Social constructionist approaches to the self emphasise the idea that people choose their identity

Identities are marked by a number of factors – ethnicity, gender or class, to name a few. The very real locus of these factors, however, is the notion of difference. A central question in this debate is who ascribes the identity, to whom and for what reason? Do we choose our identity, or is it beyond our control? To further complicate this matter we could also ask whether identity is a social construction or part of a psychodynamic process, or whether it is a complex amalgam of both of these.

There is quite a strong constructionist view of how the self and identity are both constructed by and maintained in parallel with societal norms (Burr, 2003). A central assumption within this broad approach is that reality is not self-evident, stable and waiting to be discovered, but instead it is a product of human activity. In this broad sense all versions of social constructivism can be identified as a reaction against positivism and naive realism. Social and cultural identities are founded on difference and they are shaped in relation to societal norms. In Foucault’s exploration of the mad, the criminally insane, the history of the deviant and of sexualities we see how the self is created in relation to expert discourses that define normal and pathological as well as trying to drive us back towards a norm; to make our sense of self align with a rational model in a process of normalization.

A social constructivist approach to identity assumes that we create realities – and make these realities meaningful – by way of interaction. We come to know society by interacting with culturally significant others (such as parents, teachers, and doctors), institutions (such as churches, schools, and governments), and symbolic universes (such as capitalism, patriarchy, and Christianity). The approach frames knowledge as learned, situational, and fallible, and, as such, partial, consequential, and sometimes problematic. Social constructivists attend to the processes in which realities – and knowledge of these realities – are developed by, maintained by, and transmitted to cultural members. Social constructivists focus on the ways in which a group’s beliefs, attitudes, and practices metaphorically crystallize into objective, authorless, seemingly natural and seemingly necessary matters of fact. By way of socialization, these matters, consequentially, also come to be perceived of as correct, valuable, normal, and therefore, unquestionable; they become phenomena we must understand and negotiate to be perceived as competent, legitimate cultural members.

Finally, one of the goals of this paper is to address the consequences of the processes of social interpretations, perceptions, and evaluations that correspond to claiming or being perceived as a particular kind of person.

Social constructionist approaches to the self: can people choose their identity?

Social constructionism may be defined as a perspective which believes that a great deal of human life exists as it does due to social and interpersonal influences (Gergen 1985). Although genetically inherited factors and social factors are at work at the same time, social constructionism does not deny the influence of genetic inheritance, but decides to concentrate on investigating the social influences on communal and individual life. The subjects that social constructionism is interested in are those to do with what anthropologists call culture, and sociologists call society: the shared social aspects of all that is psychological.