Abstract
We consider identity as a historically emerging discourse that requires genealogical analysis ― not to discover the roots of our identity but to commit [ourselves] to its dissipation (Foucault 1977, p. 162). We suggest analyzing identity through the history of socio-economic classes, their life struggles, ambitions, development, and reproduction. We see learning not as a project of transformation of identity, but rather as developing access to socially valuable practices and developing one‘s own voice within these practices (through addressing and responding to other voices). The access and voice projects free agents from unnecessary finalization and objectivization by oneself and others (Bakhtin 1999; Bakhtin 1990). In education, we should develop indigenous discourses of learning and develop a conceptual framework that makes analysis of diverse discourses possible. We argue that learning, as transformation of participation in a sociocultural practice to gain more access, is a better conceptual framework than learning as transformation of identity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Genealogy differs from Foucault’s archeological methodology in that the latter investigates disciplinary systems of knowledge, focusing particularly upon assertions of experts. Genealogy, by contrast, focuses upon de-essentializing ideas of such disciplines. However, Foucaultian genealogy should not be considered to be incompatible with or disconnected from archaeological methodology (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982).
Many middle-class participants might not experience these crises as “luxuries,” but people from other classes, especially from the working class (thrown into a life of survival), might see them as a “luxury” (Lubrano, 2004). In other words, it may be a luxury for some families and communities to think of young people as having an “identity crisis” (e.g., “should I assume the identity of a doctor or a lawyer? No, let me have a psycho-social moratorium for a while!”). There is thus a collision of voices of people here from different classes.
We should point out that our analysis of “middle class,” and all classes here, are Anglo-American in their orientation and historical content.
It appears that there has been some change in the American upper class in regard to the degree to which they participate in schooling in order to transition into future schooling; for instance, upper class young adults may take achievement tests to go into elite colleges. This transformation of the upper class has been noted by sociologists; see, for instance, Brooks (2000). However, a phenomenon of “two Harvards,” (i.e., Harvard University) has been noted, the Harvard for the middle class and the Harvard for the elite, with the latter’s experience being much more about access into powerful networks (Konigsberg 2007). Furthermore, as Soares (2007) has noted, a prioritization on cultivated leadership and personal character has been more notable in U.S. elite college admissions in the standardized admissions test era than an emphasis on an “academic meritocracy.”
Despite many attempts to develop essentialist definitions, the notion of “class” in general and middle-class in specific seems to be always contested and illusive and probably depends on the purpose and the material of the analysis (Gallie, 1956; Reich, personal communication, July 28, 2003).
Benjamin Guggenheim was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the fifth of seven sons of the wealthy mining magnate Meyer Guggenheim (1828–1905) and Barbara Myers (1834–1900). He was heard to remark on the sinking Titanic, “We’ve dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Guggenheim).
We wish to note to the reader here that we do not intend to operationalize the notion of identity materialistically, as a social entity which is formed out of class, or not formed out of class. Such a discussion is of great debate in sociology (the degree to which identity is formed from class or knowledge, for example), and we wish to indicate that we see such a discussion as being out of scope of our paper. In this paper, we treat identity discursively, and are indicating the discourses in which we sense the identity discourse lives, and in which it makes sense. We sense this is a different project than understanding its material underpinnings.
Interestingly, within the “identity statements” she collected from her students in the 2000’s as part of a course assignment, a Dutch colleague found lots of examples of choice making in the narratives that are characterized by “suffering and being lost in all the options they see themselves confronted with” (M. De Haan, personal communication, December 20, 2007).
These examples show rejection of the identity discourse by some contemporary US minority youth. They probably have alternative discourses worth studying. Our hypothesis is that in some African American communities an alternative discourse to a middle-class discourse on identity exists about “signifying” (Gates, 1988). Please notice that Robert in Penuel’s study seemed to refer to this “signifying” discourse in the example above. We call for studying historically and culturally indigenous discourses about how people describe agents of deeds and the genealogy of these discourses.
As Gee (2000) wrote, “we were interested in whether and how each teenager would (or wouldn’t) accommodate to this academic identity. Of course, we fully realize that when we study identities emerging in interviews, we are, unavoidably, studying something that is co-constructed by the teen and the interviewer” (p. 415).
Apparently, in one of her comments, bell hooks articulated an ambivalence that many African-Americans express about their race, “Two things I want you to know. Number one: I want you to forget that I’m black. And number two: I don’t want you ever to forget that I’m black” (Simpson and Simpson 2007, October 18, n.p.).
This “imposed etics” is of concern not only for populations studied by social scientists, but also for the study of social scientists themselves. It seems important to take a situated perspective on social scientists as well; there are may be some communities of social science researchers for which the notion of “identity” is seen as a relevant and important concept, and others for which it may make little sense at all. This is not a relativist position, however, in that we challenge social scientists employing the notion of identity to consider the possibility of “identity” as imposed etic for the population of study.
References
Abend, G. (2008). The meaning of “theory”. Sociological Theory, 26(2), 173–199.
Adams, G. R., Shea, J. A., & Fitch, S. A. (1979). Toward the development of an objective assessment of ego-identity status. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 8(2), 223–237.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1999). Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics (Vol. 8). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bakhtin, M. M., Holquist, M., & Liapunov, V. (1990). Art and answerability: Early philosophical essays (1st ed.). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Ball, S. J. (2004). Performativities and fabrications in the education economy: Towards the perfomative society. In S. J. Ball (Ed.), The RoutledgeFalmer reader in sociology of education (pp. 143–155). London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Bauman, Z. (1996). From pilgrim to tourist—or a short history of identity. In S. Hall & P. Du Gay (Eds.), Questions of cultural identity (pp. 18–36). London: Sage.
Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. C. (1990). Reproduction in education, society and culture (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Bourne, E. (1978). The state of research on ego identity: a review and appraisal: I. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 7(3), 223–251.
Brandt, D. E. (1977). Separation and identity in adolescence: Erikson and Mahler—some similarities. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 13(4), 507–518.
Brooks, D. (2000). Bobos in paradise: The new upper class and how they got there. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Calhoun, C. J. (1994a). Social theory and the politics of identity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Calhoun, C. J. (1994b). Social theory and the politics of identity: The modern discourse of identity. In C. J. Calhoun (Ed.), Social theory and the politics of identity (pp. 9–36). Oxford: Blackwell.
Cole, M., & Cole, S. (1993). The development of children (2nd ed.). New York: Scientific American Books: Distributed by W.H. Freeman.
Cushman, P. (1990). Why the self is empty: toward a historically situated psychology. American Psychologist, 45(5), 599–611.
Davies, B., & Harré, R. (2001). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. In M. Wetherell, S. Taylor, & S. Yates (Eds.), Discourse theory and practice: A reader (pp. 261–271). London: Sage.
Donovan, J. M. (1975). Identity status: its relationship to Rorschach performance and to daily life patterns. Adolescence, 10(37), 29–44.
Dreyfus, H. L., & Rabinow, P. (1982). Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1961). The souls of black folks. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.
Eaton, J. P., & Haas, C. A. (1987). Titanic: Destination disaster: The legends and the reality (1st, American edn). New York: Norton.
Edwards, C. (1994, April). Cultural relativity meets best practice, OR anthropology and early education, a promising friendship. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA.
Erikson, E. H. (1958). Young man Luther: A study in psychoanalysis and history (1st ed.). New York: Norton.
Erikson, E. H. (1994). Identity: Youth and crisis. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Ewen, S. (1989). Advertising and the development of consumer society. In I. Angus & S. Jhally (Eds.), Cultural politics in contemporary America (pp. 82–95). New York: Routledge.
Fannin, P. M. (1979). The relation between ego-identity status and sex-role attitude, work-role salience, atypicality of major, and self-esteem in college women. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14(1), 12–22.
Foote, N. N. (1951). Identification as the basis of a theory of motivation. American Sociological Review, 16(1), 14–21.
Foucault, M. (1977). Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (2nd Vintage Books ed.). New York: Vintage Books.
Fussell, P. (1984). Class (1st Ballantine) (1st Ballantine Ed.). New York: Ballantine.
Gallie, W. B. (1956). Essentially contested concepts. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 56, 167–198.
Gates, H. L. (1988). The signifying monkey: A theory of Afro-American literary criticism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gee, J. P. (2000). Teenagers in new times: a new literacy studies perspective. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 43(5), 412–420.
Gee, J. P. (2001). Identity as an analytic lens for research in education. Review of Research in Education, 25, 99–125.
Glasser, W. (1972). The identity society (1st ed.). New York: Harper & Row.
Gleason, P. (1983). Identifying identity: a semantic history. The Journal of American History, 69(4), 910–931.
Grob, A., Krings, F., & Bangerter, A. (2001). Life markers in biographical narratives of people from three cohorts: a life span perspective in its historical context. Human Development, 44(4), 171–190.
Heath, S. B., & McLaughlin, M. W. (1993). Identity and inner-city youth: Beyond ethnicity and gender. New York: Teachers College Press.
Hermans, H. J. M. (2001). The dialogical self: Toward a theory of personal and cultural positioning. Culture and Psychology, 7(3), 243–281.
Hoffman, D. M. (1998). A therapeutic moment? Identity, self, and culture in the anthropology of education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 29(3), 324–346.
Holland, D. C., Lachicotte, W. J., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (2001). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Holzman, L. (1997). Schools for growth: Radical alternatives to current educational models. Mahwah: L. Erlbaum Associates.
Konigsberg, E. (2007, December 30). Never having to say,‘Too expensive’. The New York Times.
Kvale, S. (1992). Psychology and postmodernism. London: Sage Publications.
Labaree, D. F. (1997). How to succeed in school without really learning: The credentials race in American education. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Latour, B. (1987). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice: Mind, mathematics, and culture in everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lave, J. (1992). Learning as participation in communities of practice. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lemke, J. L. (1995). Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics. London: Taylor & Francis.
Lemke, J. L. (2002a). Discursive technologies and the social organization of meaning, from http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/papers/traversals/folio_traversals.htm.
Lemke, J. L. (2002b). Language development and identity: multiple timescales in the social ecology of learning. In C. J. Kramsch (Ed.), Language acquisition and language socialization: Ecological perspectives (pp. 68–87). London: Continuum.
Lemke, J. L. (2008a). Identity, development and desire: Critical questions. In C. R. Caldas-Coulthard & R. Iedema (Eds.), Identity trouble: Critical discourse and contested identities (pp. 17–42). New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Lemke, J. L. (2008b). Identity, development and desire: Critical questions. In C. R. Caldas-Coulthard & R. Iedema (Eds.), Identity trouble: Critical discourse and contested identities (p. 320). New York: Palgrave MacMillan. in press.
Lewin, K. (1948). Resolving social conflicts: Selected papers on group dynamics 1935–1946. New York: Harper.
Lieberman, R., Gallagher, P., Scott, G. C., Zeta-Jones, C., & Saint, E. M. (1996). Titanic [videorecording]. Los Angeles: Evergreen Entertainment.
Lowe, D. M. (1982). History of bourgeois perception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lubrano, A. (2004). Limbo: Blue-collar roots, white-collar dreams. Hoboken: Wiley.
Lynd, R. S., & Lynd, H. M. (1982). Middletown: A study in American culture. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
MacLure, M. (1993). Arguing for your self: identity as an organising principle in teachers’ jobs and lives. British Educational Research Journal, 19(4), 311–322.
Mah, T. (2001). The limits of democracy in the suburbs: Constructing the middle class through residential exclusion. In B. J. Bledstein & R. D. Johnston (Eds.), The middling sorts: Explorations in the history of the American middle class (pp. 256–266). New York: Routledge.
Maslow, A. H. (1960). Resistance to being rubricized. In B. Kaplan & S. Wapner (Eds.), Perspectives in psychological theory: Essays in honor of Heinz Werner (pp. 173–178). New York: International Universities Press.
Matusov, E., & Smith, M. P. (2007). Teaching imaginary children: University students’ narratives about their Latino practicum children. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23(5), 705–729.
McAdams, D. P. (2006). The redemptive self: Stories Americans live by. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mills, C. W. (1951). White collar: The American middle classes. New York: Oxford University Press.
Orwell, G. (1939). Coming up for air. London: V. Gollancz, Ltd.
Parker, M. (1995, April). “Local ontology”—cultural work in the classroom. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.
Patterson, J. T. (1996). Grand expectations: The United States, 1945–1974. New York: Oxford University Press.
Penuel, W. R. (1996). “That’s how they signify me”: Identifying voices in youth organizations. Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Chicago, IL.
Penuel, W. R., & Wertsch, J. V. (1995). Vygotsky and identity formation: A sociocultural approach. Educational Psychologist, 30(2), 83–92.
Riesman, D. (1950). The lonely crowd: A study of the changing American character. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rogoff, B., Matusov, E., & White, C. (1996). Models of teaching and learning: Participation in a community of learners. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The handbook of education and human development: New models of learning, teaching and schooling (pp. 388–414). Malden: Blackwell Publishers Inc.
Salinger, J. D. (1964). The catcher in the rye (Bantam ed.). New York: Bantam.
Sfard, A. (2007). Toward a theory of identity and identifying as discoursive adctivities. Paper presented at the 2nd Socio-cultural Theory in Educational Research and Practice Conference: Theory, Identity and Learning, Manchester, UK.
Sfard, A., & Prusak, A. (2005). Telling identities: In search of an analytic tool for investigating learning as a culturally shaped activity. Educational Researcher, 34(4), 14–22.
Shiner, L. (1982). Reading Foucault: anti-method and the genealogy of power-knowledge. History and Theory, 21(3), 382–398.
Sidorkin, A. M. (2002). Learning relations: Impure education, deschooled schools, & dialogue with evil. New York: P. Lang.
Simpson, D., & Simpson, D. (2007, October 18). Interview with Marty Moss-Coane. Radio Times. Philadelphia: NPR: WHYY.
Smith, M. B. (1994). Selfhood at risk: postmodern perils and the perils of postmodernism. American Psychologist, 49(5), 405–411.
Soares, J. A. (2007). The power of privilege: Yale and America’s elite colleges. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Søreide, G. E. (2006). Narrative construction of teacher identity: positioning and negotiation. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 12(5), 527–547.
Søreide, G. E. (2007). Narrative construction of teacher identity. Doctor of Philosophy, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
Sorokin, P. A. (1927). Social mobility. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Sorokin, P. A. (1959). Social and cultural mobility. Glencoe: Free Press.
St. Clair, S., & Day, H. D. (1979). Ego identity status and values among high school females. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 8(3), 317–326.
Sullivan, P. (2007). Examining the self—other dialogue through ‘Spirit’ and ‘Soul’. Culture & Psychology, 13(1), 105–128.
Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Waller, W. W. (1932). The sociology of teaching. New York: Wiley.
Waterman, A. S. (1988). Identity status theory and Erikson’s theory: communalities and differences. Developmental Review, 8(2), 185–208.
Weber, M., & Kalberg, S. (2001). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn.
Wekker, G. (1999). “What’s identity got to do with it?” rethinking identity in light of the Mati work in Suriname. In E. Blackwood & S. Wieringa (Eds.), Female desires: Same-sex relations and transgender practices across cultures (pp. 119–138). New York: Columbia University Press.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wenger, E. (2007). Identity as a learned experience of agency. Paper presented at the 2nd Socio-cultural Theory in Educational Research and Practice Conference: Theory, Identity and Learning, Manchester, UK.
Wenger, E. (2007, September). Identity as a learned experience of agency. Paper presented at the 2nd Socio-cultural Theory in Educational Research and Practice Conference: Theory, Identity and Learning, Manchester, UK.
Whyte, W. H. (1956). The organization man. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Willis, P. E. (1981). Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs (Morningsideth ed.). New York: Columbia University Press.
Wood, G. S. (2004). The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Penguin Press.
Wright, E. O. (1985). Classes. London: Verso.
Zakaria, F. (2003). The future of freedom: Illiberal democracy at home and abroad (1st ed.). New York: W.W. Norton.
Zaretsky, E. (1994). Identity theory, identity politics: Psychoanalysis, Marxism, post-structuralism. In C. J. Calhoun (Ed.), Social theory and the politics of identity (pp. 198–215). Oxford: Blackwell.
Acknowledgements
We are thankful to Mariette de Haan, John St. Julien, Paul Sullivan, Jay Lemke, Ellice Forman, Robert Reich, Robert Hampel, Karen Lunsford, David Labaree, and Olga Dysthe for discussion and critique of the earlier versions of the paper and its ideas and their kind support and encouragement.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Matusov, E., Smith, M.P. The Middle-Class Nature of Identity and its Implications for Education: A Genealogical Analysis and Reevaluation of a Culturally and Historically Bounded Concept. Integr. psych. behav. 46, 274–295 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-012-9192-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-012-9192-0