The Psych Student

"Three identities" by by jacobrendell via Flickr

This post looks at how social constructionist theory. Primarily it pulls from the Open University text, but I’ve also been reading up on some insider social constructionist criticism. I’ll admit at the outset that I’m biased in favor of the theory and think, as far as the main theories of identity formation go, it explains things the best. Primarily the section looked at psychosocial and social identity theories as well, but I found myself most taken with constuctionist arguments. This post also delves some into identity formation specifically among people with disabilities, which is what the Open University course material uses to provide examples and case studies.  The post may be a bit jumbled, and is basically a cobbling together of what I have in my notebook, something I plan to do in this blog from time to time.

While I do champion social constructionist theory here, it’s not without reservations. I have a problem with how untethered social constructionism is from the material world, and as a person leaning heavily toward evolutionary explanations for psychological phenomenon (though not entirely) I think that social constructionist theory contains rather gaping holes in need of filling. I’ve brought along on this journey a paper written by some social constructionist revisionists looking to fill that gap. Social constructionism’s focus on language and discourse is useful in describing the process of identity formation, it can be enhanced by a wider approach that incorporates other issues such as materiality and embodiment. In looking at the limits of social constructionist theory, it will be shown that a wider interpretation is called for in order to more meaningfully address the topic.

Social constructionism says that identities exist in the plural in each individual. It describes these identities as resources which can be employed for coping with various situations. They are in constant fluctuation, always being revised by our experiences and interactions with others. (Phoenix¹). While the study of identity is a separate line in its own right, this notion of identities as resources jives with my evolutionary psychology ethic. I can see how various identity formations, some of which can be better adapted to situations and environments than others, fits into notions of either sexual or natural selection. The ability to fit yourself in successfully in your culture can increase both survivability and increase your chances among mates. The book looks at different people who have faced disadvantages in socieity and how they’ve altered their self identity or how others percieve them in ways that essentially improve their status.

Social constructionism joins the other theories on identity formation in asserting that all “identities require positive recognition from others” to thrive (ibid). This has been shown in the numerous social, political and economic campaign strategies over the years by various groups. The open University book looks at disabled people, so let’s check that out. There are scads of examples of attempts to redefine the image of disability and people with disabilities. This would include one poorly conceived attempt around the middle 1980s, in which the term “differently abled” was floated by some campaigners in the U.S. Democratic National Committee as a more appropriate alternative to the word “handicapped.” Reframing isn’t always pretty.

I was a little uneasy with the extensive use of disabled people as the prime example in the text. With the wide variety of physical and mental impairments in the world, combined with the multitude of other experience combinations that a person can have outside of those associated with being disabled, the notion that there is an easily identifiale “disabled identity” is fairly ridiculous. The book touches on this, but I didn’t think it emphasised the fact enough. It also primarily focused on attempts at those who are reconstructing a post-accident disabled identity, which is already a narrow swath of what is a very diverse population. Furthermore, it looked at how people are re-adjusting their identities in ways that are empowering. I’m all for a positive outlook, but it’s not the only one on the market.

This is somewhat illustrated in the exchange between commentators Lois Keith, Mike Oliver and Al Alvarez (Exploring Psychology Audio²). Oliver says he regards the impact his disabling accident has had as “wholly positive,” while Keith employs a neutral term, referring to her life-changing accident as “a hinge” separating her existence into two phases. Alvarez views his disability as both a curse and a challenge. All find a position of power in how they frame themselves and their physical impairments. Both Keith and Oliver also take the view that there is strength in accepting their life as it is. “Mike and I forge a new kind of identity,” Keith says, eschewing suggestions that she should spend her time wishing to be cured. Alvarez meanwhile finds he is proving his independents by continually challenging the limitations his injury would imply by taking on new challenges.

In the novel Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut writes, “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Bruner (cited in Phoenix) “suggests that we ‘make ourselves; and our identities through the stories about ourselves that we tell others and ourselves.” Depending on the need, this conjures forth the different identities required for the situation. The narrative Mike Oliver creates for himself encompasses two different identities into one complete narrative, which puts his current identity in the more positive position. He now views his former life as a boring working stiff who would have continued on a dead-end path if it weren’t for the accident that both landed him in a wheelchair and catapulted him into a much more stimulating trajectory as an author and professor of sociology. We cannot travel back in time to see how the non-disabled version of Oliver would describe the prospect of spending the rest of his life without the use of his legs. He says that he had met with a similarly disabled person just a month before his own accident and said he couldn’t have imagined wanting to go on living. This narrative takes a different path than the one much of the popular culture seems to prefer (which Oliver and Keith refer to), in which disabled celebrities like Christopher Reeves work tirelessly to convince the world that they will walk again. It’s one in which Oliver gets to succeed, as he says “I went from being one of the very many to someone who was special.”

Social constructionism allows for this kind of constant transformation. The theory dictates that our identities are constantly in a state of metamorphosis. In how we describe ourselves we attempt to reposition ourselves and how we are seen. And as social constructionism says there are no differences between the personal and the social, it represents how we would like to see our own identities.

Social constructionist theory goes some way toward providing an explanation into how the infinitely diverse range of identities among those with disabilities form over time. But the theory can be pushed further. It can do more.

“All identities are social” as the text book says, but some are more so than others. If we return to Lois Keith, later in her conversation with Oliver and Alvarez she discusses how she personally feels being in a wheelchair versus the images she projects. “It makes you smaller,” she says. “It infanticises you.” She describes it as a barrier in social situations. She describes being at a party in which she pretends she’s not in that situation at all. This is a completely different identity than the one she projects. No less real or less necessary as a resource for dealing with the situation at hand, but something that relates to more than just the social circumstances. It is her direct relationship with the physical, materialistic reality. The need to reconstruct identity is grounded in changes taking place in the material world of bodies. The legs had to stop working before Keith had a reason to reconstruct her identity, which means that before she would present herself in light of others around her, she had to re-adjust her own relationship with mobility itself. She says this as she describes hating to be at the party that she pretends to enjoy and as she describes having to come to terms with not being able to do the things she felt mothers ought to be able to accomplish.

“From missing limbs to cold sores” ( Cromby and Nightingale 1999³) coping with material changes is at the root of our need to construct identities and form new narratives to collate them. The human body with all its features and faults “provides the material preconditions for subjectivity, thought, emotion and language.” They get wounded and heal, lose body parts, age and change. “Not only does constructionism have no notion of the body to call its own, it views other approaches to the body with deep mistrust, branding them as biologistic, cognitivist or essentialist.”

As we see with the case of people with disabilities, identity construction takes place within the world of discourse. Concepts of what people are capable of are challenged. New laws are passed barring discrimination. Ad campaigns at tube stations ask us to reconsider how we view disability. But before someone shares the narrative of their life with others, one that combines their various identities into a whole, there is the dealing, coping and initial identity formation that must take place with regards to the the physical world. When Lois Keith had to start life in a wheelchair she was living in a traditional Victorian home. In it, she was unable to access different rooms on her own or accomplish the regular tasks she was used to doing as a mother. It was when her family moved into a house adapted to her needs that she could once again feel free. “I had to redefine independence for myself,” she said, based on the new physical reality. Once defined, it could be presented as part of the narrative that tied her previously helpless feeling self with the new empowered identity.

“The intense focus on language and discourse has served social constructionism well so far,” (Cromby) and to accept that identities are all social requires that language and social interactions must be at the core of their formation.

The focus that ties all identity formation to language would also suggest that identity came pretty late in the game regarding our ancestors’ evolution, and I don’t know if that case can be made. Weren’t there other ways of establishing your role in your tribe or pack or whatever it was they had? Adornment, behavior, use of violence and all sorts of other social, non-linguistic activity can be used to establish or describe an identity, but these need to take into account a material world.

Conversely, in the modern age, language can play an alternatingly greater and lesser role on our diverse available identity resources. It’s easy to see how language plays a greater role in various online identities, our combined digital persona. Status updates, emails, dating website profiles, online CVs and more are all language-dependent ways of establishing who we are to others and ourselves. However, more fully immersive technologies are taking form. How does social constructionist theory expand to incorporate what people do in Second Life? People are doing more than reframing their identity around physical appearance and capabilities, they are changing their physical appearance. Perhaps there’s an aspect of my identity that really sees itself more fully expressed as a furry tiger-human hybrid thing. There could be entire people who only know my as looking like that within the confines of Second Life. You don’t see that many wheelchair-bound avatars in the game. It would be interesting to know how many disabled people are using it as a social tool, though. All our online identities fit well within the realm of social constructionist theory, especially the idea of a diverse set of swirling resources with no core. You’re Guardian Soulmates site identity has a different goal, image and text than you’re Friends Reunited profile or your Linkedin identity or your eBay profile. But here, while currently language holds much sway, the the ground is shifting. You can choose your avatar. You can show instead of tell.

I think there is some need for the theory to be more pliable in order to complete the task. By incorporating into it issues of body and materiality and how they fit into the ever evolving identities we all harbor, it will not only complete the task in describing identities of people with disabilities, but everyone else as well.