What important interface is presented through identity?
Identity presents the interface between the personal (what is going on in our heads, how we individuals feel about who we are) and the social (the societies in which we live and the social, cultural and economic factors which shape experience and make it possible for people to take up some identities and render others inaccessible or impossible.
Why do we need to look in detail at relationship between changing social structures and changing identities?
In order to explore the possibility that there might be some uncertainties about who we are in the contemporary UK, we need to look in more detail at the relationship between changing social structures and changing identities.
What happens when individuals take up a particular identity position?
The importance of symbolization and the ways in which human beings can imagine themselves occupying a particular identity. What is actually happening when we imagine ourselves as the successful candidate, the streetwise teenager or the sporting hero?
What is actually happening when we imagine ourselves as a successful student/footballer/dancer?
One important attempt to resolve the problem of where the individual stands in relation to socially constructed and even determined identity positions was developed by Louis Althusser who argued that when people are recruited into identity positions they are interpellated or hailed.
Why and in what way do some identities ‘work’ so that we are dawn into them?
It works like this, you have to imagine that you are walking down the street and someone calls out your name. You stop, turn around and think ‘that’s me they’re calling me’.
What important problem does Louis Althusser theory attempt to resolve?
Althusser argued that this is how we come to feel that an identity is the one which fits us – as a member of a religious community, as a New Labour voter, as a lad, as a mother, as a ‘new man’, as a European. The process is one of recognition, of looking at yourself and thinking ‘that’s me!’.
What is interpellation and how does it work?
Interpellation is a process whereby people recognize themselves in a particular identity and think ‘that’s me’.
Come up with three examples of advertisements which seek to interpellate the reader in certain ways. How is the interpellation working?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcq8bnMpsKQ this advert is an advert that women can relate to. Women are stereotypically the housewife and so a chore such as food shopping is related to them. Women can relate to this because there a days when you don’t feel yourself and everybody gets ill. Also young children are known to through tantrums and the parent in this advert I think is doing the action that most parents feel in that situation but they keep it in their head.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cM4EOeJzHA this advert advertises Virgin Airways. This advert interperllates the fact that if you travel/fly/book or work for Virgin Airways then you have a glamorous team looking after you, who express first class qualities in the ad. Also your flight will be on time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mviAHJ6AkOs this advert interpellates to anyone that has been bullied as this advert explains how it feels. This advert reaches out to everybody really but in particular I think young children and teenagers as this is where most of the bullying happens. Also the use of modern celebrities are ones that young people will recognise too.
Give three new examples of interpellation working consciously and subconsciously in lifestyle magazines/television/film. Explain how the interpellation is working in each context and how the reader/viewer is recruited towards certain identities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZumXPlCoZ8k This trailer is advertising the film Mum at 16. young mums, especially those who have had a baby at 16 and younger will be able to relate to this film because they have been in the same situation and may have felt the way the main character in this film does. The same goes for parents, in particular the mother who is represented in this film. Mothers who’s children haven’t had babies at a young age may be able to feel what the mother feels in this film because if they have children themselves and they were in that situation then they may react the same. And finally teachers. If you have a student at school that is pregnant and trying to keep it a secret then teachers may be able to sympathise with them because of the pastoral training they have had for students.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB3NPNM4xgo when I first watched this t mobile advert I did not feel that it related to any of us at all, however since reading about interpellation I was able to make some observations. Of course this sort of things doesn’t happen to us all in airports. However meeting and greeting a loved one at the airport is something we can relate to, for example not seeing a member of family for a long time who means a lot to you. The people singing in the advert are verbally expressing the way the people feel, in particular the first couple, and we can also relate to this. Also the Indian man singing to the guy right in his face is feeling slightly uncomfortable and confused (we can tell by his facial expression), this is something that we would probably feel and are able to relate to in case this ever happened us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWNBjU6DjYY&feature=related This advert interpellates mothers, fathers, children and large families. We can relate to there being a big family meal and needing something to cook that everyone will like. Also the never ending washing up situation is demonstrated through the hyperbole of the dishwasher, for parents the washing in households seems to be never ending. The song connotates families through the lyrics and also it’s from 80’s which may be of the parents era, therefore something they can relate to.
What is class and how have social scientists attempted to explain work based identities through class?
Social class is used by social scientists as a means of classifying the economic and social divisions of a society. Different economic systems create social class groupings, which involve some degree of inequality.
What is gender and what has social science to say about the inequalities between genders and the relationship between gender and identity?
There are areas of the labour market and of domestic work, including unpaid caring work within the home, which a seen as ‘men’s work’ or ‘women’s work’. In industrial societies, paid work is exchanged for remuneration and is hence more valued and has higher status than unpaid domestic or caring work. The former has been seen as masculine and the latter as feminine. This has been enacted in most Western societies through the notion of a male breadwinner which is primary to man’s identity, whereas women’s work has been seen as an extension of their roles as wives and mothers and thus as a secondary activity.
What is culture? What is the relationship between culture and identity?
The culture of a society has its shared meanings, values and practices. Culture provides us with some of the categories and means of organizing ideas through which we make sense of our lives. Assumptions about what is appropriate for women and for men can shape and influence our identities and the scope which we have for deciding both ‘who we are’ and ‘who we want to be’.
Give one historical and one contemporary example of cultural meaning being established through genders part in the construction of identity.
How do the new factors of class and gender increase the tension between the individual and the social and between the individuals control or agency and that of social structures?
The changing of social structures for example changing gender roles, patterns of employment, changing class and ethnic composition of the UK, might mean different identities are becoming available and others are disappearing.
