Identity: Sociological Perspectives

and reflexive sense that people have of who they are.

‘one’s humanity is simultaneously shared and singular’ (Jackson, 2002: 142).

My sense of myself, others’ perceptions of me, my reactions to others’ perceptions, the social categories that attach themselves to me and to which I attach myself – all may be referred to as ‘identity’,

Erving Goffman distinguishes, in his work on stigma (Goffman, 1968), between three forms of identity: personal identity (the unique characteristics of the person, both in themselves

and in terms of their relations with others); social identity (what we might call a ‘categorical’ identity – an identity that persons have by virtue of their membership of social categories); and ego identity or felt identity.

identity itself is a social and collective process and not, as Western traditions would

Instead of seeing identity as something located ‘within’ the person – a property of the person, we might say – I consider it as something produced through social relations.

Mead (1934) proposes a distinction between two dynamic aspects of the self: the ‘me’ who moves through the social world, existing in complex social relations (Mead uses the analogy of play), and the ‘I’ whose exact definition proves difficult, but which represents a post hoc reflection on the actions, perceptions and understandings of the ‘me’.

and the more personal, ambivalent, reflective