SOC 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: T-Shirt, Postfeminism, Old Navy
16 Nov 2016
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Lecture 9 identity and the politics of representation: Essentialist theories posit identity as a fundamental, unchanging core of meaning that precedes and transcends culture and politics (o"brien and. Social constructivist theories emphasize the cultural and political circumstances in which identities are produced. Social constructivism takes issue with the essentialist premise of identity as something inherent within an individual or group, foregrounding instead the complex process through which narratives of identity express broader social relations, including and especially relations of power. These relations remain invisible to the extent that identities are naturalized or essentialized (p. To say that identity is socially constructed" means . It is not natural, not biological fact, not in" an individual body. Identity is made in culture and revealing of culture. Meanings become dominant and naturalized in part through repetition come to seem natural, inevitable, just the way it is". Need for analysis that takes account of complexity, our own immersion, contradictory meanings.
