Social Identity

Abstract

Social identity refers to the cultural meanings that individuals give to their own, and to others', social locations, or status positions, within a social structure. The concept of social identity is closely related to classic sociological notions of the self, which contemporary sociologists would define as a relatively stable set of socially constructed ideas one holds about one's own existence. More contemporary notions of identity argue that the meanings one assigns to one's self, and to others, must be socially produced and maintained in ongoing interaction rituals. More recently, feminist social scientists, as well as critical theorists informed by postmodernism, have emphasized that the meanings individuals assign to social identities, and particularly the social identities of sex, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and nation, are not based on universal, stable, or fixed social categories, but are variable or contextual, and imbued with multiple meanings that are embedded in intersecting social practices, social institutions, and systems of social inequality, and with a range of consequences for individuals' experiences of gender and sexual oppression.