynamics of identity meshes with that which is embodied in the informal coalitions view of organizational dynamics and other ‘relational’ perspectives. As such, although its focus is on broad social and political issues, it necessarily places a number of question marks against important elements of mainstream thinking on the leadership, performance and development of organizations. I’ve just finished reading a really engaging book on identity by Sociology lecturer, Steph Lawler. In it, she challenges the widely held view that a person’s ‘true identity’ is ‘inside’ them and fundamentally separated from the social world. Instead, she advances a radically social perspective of identity, arguing that it is produced and negotiated between people in relationship.
Chapter 1 – In this introductory chapter, Lawler raises the question of what identity is and how it is formed. The central proposition that emerges from this is that
"identity needs to be understood not as belonging ‘within’ the individual person, but as produced between persons and within social relations".
She argues that the idea that the ‘true self’ or a ‘true identity’ is ‘inside’ and fundamentally separated from the social world is not an effect of any innate feature of human identity but rather of social processes of control. This notion of identity hinges on the paradoxical combination of sameness and difference: We are identical with ourselves (from birth to death) and identical with others (sharing some common identities). At the same time, we are unique and different from others.
Chapter 2 – Here Lawler argues that identities are ‘made up’ through crafting a story out of life: assembling various memories, experiences, episodes, interpretations, understandings etc through narrative. This narrative view of identity forms the core of her argument. We endlessly tell stories about our lives - to ourselves and to others. And it is through such stories that we make sense of the world, of our relationship to that world, and of the relationship between ourselves and other selves.
Crucially, from this perspective, these narratives do not reflect a pre-given identity. That is, narrative is not a transparent carrier of a ‘true life’. Instead, identities are
"produced through the autobiographical work in which all of us engage every day, even though few of us will formally write an ‘autobiography’".
Identity is therefore profoundly social and is continually interpreted and reinterpreted. Insofar as we know ourselves (and others) we achieve this knowledge only through interpretation. Self-knowledge is then self-interpretation.
Chapter 3 – In Chapter 3, Lawler explores the implication of the notion of kinship for our understanding of identity. She sees this as
"a cultural category produced as if founded in ‘objective nature’".
The chapter then goes on to discuss how this affects the construction of such things as family, race, nationhood and so on.
Chapter 4 – The focus of Chapter 4 is on the notion of "becoming ourselves" and the search for ‘autonomy’ that Western society values so highly. Lawler challenges this conception in the context of the critical role played by power – and how this is construed – in normalising this position. In particular, she argues that "Regulatory power has come to saturate the social world: it is present in all appeals to self-fulfilment and self-improvement, whether of the mind or the body."
The chapter explores the implications of seeing power as something that is exercised rather than owned – albeit not equally by everybody. It also suggests a relationship between power and knowledge:
"… power and knowledge are bound together: the extension of power involves the production of knowledge by which people can be known and understood …". This refers "not to knowledge about a set of facts, but rather to what might be termed ways of knowing …".
Such discourses, she argues, define what and how things can be said and thought. So certain things become ‘true’ or ‘real’ not as an effect of intrinsic properties of the knowledge itself but of the social relations that produce them as true.
"Who we (and others) are is [therefore] an effect of what we know ourselves (and others) to be."
And this knowledge is based on the socially produced categories of person. Through this process, we become that person.
Chapter 5 – In Chapter 5, Lawler considers what psychoanalysis might have to offer to sociological theories of identity. This provides a contrast to other theories explored in the book, by emphasising what it sees as the unconscious aspects of identity formation. Lawler argues that this perspective offers a number of ways of understanding non-rational, concealed aspects of identity that otherwise would be inaccessible:
"… part of the messiness [of the social world], it seems to me, derives from the messiness of the unconscious."
Chapter 6 - Entitled "Masquerading as ourselves," this chapter challenges the distinction that is often made between ‘being’ (‘who we really are’) and ‘doing/acting’ (performing a role). Here Lawler returns to her central theme that identity is formed and enacted through relationships. It is not something that is self-constructed and residing somewhere inside the individual.
She acknowledges that, if authenticity is positioned as the touchstone of identity, any suggestion that our expression of identity does not "… spring from somewhere ‘deep within’ us" is bound to be seen as problematic. However, as she further points out, the ‘deep within us’ is itself formed through our everyday ‘performances’. In other words, identity is always something that is done. Through this process, she argues, we assume characteristics that we claim as our own. That is,
"we become (social) persons through performing our selves."
The key question then shifts from one of ‘who we really are’ to "how we achieve identity, under what constraints and in what contexts."
Chapter 7 – Here lawler explains how the ways in which identities are constructed privilege some people and disadvantage others. Using class-based examples, she shows how
"… privileged identities are constituted through a rejection and repulsion of those identities with which they could be compared."
Importantly too, she argues that we should not look at identities as being stable, coherent and unproblematic but rather recognise that all identities
"have anxiousness and defensiveness at [their] heart".
Afterword – In a brief postscript, Lawler reprises her "deeply social" view of identity. "There is," she asserts, "no aspect of identity that lies outside social relations."
She reminds readers of her challenge to accepted wisdom that identities are lived out relationally and collectively:
"They do not simply belong to the individual; rather, they must be negotiated collectively, and they must conform to social rules."
Identities are therefore forged through people’s connectivities to each other. Each of us is ‘made’ through this process as "a set of overlapping and contradictory identities", which are embedded within and produced by the social world:
"The idea that we can ‘be whatever we want to be’ relies on an illusory eclipsing of the social world."
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Dr. Steph Lawler is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Newcastle University in the UK. Copies of Identity - Sociological perspectives can be obtained from Amazon (UK and USA/world).
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