Identity and agency

These notes are part of a series for the book. This article looks at how identity is continually evolving as people discard old identities and adopt new ones. Hall’s article ‘illustrates how pedagogy involves consideration of what children bring with them to the classroom and not only what teachers do…. In demonstrating the unavailability to him of a successful learner identity in primary school, together with the emergence of a potentially new positive learner identity in secondary school, the need for a culturally responsive pedagogy is highlighted’ (from the Introduction in the book, p. xii).

Hall, K. (2008) ‘Leaving Middle Childhood and Moving into Teenhood: Small Stories Revealing Identity and Agency’, in Hall, K., Murphy, P., and Soler, J. (eds) (2012) Pedagogy and Practice: Culture and Identities, London, SAGE Publications Ltd. in association with The Open University.

Outline

Introduction
Methodology and theoretical background
Constructing a common identity: recruiting class and gender
Excerpt 1: Esker estate — class mediation
Excerpt 2: Girlie girls — gender mediation
1. The figured world of popular teenage boys
Excerpt 3: Friends and the town
Agency: Choosing an identity to grow by
1. Identity: the opportunity cost
Conclusion

Notes

This article looks at one 11-year-old boy (Daniel) as he moves into his teen years, as a way of exploring how people construct identity, choosing from the identities available to them, and how those identities are jointly constructed, mediated by class, and both empowering and constraining. The article was based on a study in which they shadowed, interviewed, and reviewed diaries from the children of four families in rural Ireland. The children were in middle childhood (8 to 13 years old).

Concepts

The study is based on a premise of identity as being ‘fragmentary, multiple, contradictory and always relational, and open to construction and reconstruction’ (Hall, 2012, p. 88). The analysis in the study rests on three interrelated concepts:

Mediated action: This term comes from James Wertsch; it is how a person uses cultural tools or mediational means (that is, shaping resources) to act and interact. ‘What mediational means people appropriate and how they appropriate them are of significance in understanding identity formation. What is fundamental is that they are acquired in participation and interaction with others and therefore they are always distributed’ (Hall, 2012, p. 88).
Figured world: People inhabit more than one figured world. ‘Figured worlds are meaning systems which mediate our behaviour’ (Hall, 2012, p. 89).
Positionality: This is the way our actions signal to others our relative social position. ‘It has to do with relations of power, prestige, entitlement, influence, affiliation and status…. [and] therefore depend on who is present in the interaction’ (Hall, 2012, p. 89).
See also:
- The figured world and positional identities: Holland, D., Lachicotte Jr., W., Skinner, D., and Cain, C. (1998) ‘Positional Identities’
- Mediated action: Ferreday, D., Hodgson, V., and Jones, C. (2006) ‘Dialogue, language and identity: critical issues for networked management learning’

The study’s analysis

The author analyzes dialogue from group interviews with Daniel and his friends. She finds that the group of boys have created an identity that is based on neighborhood, class, and gender.

They are not shifty, no-good Travellers [sic]: To maintain this differentiation, they take great pains to talk about how they are not like the people in Esker, which they view as being populated by Travellers who are shifty and bad people. Daniel is more tentative in his negative statements about the people of Esker, in a way that still denigrates them but also signals to the adult (Hall) that he does not entirely agree.
They are not gay: The boys are also concerned that nobody questions their heterosexuality. They have identified traits that they believe indicates homosexuality, such as playing musical instruments, and do not participate in these activities.
They don’t like girls: They also don’t like feminine girls, but again Daniel hedges his statements so as to signal to Hall his dissension without challenging his friend out-right.

Identity

Daniel has entered a figured world of the “popular teenager”. ‘He uses a range of cultural tools and mediating devices to pull off this identity — from physical markers, particularly expensive designer trainers and subtly highlighted hair, to significant experiences like going to discos, clubs, and pubs, having older friends who party and drink alcohol, knowing about pop music, and having the freedom to plan his own time’ (Hall, 2012, p. 95). He has to continuously assert this identity when participating with others, because participation is dynamic. In one excerpt, he tells stories about him hanging out with older teenagers and doing “cool” things. His friend reflects back this positioning so that Daniel maintains his identity as a popular teen. Similarly, the group of boys maintain their status or identity relative to others by denigrating a girl who they think has few friends. This helps them maintain a distinction between popular and not-popular.

Everyone must choose identities. Agency comes into play in that we can choose which identities we’ll choose, but that too is sometimes limited by others. In Daniel’s case, he chose the “popular teen” but other identities were not available to him, such as the “smart kid” identity because his teacher, mother, and friends would not let him choose that identity. Additionally, popular culture and his own parents (who were similarly “popular”) approved and supported his choice of being the “popular teen”, which the author calls ‘a lifetime in a process of recruitment and identification…. moving towards generational inclusion’ (Hall, 2012, p. 100).

We all have multiple identities. For Daniel, he was sometimes the “child” when around his parents, or the “caring teen” when it wasn’t observed by his friends or causing conflict with his “popular teen” identity (which was his dominant identity).

Choosing identities means that we miss out on the good parts of the identities we don’t choose. For Daniel, he cannot learn to play a musical instrument (which he identifies as a marker of homosexuality) because it goes counter to his chosen identity.

‘Since identity or self is jointly constructed and can only be given legitimacy in interaction with others, the self is ever relational and dynamic; it is socially distributed and can’t ever be possessed by an individual. The self is a self in practice’ (Hall, 2012, p. 103).