‘Countless acts of recognition’: young men, ethnicity and the messiness of identities in everyday life

Abstract

This paper engages with the ‘politics of recognition’ that inform much of our understanding of cultural diversity and young men's subjectivities. Drawing on data from several research projects on young people, gender and ethnicity, it explores issues around the nature of identity in everyday life. It argues that an emphasis on the primacy of ethnic or gender identity often embedded in the ‘politics of recognition’ fails to capture the complex nature of social being for young men. It argues that questions of legitimacy and competence arise in specific social settings and need to be addressed because they entail different logics of identification. Such an emphasis foregrounds the situated sociability of young men's identities: multiple and fluid attachments, the temporality of being, and the situated and provisional nature of subjectivity.