Conversational identity work in everyday interaction

Abstract

Increasing numbers of studies are identifying ‘identity work’ in research participants’ efforts to establish, maintain, deny or change the identity positions being ascribed to self and other. However, as authors variously emphasize how far identity is negotiated between people, on the one hand, and how far it is determined by prevailing discourses and local ideational notions of who people are, on the other, we are arguably no closer to understanding how identity work gets done in everyday organizational talk. To address this issue we present a conceptualisation of identity work that contrasts these two aspects. Through an analysis of talk in a mundane, everyday, meeting we identify and illustrate five prevalent identity work forms. Taken together, these forms and the conceptualisation represent an important first-step towards developing a more nuanced understanding of the different ways in which people's identities are engaged in, reproduced through, and altered by their participation in their everyday routine organizing practices

Role-meanings as a critical factor in understanding doctor managers' identity work and different role identities

“…Firstly, we consider how our study adds to the extant literature on identity work. Here, we relate our study to the general framework developed by McInnes and Corlett (2012), who suggest that identity work is comprised of two classifying dimensions: an ideational/discursive dimension in which identities are constructed by the influence of organizational and societal discourses on people's interactions; and an interpersonal dimension where the person's identity is repaired, maintained or revised by social interactions. Our results suggest that these dimensions of identity work are stated through role-meanings as shown in Figure 1.…”

Performing the Responsive and Committed Employee through the Sociomaterial Mangle of Connection

“… Human agency in the intention to achieve (contextually-relevant) ideational identities and position self in relation to Others (McInnes & Corlett, 2012);  The intermeshing of this with the material agency of the smartphone, including the cultural interpretation of affordances (Pickering, 1995;Bloomfield et al, 2010)  The recursive 'tuning' processes of resistance and accommodation as human and material agency meet within the mangle of practice (Pickering, 1995)  The situated identity performances of connection constituted by this entanglement of agencies  Processes by which sociomaterial identity performances appear disciplined and sedimented (Pickering, 1995;Butler, 1997) Examples from this analysis are presented below. While our analysis was shaped by the concerns outlined above, these should be viewed as sensitising theoretical concepts drawn from relevant literatures rather than mechanistically applied categories.…”

Social Enterprise and Dis/identification

“…As a concept addressed in various disciplines, such as psychology (notably psychoanalysis), cultural theory, and organization studies, identification essentially implies that broader societal discourses offer individuals and groups opportunities to produce individual and collective identities (Clarke, Brown, & Hope Hailey, 2009). While our analysis was focusing on the various ways in which third sector practitioners attempt to form, repair, maintain, or revise their identity (McInnes & Corlett, 2012), it was premised on the assumption that broader societal discourses form the repertoires through which identity is enacted. It is in this way that processes of identification are assumed to mediate between the individual and society (Ybema et al, 2009) as individuals enact identities based on the symbolic heritage made available to them.…”