The Bloomsbury Handbook of Culture and Identity from Early Childhood to Early Adulthood

Perceptions and Implications

Ruth Wills, Marian de Souza, Jennifer Mata-McMahon, Mukhlis Abu Bakar, Cornelia Roux, Ruth Wills, Marian de Souza, Jennifer Mata-McMahon, Mukhlis Abu Bakar, Cornelia Roux

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350157163
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

How do children determine which identity becomes paramount as they grow into adolescence and early adulthood? Which identity results in patterns of behaviour as they develop? To whom or to which group do they feel a sense of belonging? How might children, adolescents and young adults negotiate the gap between their own sense of identity and the values promoted by external influences?
The contributors explore the impact of globalization and pluralism on the way most children and adolescents grow into early adulthood. They look at the influences of media and technology that can be felt within the living spaces of their homes, competing with the religious and cultural influences of family and community, and consider the ways many children and adolescents have developed multiple and virtual identities which help them to respond to different circumstances and contexts. They discuss the ways that many children find themselves in a perpetual state of shifting identities without ever being firmly grounded in one, potentially leading to tension and confusion particularly when there is conflict between one identity and another. This can result in increased anxiety and diminished self-esteem. This book explores how parents, educators and social and health workers might have a raised awareness of the issues generated by plural identities and the overpowering human need to belong so that they can address associated issues and nurture a sense of wholeness in children and adolescents as they grow into early adulthood.

Part One

Theoretical and Historical Perspectives

1

Social and Cultural Factors and the Construction of Young Children’s Identities

Tony Eaude

Introduction

This chapter explores how young children’s identities are constructed and the influences on this process. ‘Constructed’ is not the only verb to describe how identities become what they are. For instance, identities are also woven, forged, grafted and overlaid on to previous identities; and they need to be experimented with, re-negotiated and mediated (see Eaude, 2020: 71). Each of these reveals something significant, but for ease I mostly use ‘constructed’ to indicate that identities are continually changing.

The chapter is a distillation of arguments made at greater length in Eaude (2018, 2019, 2020).¹ The focus is on children in early childhood and pre-adolescence, though, as discussed below, the boundaries between stages and phases of childhood are often blurred.

In discussing identity and culture, one must recognize that, historically, many groups have been disadvantaged because of factors such as their sex, ethnicity, social background and physical and mental abilities, as well as the legacy of patriarchy and colonialism, the marginalization of the poor and religious intolerance – and the extent to which these still continue.

In exploring complicated and frequently contested ideas, I draw from, and try to synthesize, research in psychology, sociology and anthropology. However, the problems and limitations of language must be recognized. Firstly, words have different meanings and connotations across cultures thereby affecting their interpretation. Secondly, an awareness of how one’s own cultural assumptions, many of them tacit, may affect presumptions and conclusions is essential. Thirdly, because of the sensitivity of many of the issues raised, it is easy to cause offence unintentionally. Such considerations should make everyone aware of, and acknowledge, their own perspective, leading to cautious rather than definite conclusions.

I approach these issues as a white, middle-class, English man who has spent much of his professional career as a teacher of young children and head teacher and subsequently as a researcher and author in areas associated with spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. While my membership of most of the advantaged groups in society, historically, might appear as an impediment in writing about identity and culture, I suggest that the implications are especially pertinent to these groups.

In the next two sections I examine the terms ‘identity’ and ‘culture’. I then consider the current social and cultural context and contextual factors which affect how identities are constructed. I then discuss how young children learn, especially in constructing robust but flexible identities. This leads into my advocacy of a holistic approach to how young children are brought up and a discussion of the implications for adults, in general, and for schools.

Identity

The word ‘identity’ is usually used to refer to who one ‘is’. However, identity is complex, multiple, constantly changing and not just individual. Some aspects are the result of genetics and temperament, but identities are socially constructed, related to both who one ‘is’ and who one is seen to be. As Wenger (2008: 108) argues, identity

is not an object but a constant becoming. The work of identity is always going on. Identity is not some primordial core of personality that already exists. Nor is it something we acquire at some point in the same way that, at a certain age, we grow a set of permanent teeth.

An individual’s identity can be conceptualized in terms of elements such as physical, mental, cognitive, emotional, spiritual, moral, social and cultural. But this is only a convenience since all are linked and it is best to think of identities rather than one identity, with these elements understood as aspects of the whole person.

In Salmon’s words (1995: 63), ‘identity … is forged out of interaction with others. Who we are is inextricably bound up with who we are known to be’. Therefore, individuals’ identities should be understood in terms of the many groups of which any person is part, each with its own norms and assumptions. Personal, group and national identities are frequently intertwined. Religious, linguistic and cultural identities are often related to national ones, but how one person understands and expresses these may not coincide with other groups’ and individuals’ views.

Jenkins (2014: 51–2) distinguishes between ‘self’ as how each person feels and understands himself or herself privately and ‘person’ as how she or he is seen by others. Holland et al. (2003: 3) write that ‘people tell others who they are, but even more important they tell themselves and then try to act as though they are who they say they are. These self-understandings, especially those with strong emotional resonance for the teller, are what we refer to as identities’. This highlights the centrality of feelings as the basis of everyone’s sense of who he or she is, especially for young children.

As Wenger (2008: 108) writes, ‘in practice, we know who we are by what is familiar, understandable, usable, negotiable. We know who we are not by what is foreign, opaque, unwieldy, unfamiliar’. Identities are a source of, and a result of, belonging and being an outsider. As Richardson and Wood (2000: 18) indicate, ‘allegiances, belongings and loyalties are sources of a sense of identity’, though these inevitably have different weightings. But many children – and adults – feel insecurity about whether, and where, they belong because of many factors, some structural, others more individual.

Identities and one’s sense of self are strongly influenced by factors, both in one’s past and in the behaviour, attitudes and assumptions of other people, as expressed and transmitted through culture. How individuals are perceived and perceive themselves may not coincide, and the elements which an individual regards as predominant may not be those which other people see as most significant.

Woods and Jeffery (2002) highlight the distinction between situational and substantive identities. The former refers to the identities which an individual has in a particular context, with the latter applying across different contexts. So my identities at a conference, a sports match or a family gathering will be rather different but some elements remain constant. While we have multiple identities, which depend to some extent on the context, there is an underlying continuity.

Wenger (2008: 105) highlights five aspects of identity through which we define who we are:

• negotiated experience, by participation, as well as by how we and others reify ourselves;

• community membership, by what is familiar and unfamiliar;

• learning trajectory, by where we have been and where we are going;

• nexus of multimembership, by the ways we reconcile various forms of membership into one identity;

• a relation between the local and the global, by negotiating local ways of belonging to broader groups.

This typology highlights various points related to the construction of identities to which we return but indicates that identities are best seen in terms of a constantly changing narrative.

All individuals, by definition, have identities. As Mercer (2005: 174) writes, ‘children – and all human beings … – exist in multiple and often competing communities, exercising formative, shaping influences on the child’s identity’. The complex contexts in which young children grow up, and the choices available to them, mean that their identities must be ‘robust but flexible enough – more like rubber than glass – to enable them to cope with change and adversity and the turbulence of adolescence’ (Eaude, 2020: 7). Eaude (2020: 69) lists a range of qualities and dispositions associated with such identities such as resilience and empathy, recognizing that the qualities deemed to matter most will inevitably vary to some extent according to culture, religion and context. Before exploring how such identities are constructed, we consider different meanings of the word ‘culture’.

What Is ‘Culture’?

Alexander (2000: 163) indicates that culture is one of the most complicated words in the English language and distinguishes two main usages:

• a broader anthropological one, referring to aspects such as values, beliefs, ideas, institutions, networks of relationships, patterns of behaviour and artefacts; and

• a more restricted aesthetic one, based on artistic-cum-literary experiences – the arts and the humanities – with powerful connotations of relative worth, shading into assumptions about class and status.

Alexander adds that ‘a residual baggage … stubbornly refuses to be tidied into … these definitions’ highlighting that the word frequently carries appendages, such as adjectives which demarcate and tacitly evaluate kinds of culture such as ‘high’, ‘popular’ and ‘ethnic’ and nouns indicating how culture affects people, like cultural ‘capital’ and ‘transmission’.

While this definition is helpful, it underplays the idea of culture as the space(s) and environments where people grow and are nurtured. The aesthetic aspect is evident in ideas like a ‘cultured person’ and ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, with ‘high’ culture seen as improving and ‘low’ culture as entertainment and so deemed less valuable. I share this view to some extent, but one should remember that many ‘cultured’ people have done terrible things and that what constitutes high and low culture is mainly based on the views of privileged, white men, although the boundaries between high and low culture have become more fluid in recent years. Moreover, cultural superiority is frequently assumed even if not actually asserted, and we often fail to acknowledge or even to see our own cultural assumptions.

Underlying assumptions about childhood and education are deeply embedded in culture. Very young children are usually seen as innocents, with older ones increasingly needing to be controlled. While what is meant by childhood and how children are perceived and brought up vary significantly between cultures and societies, one defining feature of childhood cross-culturally is a sense of powerlessness (on the part of the child).² Yet children must be active participants in constructing robust and flexible identities.

Signifiers, or markers, of identity and culture come in many guises, including how one talks, shared humour, food and clothes, the music and books one values, the artefacts and texts deemed to be sacred, and attitudes towards male/female and adult/child relationships. Some are visible such as a cross, a uniform or a football shirt; others more coded, such as types of speech and customs, making them harder to understand, especially for young children.

Aspects such as norms, assumptions and expectations are transmitted through culture. Although Bronfenbrenner (1979) identifies several ‘nested’ levels of culture, I distinguish here only between micro-cultures and the macro-culture. By the former, I mean cultures such as the home, family, immediate community, formal settings and the street, some formal, others more fluid and informal. By the macro-culture, I mean wider society, at a national and increasingly global level.

Cultures are constantly changing, albeit often slowly. For instance, societal attitudes towards the role of women, people of different ethnicities and those with disabilities and beliefs about bringing up children and corporal punishment and child rearing have changed considerably in the last thirty years, though more so in some societies than others. This indicates the importance of the context in which children grow up.

Contemporary Contexts

As discussed in the Cambridge Primary Review (Alexander, 2010), social and cultural change in recent years has led to more diverse types of family. For example, many children do not live with both birth parents or in a traditional nuclear family due to the increased frequency of events such as the breakdown of relationships, adoption and different ways in which people become parents.

As a consequence of factors such as migration and relationships between those of different ethnic backgrounds, far more children are of mixed heritage and most children live in communities with greater linguistic, cultural and religious diversity. The fragmentation of communities and weakening of support structures, such as faith-based and community groups which have traditionally offered a basis for shared identities and a protective function, has led to what Giddens (1991) calls ‘disembeddedness’ with people relying more on themselves as individuals. With globalization and secularization, cultural affinities and identities have become more fluid. Moreover, increasing numbers of children report being unhappy, and the incidence of mental health problems has increased (Palmer, 2006).

Westerlund (2016: 224) argues that the consumer culture has helped to create a ‘performance culture’, where one must perform to maintain one’s identity but is constantly measured and compared with others. The influence of advertising, television, computer games and, increasingly, social media, and the messages about happiness and success presented encourages children to focus on themselves and how they look. These messages are often targeted at young children and operate in subtle ways, presenting a view where success is usually based on possessions and idealized, good looks, often in the context of sport, fashion and celebrity. The emphasis on body image results in many young girls dressing in what most adults regard as inappropriately sexualized ways. Paradoxically, the appearance of choice frequently leads children to conform with their peer group, for instance having the ‘right’ clothes or mobile phone.

Moreover, technology and the media help to create a world characterized by immediacy and gratification which tends to favour simple solutions and to discourage sustained and critical thought. Children expect to be entertained more than previously. As discussed in Eaude (2020: 58), Greenfield suggests that children come to school with shorter attention spans and often less well-developed speech and imaginations; and they are used to receiving information mainly iconically and visually in short, sharp bursts, rather than in sustained ways that help to develop concentration and the building of conceptual frameworks.

Such influences, especially the focus on individuals and how they feel, tend to lead to children becoming passive, individualistic, brittle and narcissistic (see Ecclestone and Hayes, 2009). This does not mean that all children are like this, but the emphasis on looks and possessions seems to affect those who are less resilient particularly strongly, by preying on their insecurities.

Factors Associated with Culture(s)

This section explores how factors such as sex/gender, ethnicity/race, class and religion combine to affect how young children’s identities are constructed. It only touches on complex and often-contested issues, but it is vital to recognize that these factors

• help to shape norms and assumptions, many of them implicit;

• all intersect rather than operate separately;

• are imbued with issues of power and status and are often the basis of advantage and discrimination.

One should remember that there is more difference within, than between, groups and avoid making assumptions and generalizations about individuals on the basis of background. However, in patterns of disadvantage, groups such as women, people of colour and many ethnic minorities and the poor are disproportionately represented.

In general, males and females tend to act in different ways. For instance, men tend to be more competitive and commit far more violence than women. Boys are frequently seen as boisterous; they like rough games, are discouraged from appearing weak and tend to have a more restricted emotional repertoire so they ‘act out’ their anger in physical ways. One vital issue is how to develop sensitivity and compassion in boys, especially those who rarely experience empathic models of masculinity. Girls are expected to concentrate more on pleasing adults and be interested in quieter activities such as reading and clothes. However, such gender roles are socially constructed, by expectations created from an early age.

Social class is another complex factor which affects how children’s identities are constructed. Reay (2017) highlights two main meanings related to

• socio-economic background and level of family income; and

• values, norms, beliefs and practices, which demonstrate status and what is deemed to matter.

Drawing on this, class is conceptualized here mainly in relation to wealth and status, though these frequently overlap. However, while issues of status and norms of expected behaviour vary considerably between societies and cultures, poverty is common to all societies and is strongly associated with stress, ill health and educational disadvantage. Moreover, many children from poor backgrounds have a sense of shame and often inadequacy.³

Hirsch (2018: 61) writes that ‘genetic difference between racial groups is negligible and is far overshadowed by the range of ethnic difference within groups’. Although there is no biological basis for the existence of separate ‘races’, discrimination on the ground of skin colour and language remains prevalent. And children of colour face not only such barriers, but more subtle expectations which damage their self-esteem. For instance, Ogbu (1974) argued that black children learn that their effort does not bring the same rewards as for white children. Since people tend to measure themselves against those whom they know, low expectations, especially in terms of effort, easily become self-fulfilling in a culture where success and effort are not seen as complementary.

Disproportionate numbers of families and children from black and minority ethnic backgrounds live in poverty and children from minority ethnic backgrounds who attain highly tend to be from more affluent backgrounds. However, while not all those brought up in pove...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• PART ONE: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
• PART TWO: EDUCATIONAL, SOCIAL, LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES
• PART THREE: GENDER, RACE/ETHNICITY, CLASS, RELIGION AND (DIS)ABILITY PERSPECTIVES
• PART FOUR: SPIRITUAL, HEALTH AND WELL-BEING PERSPECTIVES
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Imprint