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Roots and Routes of Identity
(MLLS 406) Contextualising Globalisation, Culture and Lifestyle
Lecture VIII
Daniel Turner and Jenny Flinn
Understanding Identity
Identity can be understood as the
relationship between culture and society
 Culture represents the macro pattern of
life
 Identity represents the micro meanings
we have as individuals
 Two views on understanding culture and
identity

◦ Structural sociology
◦ Action sociology
Roots of Identity
Structural Sociology
 Marx and Durkheim

◦ Modernist thinkers
◦ Founders of classical sociology?

Classical sociology has the following key
features
◦
◦
◦
◦
A belief in social progress
An image of society as a system
The view that societies evolve through history
The idea that sociology can understand and solve
social problems by scientific means (Kidd, 2002)
Roots of Identity
Action Sociology
 Weber and Simmel
 Action sociology has the following key features

◦ Humans are not passive victims of the social structure
◦ Society does not exist as a ‘thing’ but as a series of actions and
interactions by individuals
◦ Social life makes sense (it is meaningful to those involved)
◦ Sociology and sociologists can only study the reality of society
by looking at the micro level – what do people actually do.

Contemporary sociologists attempt to find these
models too extreme and seek to find a balance, e.g.
Bourdieu
Routes of Identity
Negus (1996) talks of the crisis of identity
in a globalised, postmodern world
 Postmodernity offers a number of
opportunities and threats with regards to
identity construction
 For example, in talking about national
identity Bhabha (1990) suggests that
immigration can both threaten the
continuity and purity of the nation and
enhance it’s richness and diversity

Hybridisation of Identity
Postmodernity offers the opportunity for
hybridisation of identities
 This allows people to belong to two or
more distinct cultural groups
simultaneously
 For example, diasporic groups such as
British Asians, Scots-Americans
 This offers many opportunities but can
also raise challenging issues
 Multiculturalism v Monoculturalism

The Future of Identity
 ‘People’s
identities appear, from one
point of view to be liberated by
modernity. Their identities are now
ascribed, not prescribed. But there
is a price to pay for such liberation
and that price is risk and
uncertainty.’(Miles, 2001:145)