Torquetum

 

Identity is a term thrown around a lot in educational and other literature. Sfard and Prusak felt that a definition of identity that is operational is needed if it is to be useful. First and foremost, they define identity as stories about people. The notion of identity differs from other terms such as character, nature and personality in that it is not as “tainted” with undertones of biological determinism and as such is better suited to research located in a sociocultural context. 

 

“[I]n particular, identity features prominently whenever one addresses the question of how collective discourses shape personal worlds and how individual voices combine into the voice of a community” (p. 15) [so group to individual and individual to group] and “the question of the mechanisms through which the collective and the common enter individual activities also lies at the center of educational research on learning” (p. 15). It is known that culture shapes learning. There is a “complex dialectic” between learning and its sociocultural context and identity seems tailor-made to bridge the gap. However, identity can only be really useful if it has an operational definition. The authors says “it is the activity of identifying rather than its end product that is of interest to the researcher”, whose focus is not on identity so much as the “complex dialectic between identity-building and other human activities” (p. 17). 

 

But why not beliefs or attitudes as the bridge between learning and sociocultural context? Beliefs are tricksy things as they imply an existence which is discourse-independent yet how is an analyst to perceive and objectively identify them? Attitudes are similarly tricksy. 

 

Sfard and Prusak refer to Blumer’s test of admissibility, which is something I have not read the original of and probably should seek out. For a concept to be applicable in research it has to meet 3 conditions: we have to know what to look at in order to pinpoint the concept, we need to know how to identify things which are not the concept, and it needs to “enable accumulation of knowledge” (p. 15). Beliefs and attitudes don’t meet these criteria and, in fact, identity is at similar risk unless an operational definition can be found. The authors criticise others’ usage of the word identity without an explanation of what it is or how to use it, however they like Gee and other’s use of the term or idea of narrativisation, of people telling stories about who they are. The flaw they find in this is the postulation of there being some sort of internal thing about which you are telling stories. They call this an “essentialist vision” of identity and consider the notion of identity being something that is extra-discursive and independent of action to be both untenable (it gives us no idea of what to look for) and potentially harmful (descriptors can become self-fulfilling). 

 

Instead of beliefs or attitudes, Sfard and Prusak support the use of identity as a descriptive tool. They provide a collection of definitions which operationalise identity. 

Identity: “we suggest that identities may be defined as collections of stories about persons or, more specifically, as those narratives about individuals that are reifying, endorsable and significant” (p. 16) 

Reifying: the use of verbs such as be, have or can (rather than do) and with the adverbs always, never, usually, etc. that stress repetitiveness of the action. 

Endorsable: the “identity-builder” would agree that the story “faithfully reflects the state of affairs in the world” 

Significant: any change in the story is likely to affect the storyteller’s feelings towards the identified person. Often the most significant stories are those about inclusion in or exclusion from a community. 

 

Actual identity: stories about the actual state of affairs; present tense; formulated as fact 

Designated identity: stories about a state of affairs expected to be the case in the future, having the potential to become part of one’s identity; future tense, or expressed in words evoking obligation, commitment, necessity, wish; not necessarily desired, but always binding; sometimes the person is not aware that there are alternatives; the most important source is narratives authored by others; 

Critical stories: “those core elements that, if changed, would make one feel as if one’s whole identity had changed” (p. 18); without these elements the person would find it hard to tell which stories about him/her were endorsable or not. 

Significant narrators: influential people, “carriers of those cultural messages that will have the greatest impact on one’s actions” (p. 18). 

 

They then define learning as closing the gap between actual and designated identities. 

 

Any narrative can be seen as a triple BAC where A is the identified person, B the storyteller and C the recipient. Without going on any further it is clear that there are therefore multiple identities for any one person, which really has to be part of any definition of identity. Whether any of these three are the same person or not allows us to define three “levels” of identity narrative: 

AAC: the storyteller is the identified person: first-person identity 

BAA: the story is told to the identified person: second-person identity 

BAC: all three are different people: third-person identity 

AAA is a particularly special identity, a first-person self-told identity which is possibly what many people mean when they speak of identity – it has potentially the most impact on one’s actions. Second- and third-person identities have the potential to be incorporated into our first-person designated identities (p. 18). 

 

A merit of this narrative definition of identity is that “human agency and the dynamic nature of identity are brought to the fore” (p. 17); the focus of attention is on things being said, not on something existing behind what is said. As stories, identities are human-made, have authors and recipients, and can change according to need, they are accessible and investigable. A criticism of this narrative definition is that “text” cannot replace experience. Wenger in particular stresses that the words used to express or represent identity are not the identity itself. Sfard and Prusak argue that, while they agree with Wenger that identities originate in the “experience of engagement”, it is the stories one tells about experiences, or the visions of these experiences, that constitute identities, not the experiences themselves. 

 

Of all the theoretical texts on identity which I have covered so far, it is this narrative one I like the best. One reason is that I am wanting to use theory to look at some data I have and that data is largely in the form of interviews. Perhaps on a different data set I might prefer a different theoretical tool. Still, this definition of identity as story, with a split into actual and designated identities with learning drawing those two together really works for me. I shall try to apply this to my data and see what comes out! 

 

Blumer, H. (1969) Symbolic Interactionism: Perspectives and Methods. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.