Social Identity

 

What is social identity?

• Identity has many components and different meanings
• It is argued that individual identity has no meaning in isolation from the social world of others (Jenkins 1996)
• Social identity is ‘our understanding of who we are and of who other people are’ (Jenkins (1996:5)
• We use social identity to: compare, locate and differentiate ourselves to others (Charmaz 1999)

Activity:

Write down 5 things that you think makes up a person's identity:

 

Think about what these might be for a few minutes before moving to the next page.