Negotiating Identity

I was curious to see if anyone else has written about our book, Negotiating Identity, so I Googled the term. As you will see by scanning the following examples. the term is used in many different contexts, where language and culture are just a small part. Our students are working with many different identities, not just, for example, Latina/American. Our native born, WASP students are struggling with identities as well, like the kid whose parents expect him to be a doctor and he'd rather become a chef, or movie actor, or school teacher, which reminds me of Harry Wong's dedication to The First Days of School:

Dedicated to my father and mother,
who wanted me to be a brain surgeon.
I exceeded their expectations.
I became a scholar and a teacher.

• From Faceted Id/entity: Managing representation in a digital world, Danah Boyd's Master's Thesis at the MIT Media Lab:

Chapter 2: Negotiating Identity in Social Interactions
During social interaction, people regularly present themselves while simultaneously reading the presentations of others. Depending on one's personality, an individual will adjust aspects of their presentation according to the reactions and presentations of those around them. Fundamentally, social interaction is a negotiation between individuals performing within a particular social context to convey aspects of their identity. This negotiation often occurs with little conscious thought; people comfortably interact with one another, revealing what is appropriate while assessing what information is being given.

• From Negotiating Identity and Community After September 11 by Kay Deaux, Professor of Psychology, Graduate Center at the City University of New York

I became a United States citizen four years ago because of my long love affair with New York....I am a Bangladeshi woman and my last name is Rahman, a Muslim name...Before last week, I had thought of myself as a lawyer, a feminist, a wife, a sister, a friend, a woman on the street. Now I begin to see myself as a brown woman who bears a vague resemblance to the images of terrorists we see on television....As I become identified as someone outside the New York community, I feel myself losing the power to define myself...
--Anika Rahman

In this poignant statement by a U.S citizen, ethnically Bangladeshi with Muslim linkage, the complex web of issues involved in immigrant identity is dramatically clear ... Identification is typically a complex rather than simple construction, involving multiple aspects of oneself that may overlap or compete. Identification is a dynamic process, in which the meaning, the function, and even the basic labels can change from one point in time to another. Further, and most relevant now, identification is a socially constructed process in which the context and views of others have a significant role, shaping options and consequences for individual experience.

• From Coming to an Asexual Identity: Negotiating Identity, Negotiating Desire, by Kristin S. Scherrer, University of Michigan (article abstract)

Sexuality is generally considered an important aspect of selfhood. Therefore, individuals who do not experience sexual attraction, and who embrace an asexual identity, are in a unique position to inform the social construction of sexuality. ... In this article I describe several distinct aspects of asexual identities: the meanings of sexual, and therefore, asexual behaviors, essentialist characterizations of asexuality, and lastly, interest in romance as a distinct dimension of sexuality. These findings have implications not only for asexual identities, but also for the connections of asexuality with other marginalized sexualities.
Sexualities, Vol. 11, No. 5, 621-641 (2008) DOI: 10.1177/1363460708094269

• Female Repeat Offenders Negotiating Identity Abstract of article by Brenda Geiger and Michael Fischer:

This study examines the process of identity negotiation of Israeli female ex-convicts who have been separated for extensive periods of time from their children and lost custody over them. Content analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with the offenders reveal that these women were able to reconstruct their biography and retrospectively account for their crimes and drug addiction in terms of the sexual, physical, and economic abuse they had endured, and by appeal to higher loyalties, their children, whom they had to provide for. However, when having to account for their failings as mothers, all biographical reconstruction, external blame, and accusation collapsed. Looking at themselves through their children's eyes, female offenders were simply unable to renegotiate the imputed identity of incompetent mother. Neither could they confront their children's actual or expected anger and resentment nor explain why they had abandoned them. Filled with self-blame, guilt, and remorse, the offenders' only hope was to obtain their children's pardon. Permanently alienated from the center of motherhood, the female offenders interviewed in this study were doomed to existential chaos with no feeling, value, or role commitment.
Geiger, B. and Fischer, M. , 2006-11-01 "Female Repeat Offenders Negotiating Identity" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology (ASC), Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA Online . 2009-05-24 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p118631_index.html