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Identity as interaction process

Submitted by Yong-Mi Kim on Fri, 2006-04-07 16:29.
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Yong-Mi Kim's picture

This is how I interpreted Wenger:

Each person belongs to one or more communities. Identity is the interplay between the individual and the community. Identity is dynamic, will vary according to the community, and can also be seen as a buffer or membrane between the individual and the community.

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Charles's picture

Love the visual, here are some other ideas

Submitted by Charles on Fri, 2006-04-07 18:47.

I think your visual draws a pretty clear picture of how we deal with identities: Multiple communities, multiple identities.

Expanding on that visual, I think interesting things can happen when 2 communities overlap and forces identies to overlap as well. An example is when you go to happy hour with your workmates (professional community) and invite your friends (social community). The two identities will then negotiate unitl a compromise is reached.

The same thing could happen when virtual friends meet each other in person for the first time causing a compromise between their online identity and their real identity.

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Ayça AksuErkan's picture

Some are stronger

Submitted by Ayça AksuErkan on Fri, 2006-04-07 21:34.

I like the diagram too. But doesn't a person have one identity that s/he maintains across boundaries of multiple communities. Maybe the identities above are the projections of 'the identity' on particular communities. Another thing I thought was that those projections of identities do not necessarily have the same strength in terms of negotiability. For example, the projection of my identity onto SI is stronger than the projection of my identity onto the community of UM graduate students.

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Erika Doyle's picture

Projections

Submitted by Erika Doyle on Sat, 2006-04-08 22:44.

I like your idea about "projections", Ayça. And Wenger would probably want to add that just as an individual projects his identity onto the community (i.e., a personal style, a certain posture, his own sense of uniqueness), the community projects an own identity (i.e., expectations and norms of behavior and attitude) on the individual. This might explain the differing strengths of identity according to what groups one belongs to--the bigger and more diverse the group, the less identity negotiation is able to take place. The Rackham student "community" must accommodate so many students and so much diversity that it can't project any particular identity on me, and thus it isn't really worth my effort to try to project my own sense of identity on it (I am content that the Rackham administrators and my Rackham peers across campus will never really know who I am). I guess that makes me a lurker in the Rackham community.

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Paul Resnick's picture

lost in the crowd but still strong impact of identitication

Submitted by Paul Resnick on Mon, 2006-04-10 05:12.

Your identification with Rackham and its influence on you are weak, but not just because Rackham is so diverse.

The United States is far more bigger and more diverse than Rackham, yet it has a huge influence on my identity.

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Erika Doyle's picture

also a matter of being around "the other"

Submitted by Erika Doyle on Mon, 2006-04-10 11:38.

Oh, that's a good point! And just like my identiy as an American and the influences  of being an American citizen are most keenly felt while traveling abroad, I can imagine feeling a  much stronger identity with Rackham if I were in a group of graduate students from other universities, or even amongst a group of UM undergrads. This might explain why a lot of the graduating second years feel more inclined to attend the Rackham graduation ceremony than the overall university graduation, which some of my friends have described as "impersonal" and "the undergraduate ceremony".

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