Examine the Argument That Identities of Place Can Be a Source of Inclusion and Exclusion
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- Date Submitted: 01/29/2014 09:26 AM
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Examine the argument that identities of place can be a source of inclusion and exclusion.
There are many different identities that people have, for example, a personal identity is a person’s own unique identity, who you think you are – “the real me”. The sociologist Erving Goffman (1959) suggested that social behaviour is much like a theatrical play where we are all actors trying to give a good performance to live our lives as we want. Group or collective identities are people that fall into the same age group or the same gender, these are politically important as they are a basis for organising or mobilising people to vote. When you fill out a form and complete the gender and age group you will be placed into a group or collective identity along with the other people that selected the same answers as you. A situated identity is your immediate social situation as in where you are and what you are doing. This changes often and therefore is seldom used when people describe themselves. Racial and ethnic identities have a historical basis and usually refer to differences of skin colour, origin, religion etc.
We seem to put people into certain groups just by looking at them, for example, on a busy city street a person holding a camera, walking slowly and stopping every few minutes would be seen as a tourist. Local shoppers would be holding bags and walking at the fast pace you would associate with a shopper. These are situated identities, but proof that we judge people by their actions or their immediate situation without giving it a second thought.
People describe street people in negative ways. There may be any number of reasons why a person becomes homeless, these include loss of job and then home, drug addiction or alcoholism, maybe even leaving the forces and struggling to adapt to civilian life. We seem to take a wide berth when passing a street person, we avoid eye contact and stay away from them as the writer Jonathan Raban discovered when visiting New York...
There are many different identities that people have, for example, a personal identity is a person’s own unique identity, who you think you are – “the real me”. The sociologist Erving Goffman (1959) suggested that social behaviour is much like a theatrical play where we are all actors trying to give a good performance to live our lives as we want. Group or collective identities are people that fall into the same age group or the same gender, these are politically important as they are a basis for organising or mobilising people to vote. When you fill out a form and complete the gender and age group you will be placed into a group or collective identity along with the other people that selected the same answers as you. A situated identity is your immediate social situation as in where you are and what you are doing. This changes often and therefore is seldom used when people describe themselves. Racial and ethnic identities have a historical basis and usually refer to differences of skin colour, origin, religion etc.
We seem to put people into certain groups just by looking at them, for example, on a busy city street a person holding a camera, walking slowly and stopping every few minutes would be seen as a tourist. Local shoppers would be holding bags and walking at the fast pace you would associate with a shopper. These are situated identities, but proof that we judge people by their actions or their immediate situation without giving it a second thought.
People describe street people in negative ways. There may be any number of reasons why a person becomes homeless, these include loss of job and then home, drug addiction or alcoholism, maybe even leaving the forces and struggling to adapt to civilian life. We seem to take a wide berth when passing a street person, we avoid eye contact and stay away from them as the writer Jonathan Raban discovered when visiting New York...