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Articulating identities

Department of Culture, Organization, and Management at the VU University, Amsterdam, sb.ybema{at}fsw.vu.nl

Tom Keenoy

University of Leicester and Honorary Professor at the Cardiff Business School, t.keenoy{at}le.ac.uk

Cliff Oswick

Organization Theory at Queen Mary, University of London, c.oswick{at}qmul.ac.uk

Armin Beverungen

Organization Studies at Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, armin.beverungen{at}uwe.ac.uk

Nick Ellis

Critical Marketing at the University of Leicester, n.ellis{at}le.ac.uk

Ida Sabelis

Department of Culture, Organization and Management at VU University, Amsterdam, ihj.sabelis{at}fsw.vu.nl

One symptom of individualism in liquid modernity is the search for `identity'. Using the five theoretically discrete articles in this special issue as both a `rich' discursive resource and a point of departure, we develop a supplementary reading of the narratives which appear to inform identity research. We suggest that, while social agents in pursuit of `identity' draw on a cacophony of discursive sources, it is the varieties of `self—other' talk which emerge as the critical ingredient in processes of identity formation. The dualities that all such self—other talk articulate can be seen as discursive reflections of the more fundamental relationship between the individual and sociality. In turn, this is seen to refract one of the persistent problems of organizational analysis: the agency—structure issue. In addition, while we argue that deploying a discursive perspective to analyze identity work offers distinctive insights, such an approach carries with it an epistemological consequence. For what the articles also indicate is that in any attempt to delineate the `identity of identities', researchers need to be aware of not only the reflexivity displayed by social actors constructing `identity' but also of their own role in `re-authoring' such scripts. We briefly explore the implications of this for identity theory and organizational analysis more generally.

Key Words: agency discourse identity • reflexivity • self structure

Human Relations, Vol. 62, No. 3, 299-322 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0018726708101904


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