Identity Development and Meaning-Making
In recent decades identity has become a widely theorised and researched subject in social sciences. It is a complex notion that encompasses a variety of views and ideas all centred around a question “Who am I?” (Brinkmann, 2010). Identity has something to do with identifying with, being the same with something or someone. But as Brinkmann (2010) suggests in our postmodern times, this sameness has become problematic and is difficult to achieve, as the person who is seeking to be someone is always changing, always being on the move. From this follows that identity has also something to do with the sameness within the self across time and space. Questions about changing and remaining are relevant to this meaning of identity. Yet the notion of identity is also closely connected with the notion of agency. Questions about being and becoming, as well as issues of marginalisation and giving voice to those who previously were unseen, unheard or unrecognised, are essential here (Kompridis, 2007).
Many theoretical perspectives to describe and explain the emergence and functioning of identity have been proposed over the years. When considering the underlying assumptions of different models in this diverse theoretical landscape, two general perspectives emerge: an individualistic and essentialist view of identity and a constructionist view of identity. In broad terms, the former considers person and context as related, yet ontologically separated, realms and sees identity as a pregiven entity that exists in the world, therefore, neglecting the need of showing how that entity emerges in the process of human functioning (see, for example, Hogg, Terry, & White, 1995; Phinney, Horenczyk, Liebkind, & Vedder, 2001; Phinney & Ong, 2007; Rudmin, 2009; Stets & Burke, 2000; Stryker & Burke, 2000). In contrast, the constructionist approaches deny the pregiven existence of identity and, instead, direct the attention to the processes by way of which identity is produced by collective discourses that individuals engage with in their everyday functioning within the society (see, for example, Shi-xu, 2006; Shotter, 2008; Shotter & Gergen, 1989). In fact, these approaches emphasise the many ways in which persons create identifications, therefore referring to the plurality of identities that are constantly constructed and reconstructed in our everyday functioning in the social world. Dialogical perspectives on self and identity are also close to this view, being interested in the ways how identities become constructed and reconstructed through our dialogues with real and imagined self and others (Hermans, 2001; Hermans, Kempen, & van Loon, 1992; Hermans, Konopka, Oosterwegel, & Zomer, 2016; Marková, 2003). In general terms then, identity research, as many other topics in social sciences, has also been impacted by the shift towards process-oriented approaches in recent years. In accordance with this shift, the conceptualisation of identity has increasingly moved from an entity-centred to a process-centred perspective. That is to say, the conceptualisation of identity has moved from understanding identity as a fixed and relatively stable entity that people create based on their interactions with the environment and thereafter carry with them from one context to another, to understanding identity as a fluid, multiple, fragmented, dialogical, constantly constructed, reconstructed and negotiated process. Hence, the mainstream individualistic and essentialist theories of identity have given space to studies that seek to unpack the processes of identity development while also opening up many new questions about how this process of construction could and should be conceptualised (Brinkmann, 2010).
It is within this plethora of works and conceptual debates on identity that this book is situated. Being motivated by the goal of moving beyond those debates, I go back to the basics and ask what do we actually do when we construct identities and make claims about who we are? In this book, I propose a simple answer to this question: when making claims about our identities, when stating who we are, we construct signs and make meanings. According to the view I put forward in this book, identity is not a special kind of entity, nor is identity development a special kind of psychological process. Rather, I suggest, identity development can be understood as part of a person’s ongoing meaning-making process. Identity is, according to this view, a personally significant and highly generalised sign that people construct in order to create a sense of sameness and continuity across time and space and that guides their movement from past through present towards an unpredictable, yet anticipated, future.
In developing this conceptualisation of identity development in this book, I build on recent advances in semiotic cultural psychology and sociocultural studies of the lifecourse and examine the meaning-making processes in relation to the complex interplay between two potentially challenging experiences—mobility and transition to adulthood. I do this by assuming that these situations can create a break—a rupture, in one’s normal way of being and thus open up opportunities for exploring how existing meaning structures—hierarchically organised meanings about self, others and the world (see Chap. 2)—are dismantled, abandoned, maintained or modified and new ones created. In other words, I think that the situation of losing one’s known and solid grounding and having to rebuild a sense of sameness and continuity is well-suited for examining identity processes in the developmental key.
Studying Developmental Processes
As can be gathered from the above opening, this book focuses on young people’s experiences of change as these lead to the creation of new self-understandings. Developmental psychology has traditionally connected the processes of change with the processes of maturation, viewing change as organised, sequential, chronological and universal, and this has led to the creation of many normative, stage-theories of development (see, for example, Erikson, 1968; Levinson, 1986; Marcia, 2002; Piaget & Inhelder, 1969). In this kind of developmental psychology, time is seen in a linear, sequential and causal manner as a unit that measures the intervals and degrees of difference between events and states (Valsiner, 2001). In contrast to this, Kloep and Hendry (2011) suggest it does not make sense to describe human development by referring to “‘stages’ because in our ‘movement’ through the life course we are advancing, regressing, developing in some domains and not others; in a sense ever-becoming and never arriving!” (p. 54). They argue that instead of creating normative labels based on chronological age, developmental psychology should focus on analysing mechanisms and processes that underlie human development in general. In a similar vein, Valsiner (2001) points out that using chronological and sequential time in the exploration of development makes human experience seem stable and static and allows describing entities and forms of the past as these have already emerged, while offering little for understanding the dynamic and future-oriented nature of human development. Instead, he suggests that recognising the irreversible nature of time and taking into account the ever-present novelty in human experience might be a better starting point for developmental psychology.
This future-oriented process view of development is adopted in this book too. When examining identity processes as part of general meaning-making processes, the focus is on the ways in which these processes emerge and unfold—the dilemmas that keep the development going and the dialogues between different meanings that are fuelling the change. The signs about self, others and the world that are created in this process are seen as products of this ongoing meaning-making. They are seen as a temporarily created and fixed meaning that emerges in order to be re-interpreted and re-created in the next moment in the never-ending cycle of unfolding meaning-making (Salvatore, 2018). This focus on the process of meaning-making thus allows asking questions about the ways in which the change unfolds and about the kinds of intermediate forms or patterns of feeling, thinking and acting that are created as a result of this, instead of fixing these forms and patterns as essential and final products or endpoints in a stage of development. In short, the focus of this book is not on describing stages of development but rather on explaining how transitions from one way of being to another occur in the human lifecourse.
Conceptualising Transitions
The concept of ‘transitions’ is another ...