Surely few concepts in the ethical
and social sciences are more important than the concept of identity.  In fact,
there is a cluster of closely related concepts of identity, from notions of
personhood and the persistence of personal identity over time to notions of
group (e.g., ethnic, class, or national) identity.  Advances in Identity
Theory and Research focuses on a notion of identity that is taken to
straddle both traditions.  While focusing on the concept of self, "what it
means to be who one is" (p. 1), emphasis is paid to the shared social and
cultural roles or categories individuals occupy and, in particular, the
internalized meanings individuals give to these roles.  Thus, this volume
focuses on the culturally embedded nature of the self, and on the social
categories in which persons find themselves and with which they relate
themselves to others.

The volume is divided into four
parts for a total of thirteen chapters.  Each contributor approaches the topic,
to a greater or lesser degree, from the structural symbolic interaction
perspective (identity theory).  This perspective holds, very briefly, that
the meanings of environmental objects are acquired through social interaction,
that social roles have shared behavioral expectations, that persons are labeled
in terms of the social roles they occupy, that these labels become internalized
aspects of the self, and that persons’ identities emerge through the processes
of role-making and the various social interactions and expectations this
involves.  Hence, there is an important sense in which persons have a
multiplicity of identities as societies themselves have a multiplicity of
social roles.

The first part of this volume
considers the processes whereby selves gain their various identities.  In the
first chapter George J. McCall considers the role of disidentification,
the process of defining who one is not (e.g., not female, not honest) in the
development of personal identity.  McCall contends that self-identification and
self-disidentification are the positive and negative poles of personal
identity.  The second chapter, contributed by K. Jill Kiecolt and Anna F. LoMascolo,
considers the role of a child’s resemblance to her parents in the formation of
her personal identity.  Distinguishing collective from individual identities, Kiecolt
and LoMascolo argue that identification with a parent can be viewed as a type
of collective identity.  They contend that the greater the interaction
and affective commitment to one’s parents, the greater the perceived
resemblance.  The third chapter ends the first section and is contributed by
Alicia D. Cast who considers the role of one’s behavior and social interactions
in the formation of one’s identities.  Studying married couples’ reciprocal
relationships between behavior and identities, it is concluded that a husband
or wife’s identity and behavior is affected by their spouse’s identity and behavior. 

The second part of this volume
addresses the connections between identity and social structure.  Chapter four,
contributed by Peter L. Callero, considers the political aspects of personal
identity.  Specifically, Callero considers the relations between self and
democracy and argues that the political should be seen as constitutive of the
self.  Hence, the symbolic interactionist account of self can only be complete
if it considers the politics of self.  In chapter five, Matthew O. Hunt also
considers the social embeddedness of the self.  Reviewing existing research at
the intersection of personal identity theory and social stratification, Hunt
argues that personal identity is both a societal product and force in social
stratification and inequality.  Contributed by Timothy J. Owens and Richard T. Serpe,
chapter six considers the nexus between self-esteem and identity. 
Specifically, Owens and Serpe consider the role of self-esteem in family
identity commitment and salience among a broad cross-section of ethnically
diverse adults.  They conclude, among other things, that while income and
education level has an effect on the self-esteem of members of all ethnic
groups, it has its biggest impact on White self-esteem. 

The third part of this volume considers
some of the non-cognitive consequences of identity theory.  Chapter seven,
contributed by Jan E. Stets, considers the role of emotion in personal
identity.  Stets considers the view that positive and negative emotions are
caused by meeting or not meeting one’s identity expectations and contends that
identity theory, properly construed, is a useful perspective from which to
study persons’ reactions to both reward and injustice.  Linda E. Francis, the
author of chapter eight, maintains that one’s interpersonal expression of
emotion has important health benefits.  Francis gives a theoretical explanation
of this in terms of identity theory and suggests that identity theory offers
the prospects for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of stress, emotion,
and health.  Chapter nine is contributed by Edward J. Lawler and considers the question,
under what conditions do the emotional aspects of social interaction contribute
to the formation of collective identities?  Utilizing the insights of
both exchange theory and identity theory, Lawler contends that when actors in
social interaction perceive their responsibilities for interaction as shared,
and when they interpret their own affective responses in collective
terms, we see the emergence of collective identities.  In chapter ten, Kristen Marcussen
and Michael D. Large differentiate types of distress.  Combining identity
theory and self-discrepancy theory, Marcussen and Large offer a model that
distinguishes and predicts two important outcomes of stress, depression and
anxiety. 

The final section of this volume
focuses on the issue of multiple identities.  The author of chapter eleven,
Lynn Smith-Lovin, investigates the structural conditions under which multiple
identities emerge simultaneously.  In order to adequately address the
issue of multiple identities, Smith-Lovin contends that we move away from the
traditional central processing model of cognition to a distributed processing
model of the sort advanced by contemporary connectionists. The penultimate chapter,
contributed by Peggy A. Thoits, considers the benefits of an individual’s
multiple identities, for example, the purpose and meaning provided by role
identities, suggesting that these benefits will depend, in part, on whether the
identities are obligatory or voluntary.  Since they are freely chosen precisely
for their perceived benefits, voluntary identities have greater health
benefits, can be more easily abandoned if these benefits do not accrue, and, in
general, make fewer and less intense demands on an individual’s time and
energy.  The final chapter, contributed by Peter J. Burke, considers the
relationship between an individual’s place in a social structure and her
complex of identities.  In particular, Burke is concerned with how one’s multiple
identities influence the perceptual control system.  According to Burke, the
manner in which the behaviors of two identities are related in an individual
depends on the manner in which that individual is embedded in the social
structure.

The structural symbolic interaction
perspective has much to offer the field of personal identity.  William James’s
intuition that each of us is a complex of different selves is, indeed, robust;
we all don different "hats" for the various social roles we occupy,
and understanding personhood requires understanding these social roles as they
relate to individuals.  What’s more, the symbolic interactionist’s recognition
of the role of bodily affect in providing salience to identities and motivating
behaviors that preserve threatened identities, is instructive and complimentary
to recent scholarship on the embodiment and the role of bodily affect in
cognition and consciousness (see, e.g. Ellis and Newton 2000). 

However, one must not confuse the
focus of this volume with the perennial philosophical puzzle over what accounts
for the persistence of a unitary self over time and place.  For while there is
an important sense in which individuals possess many selves, there is also an
important sense in which the same, unitary, self adopts one role and abandons
another.  That is, there is a sense of self that seemingly transcends the
multiplicity of social roles an individual occupies.  Indeed, in cases of
radical breaks in consciousness (e.g., extreme forms of amnesia) there is an
important sense in which the same person goes from occupying many roles
to very few.  Nevertheless, putting aside the tough nut of self-persistence,
the structural symbolic interaction perspective offers many important tools for
understanding the socially embedded nature of selves; and this volume offers a
nice collection of contemporary articles from this perspective that covers many
of the important issues surrounding personhood. 

Ellis, R. and Newton, N. (ed.)  2000.  The Caldron of
Consciousness: Motivation, affect and self-organization.  Philadelphia:
John Benjamins Publishing Co.

© 2005 Liam
Dempsey

Liam Dempsey,
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia CA

Categories: Philosophical, Psychology