Mid-afternoon. You and Carol are listening
to “60’s” Folk Music on Pandora while waiting for Kim, Paul, Owen and Brennan
to arrive about four o’clock. Dinner is at Outback tonight. Tomorrow they leave
early for Kissimmee, Florida for a week. Staying over saves them two hours of
driving tomorrow. - Amorella
1500
hours. We are always excited to see them, so this is a good event today and
tonight.
I am going to select and edit from Gee’s work downloaded yesterday. - Amorella
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Identity Theory
James
Gee defines identity as: “Being recognized as a certain ‘kind of person,’ in a
given context…” (p.99). Gee talks of identity differences based on social and cultural
views of identity and identifies four of these views
each of
which are influenced by different forms of power, though they all have an
effect on one another.
Gee describes
them as “four ways to formulate questions about how identity is functioning for
a specific person (child or adult) in a given context or across a set of
contexts”.
The
first of his identity perspectives is “the
nature perspective” representing an identity people cannot control, one
that comes from forces of nature; an example
would be born male or female.
“These people always gain their force as
identities through the work of institutions, discourse and dialogue, or
affinity groups, that is, those who constitute others perspectives on one’s
identity”.
“The institutional perspective” refers to identities set by authorities within an institution. An example is a student, whose identity is
defined by the school as an institution with rules and traditions the student
must follow; such as being a prisoner, or can be a calling for the person,
such as being a college professor.
\
The
third perspective is the “discursive
perspective” referring to an individual trait, such as caring. These identities
are a matter of social interaction
because “other people treat, talk about, and interact” with the person in ways
that bring forth and reinforce the trait. These identities can be placed on
a continuum in terms of how active or passive one is in ‘recruiting’ them, that
is as merely ascribed to a person versus an active achievement or accomplishment
of that person”.
The final identity perspective is
the “affinity perspective”. These identities
are built by shared experiences as part of an affinity group, a shared “allegiance to, access to, and
participation in specific practices”.
Joining these groups must be something the person has chosen to
do and feels a part of in order for herorhis identity to be built. “While I [Gee] could force someone to engage in specific
practices; [they] really cannot coerce
anyone into seeing the particular experiences connected to those practices as
the ‘kind of person’ they [actually] are”.
Selected and edited from --
https://en.wikipediaDOTorg/wiki/James_Paul_Gee
Further selected and edited by
Amorella for a study of Merlyn’s character in GMG and Notes.
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