Identity Week 1_Bowen

In the subsequent discussion, I first use an example that might be considered prototypical for each perspective on identity (being an identical twin, being a college professor, being a charismatic person, and being a "Trekkie").

An affinity group is made up of people who may be dispersed across a large space (may, in fact, be in different countries). They may share little besides their interest in, say, Star Trek. What people in the group share, and must share to constitute an affinity group, is allegiance to, access to, and participation in specific practices that provide each of the group's members the requisite experiences.

Rather than discrete categories, they are ways to focus our attention on different aspects of how identities are formed and sustained.

16:46 Every time I am home I am confronted with the usual sources of irritation for most Nigerians: our failed infrastructure, our failed government, but also by the incredible resilience of people who thrive despite the government, rather than because of it.

She forgot why she had gone into the girl's empty'room, that ungirlish, tenuous lodging place with its bleak order, its ready suitcases never unpacked, the narrow bed, the contested radio on the windowsill.

10:11 Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.

...deserted, at the utter limit of land, they stood defenseless, listening to the men coming ,on, between them and home. The woman pressed her , hands to her mouth, stifling her cough. She WllS ' exhausted. She couldn't think.. . ':We can get under!" the girl cried . suddenly, and pomted toward the Greers'dock, gap-planked, its walkway grounded...

She forgot why she had gone into the girl's empty'room, that ungirlish, tenuous lodging place with its bleak order, its ready suitcases never unpacked, the narrow bed, the contested radio on the windowsill.

The woman held the dog in her arms; she dropped to her knees upon the random stones and murmured, private; haggard, "Oh, honey," three times, maybe all three times for the dog, maybe once'for each of them.

Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize.

Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize.

Like I-Identities, D-Identities can be placed on a continuum in terms of how active or passive one is in "recruiting" them, that is, in terms of how much such identities can be viewed as merely ascribed to a person versus an active achievement or accomplishment of that person.

For me, being a professor is a "vocation" or "calling" and I attempt, to the best of my abilities, to fulfill the duties of the position.

She forgot why she had gone into the girl's empty'room, that ungirlish, tenuous lodging place with its bleak order, its ready suitcases never unpacked, the narrow bed, the contested radio on the windowsill.

I-Identities can be put on a continuum in terms of how actively or passively the occupant of a position fills or fulfills his or her role or duties.

They had quarreled all morning, ·squalled all summer about the incidentals: how tight the girl's cut¬off jeans were, the "Every Inch a Woman" T-shirt. her choice of music and how loud she played it, her practiced inattention, her sullen look....

What people in the group share, and must share to constitute an affinity group, is allegiance to, access to, and participation in specific practices that provide each of the group's members the requisite experiences.

And put out her claiming hand with an authority that made the girl's arms drop from the man's insolent waist and her legs tremble.

Then she turned on her bare, haughty heel and set off high-shouldered into the heat, quick but not far, not far enough-no road was that long-only as far as she dar.ed.

The fourth perspective (we are what we are because of the experiences we have had within certain sorts of "affinity groups") is, I argue here, gaining prominence in the "new capitalism" (discussed subsequently).