COLLECTIVE IDENTITY AND IDENTITY FORMATION STRATEGIES

Many people gain a sense of positive self-esteem from their identity groups, which furthers a sense of community and belonging. Another issue that researchers have attempted to address is the question of why people engage in discrimination, i.e., why they tend to favour those they consider a part of their "in-group" over those considered to be outsiders. Both questions have been given extensive as part of the social identity approach. For example, in work surrounding social identity theory it has been shown that merely crafting cognitive distinction between in- and out-groups can lead to subtle effects on people's evaluations of others.

Different social situations also compel people to attach themselves to different self-identities which may cause some to feel marginalized, thus traveling between different groups and self-identifications. These different selves lead to constructed images dichotomized between what people want to be (the ideal self) and how others see them (the limited self). Educational background and Occupational status and roles significantly influence identity formation in this regard.

Levine

Côté 

An issue of interest in social psychology is related to the notion that there are certain identity formation strategies which a person may use to adapt to the social world. Professors James E. Côté and Charles G Levine (both of Dpt. of Sociology, University Western Ontario) developed a typology which investigated the different manners of behaviour that individuals may have. Their typology includes:

	Psychological symptoms	Personality symptoms	Social symptoms
Refuser	Develops cognitive blocks that prevent adoption of adult role-schemas	Engages in childlike behaviour	Shows extensive dependency upon others and no meaningful engagement with the community of adults
Drifter	Possesses greater psychological resources than the Refuser (i.e., intelligence, charisma)	Is apathetic toward application of psychological resources	Has no meaningful engagement with or commitment to adult communities
Searcher	Has a sense of dissatisfaction due to high personal and social expectations	Shows disdain for imperfections within the community	Interacts to some degree with role-models, but ultimately these relationships are abandoned
Guardian	Possesses clear personal values and attitudes, but also a deep fear of change	Sense of personal identity is almost exhausted by sense of social identity	Has an extremely rigid sense of social identity and strong identification with adult communities
Resolver	Consciously desires self-growth	Accepts personal skills and competencies and uses them actively	Is responsive to communities that provide opportunity for self-growth

                                                                                                                          

Gergen

Kenneth Gergen (American psychologist and professor at Swarthmore College) formulated additional classifications, which include the strategic manipulator, the pastiche personality, and the relational self. The strategic manipulator is a person who begins to regard all senses of identity merely as role-playing exercises, and who gradually becomes alienated from his or her social "self". The pastiche personality abandons all aspirations toward a true or "essential" identity, instead viewing social interactions as opportunities to play out, and hence become, the roles they play. Finally, the relational self is a perspective by which persons abandon all sense of exclusive self, and view all sense of identity in terms of social engagement with others. For Gergen, these strategies follow one another in phases, and they are linked to the increase in popularity of postmodern culture and the rise of telecommunications technology.

SHAPING COMEDY - IDENTITY OF FUNNY

Just a thought. This short history worth a look:

GLOBAL ARCHITECTURE

Sign and symbol – expressions of writing identity – where am I going with this? There is a distinction between sign and symbol, or rather between indicating and representing. They can occur simultaneously or one can defer to the other. Deferring can lead to, or indicate, some other thing.

I have hitherto linked identity with a sense of place and, to some extent with place attachment.  This concept of sense of place which emerges from our personal histories (where we were born, bred, educated, lived, worked etc.) is eroded by the increasingly mobile population,  now characteristic, of the late 20^th and 21^st centuries; however, it is not only the diaspora and redistribution of populations, but the spread and dissemination of  particular signs and symbols which construct a homogeneity of place signs and symbols thereby eroding the heterogeneity of people and places.  

One need only observe the proliferation of current architectural trends to see that the concept of site specificity becomes increasingly difficult. The building blocks of steel, glass and photoelectric cells are used across the globe. To some extent, concern for environmental pollution and global warming, are instigators of this trend; but, it is nonetheless creating a type of overall habitat, a universal neighbourhood, so to speak, which is now part of everyone’s personal history. A particular sense of place therefore becomes either far more narrow in its scope or completely worn away and superficial.

So where are signs and symbols? What price identity? Is the new identity to be identical, or does individuality remain?

                                      

ARCHITECTURAL IDENTITY + GENDER IDENTITY POLITICS

Robert Adam

Some comments from architect Robert Adam:

Identity was discussed at two architectural conferences in Barcelona at the end of last year. This unique assembly of leading international practitioners provided valuable evidence of how the architectural profession currently thinks about identity.

There’s a growing consensus in the architectural profession that the special identity of places matters. This seems to be based on the perception that globalisation is creating an undesirable uniformity in cities around the world. This concern can come from the most surprising sources. Lee Polisano, global president of the American architects, KPF, one of the world’s leading designers of tall buildings, said, “there’s a large danger of repetitiveness and sameness taking place in our cities.” The source of the problem is well-understood by major practitioners. Stefan Behnisch, principal of leading German practice, Behnisch Architekten, notes that, “one of the errors of international architecture is that we thought we could build the same thing everywhere.”

Two techniques for giving new architecture an identity to relate a building to its locality emerged: the spirit of place and the symbol of place.

The principle of the spirit of the place was summarised by Ken Yang of the leading British firm, Llewellyn Davis Yeang, “Every site is different and by responding to the locality we create a natural diversity.” He calls this “systemic identity”. Alison Brooks, a Canadian architect practicing in Britain and one of the winners of last year’s leading architectural award, described this succinctly as an abstract reaction to “found conditions”. It is this principle that allows Lee Polisano to claim that a tall office building, of a similar height and identical materials in the Middle East and London, has a local identity because it responds to individual aspects of its site, its orientation and the limitations created by adjacent sites. He says, “Local forces become local manifestations of local circumstances.”

Choosing a symbolic identity relevant to the location was described by the Berlin conceptual architect, Jurgen Mayer, as finding “certain elements that are local that we could interpret and make into something architecturally new.” It is this process that lay behind the imagery that the Catalan architect Enric Mirales and his Italian partner Benedetta Tagliabue chose for the Scottish Parliament. Using boats as a symbol of Scottish identity is not how most Scots see their national identity but was, as Tagliabue said, because as architects “you have to get the best of what you perceive”. Alejandro Polo of Foreign Office Architects similarly describes the choice of abstracted lacework imagery for the John Lewis Store in Nottingham as an attempt to “synthesise identity”.

And whilst were at it, a view of political identity, gender and feminism.