“We are in the same boat”. The dialogue between identification and dis-identification underlying individual and group positioning

Lighting the consensual nature of “contextual identities”: Individual and group positioning

Psaltis (2010) argues that there are at least two modes of approaching social representations. Precisely, on the one side, acting through social representations in an unreflective way and, on the other side, cogitating on a social representation thus implementing a reflective usage of symbolic resources. In both the cases, unreflective action and reflective discerning rest on

(1)the level of the underlying ground-rules of social representation formation, which make understanding possible … and possess a consensual dimension, and

The shift from unreflective to reflective stages precisely stake on an idea of consensus that does not rely on uncontested conformity towards the same opinion in everyday talk but rather on a degree of sharedeness that “provides a common basis upon which people discuss, compete or argue” (p. 152).

The socially derived nature of a social representation presupposes some forms of consensus “otherwise the collectively concerted understandings that constitute a social representation would not exist” (Moloney, Hall, & Walker, 2005). A central feature of social representations is that these are communally forged and socially shared (Ben-Asher, 2003). However, the consensus on a shared frame of references representing a social object (Doise, Spini, & Clémence, 1999) goes hand in hand with the emergence of subjective outlooks towards realities that are socially represented (Sammut & Gaskell, 2009). The notion of positioning (Doise, 2003) precisely accounts for the differences existing amongst individuals and groups who participate in the social creation of a given object and sheds light on the dynamic nature of consensus that characterizes the production of social knowledge. In particular, the dynamic quality of consensus underlying social representations acquires sense in the light of the “cognitive processes triggered by social regulations function within representations” (Rateau, 2004, p. 44).

The actual organization of a social representation is interrelated with the inter-group dynamics reflecting the actual and symbolic social placing which characterizes a given social field (Doise, 1992), so that individuals cognitively adjust the elements that form a social representation in accordance with the positions they hold in their relational context (Viaux, 2000). Consensual and intersubjective realities concerning a relevant social issue provide people for means to discuss and negotiate understandable meanings without implying that they hold the same views. Despite of the essential common understanding, individuals are daily engaged in discussion that involve other viewpoints (Rose et al., 1995), so that social representations might be taken into account with particular reference to the way people employ consensual principles, shared norms, and conventional ideas whenever they are requested to position themselves towards others in given situations.

At the crossroads between the knowledge function and the identity function of social representations, social actors appropriate, incorporate, and integrate newness into a “coherent fashion” in relation to their socio-cognitive and symbolic system of pre-existing knowledge. By such a way, social representations provide people with means to situate themselves into the social field thus feeding the process of identification with groups (Walmsley, 2004). The macro-social rootedness of individual positioning accounts for the anchoring of subjective outlooks within the symbolic social milieu in accordance with the societal plot of groups placing. A way to delve into such an individual-group positioning conjunction is offered by the three modes whereby social representations are shared with all of them being consistent with a dynamic notion of consensus, they are hegemonic, emancipated, and polemic social representations (Moscovici, 1988).

Hegemonic representations draw the consensual reality about a given social object, are unquestionable and well-established within a given society characterized by a low degree of inter-group conflict. Emancipated representations parallel complemental positionings of diverse groups revealing a certain degree of autonomy in respect of hegemonic representations as the former give voice to different and interacting worldviews in “integrated segments of society” (Liu, 2004), thus unveiling complementary versions of the same reality.

Polemic representations express the competing positions of given social groups whenever they actively disagree about established representations of an object. Accordingly, polemic representations are bonded to given groups holding opposite visions and, instead of being consensually shared by the whole society, these characterize competing and even conflicting groups' outlooks configuring a texture of asymmetric societal relationships.

Hegemonic representations can invade the reality of individuals as both the former are rooted in systems of power and diverse groups have diverse access to the construction of reality within the public sphere (Howarth, 2006). Consequently, polemic representations can result from inter-group conflicts at least to the extent to which these are instantiated into more or less socially legitimized power asymmetries. Whereas hegemonic representations support a particular worldview and version of social order, protecting “particular interests over others … [polemic] representations contest these versions” (p. 90).

The micro-genetic process of actual interaction and communication is precisely constrained or enabled by situational and macro-societal drives (Psaltis, 2010) that may linger unquestionable (i.e., hegemonic) or be polemically challenged at inter-individual levels. In this view, subjective positioning reflects a way to organize experience whereby a process of self-definition and self-location into the collective world (Duveen, 1993). Correspondingly, societal partitions and categorizations are not merely attached to self but rather are constantly negotiated, challenged, and contested by people in the effort to appropriate symbolic resources in a constant dialogue between diverse I-positioning and G-positioning (i.e., group). Such an idea serves as a theoretical basis for the concept of “contextual identities” introduced by Kadianaki. Basically, instead of conceptualizing different identities being “switched on” at different circumstances, the focus is on different identity dimensions that intertwine, merge, reinforce, and conflict between each other's (Howarth, 2002). In fact, identity is not only a process of self-construction but it is also a process of being constructed by others so as positioning necessarily presupposes identification with certain groups as well as dis-identification with other groups. “Questions of identity … are complex since identity refers both to the process of identifying oneself as well as of being recognized by others, that is it refers to both a process of identification and of being identified” (Psaltis & Duveen, 2006, p. 424).

The threefold level of consensus outlining hegemonic, emancipated, and polemic social representations fits into the “conceptual methodology” elaborated by Kadianaki at least to the extent to which it provides for a societal structure of inter-group power asymmetries understood in terms of degrees of sharedeness towards a common reality. In particular, in the light of the dynamic conceptualization of consensus by virtue of which even in the occurrence of divergence, social actors “know what they are talking about” (Rose et al., 1995), the individual positioning of participants reflects the societal asset of group positioning in the enlarged social context through the dialectics between hegemonic and polemic social representations towards the same reality. In fact, such a positioning rests on an apparently unsolved contraposition between subjective standpoints that in turn reflect the dynamics of identification and dis-identification, meant in the twofold sense of identifying oneself with others and being identified by others (Gillespie & Cornish, 2010).

Therefore, if social actors define themselves as members of a social category, other than in terms of personal identities, “as a function of … goals, expectations, background theories, knowledge and ideologies” (Turner, 2005, p. 15) a key issue revolves around the commonsensical nature of such an identification, with consensus understood in the sense clarified above. In fact, identification relates to the dynamics between imposition and resistance with the latter being “the point where an identity refuses to accept what is proposed by a communicative act, that is, it refuses to accept an attempt at influence” (Duveen, 2001, p. 269). Therefore, the focus is precisely on the participants' perception that any source is trying to categorize/persuade them on the basis of “a common identity, values and interests … or not?”

“We are on the same boat”: Positionality and positioning in the field of migration research

The complexity of the interplay between identifications is of enormous value to grasp the complexity of immigration-related phenomena where immigrants face with an imperative obligation to re-construct their identities as settling into a new country requires immigrants to contract “into a particular representational field” (Duveen, 1993). Broader, because of massive migration phenomena, nowadays people – they are both native and immigrants – are persistently compelled to re-examine their identities at least to the extent to which they have to face with the others' representations of their own identities. Such a demanding task includes mutual recognition in the ground of ethno-cultural difference and reflects a dynamic of reciprocal positioning according to which self-categorization can be understood as a process of meaning-construction.

With specific focus on immigration-related phenomena, social representations of ethno-cultural groups transmit not only knowledge about given social objects but they also assign power to some groups instead to some others and, therefore, the degree of sharedeness of a representation reflect the power distribution among social groups in the enlarged social context (Deaux & Wiley, 2007). Furthermore, power is related to groups' identity (Turner, 2005) and diverse forms of influence process can originate from such a kinship. In fact, whereas “the persuasive power of the group and of individuals within it are a function of group identity and consensus [my italics]” (p. 10), coercive power endeavors to exercise a control over others against their will. Such a dynamic is taken to the extreme whenever power serves as basis for prejudice, as explained by Turner (2005) who affirms that

… coercion can therefore only be exercised by a dominant group without undermining its own power by negatively categorizing and stereotyping the target as different from the group as a whole, to break down and prevent any identification with the former by the latter. (p. 17)

Such control can be exerted precisely by imposing to a target person a meaningful self-categorization constricting his or her agency of developing autonomous sense of self and so forcing an individual positioning that reflect societal power asymmetries. As already noticed, “contextual identities” articulate, at an individual and micro-level, “the way society is regulated” (Andreouli & Chryssochoou, forthcoming, p. 5).

The results from Kadianaki's study offer an insight into the way society is regulated focusing on individual reactions towards unwilling (i.e., coercive) categorization indicating that stereotypical representations of self-categories are imposed to immigrants who are not free to being from themselves a part of their hegemonic being for others.

One of the most interesting outcome emerging from the analysis of Kadianaki is exactly that participants belonging to ethno-cultural minorities reject coercive categorization and challenge stereotypical and hegemonic representations, whereby inter-group relations are regulated at social level, overpassing the identification barriers in search for a counterbalance of societal power asymmetries. Along this route, I suggest that the excerpts from Kadianaki indicate that the power of the dominant group (i.e., Greek) is somehow undermined whereby an attempt of identifying themselves and the target group on a common basis that exceeds ethno-cultural differences. Exactly, other than counter stigmatizing Greek women as well as Greek population in general through a reversal of positions, it is here advised that interviewees try to undermine the authority of the coercive stigma, reducing the difference among the ethno-cultural groups on the basis of a communal self- and other- categorization. Indeed, by comparing and confronting themselves with other Greek women, the interviewees are acting through the negative hegemonic representations of their ethno-cultural belongingness in the effort to reach a higher and more inclusive level of shared identification where the negative otherising can be to some extent overpassed. In fact, notoriously “stigmatisation poses a barrier to engaging with alternative representations by otherising the groups that construct these representations” (Andreouli, 2010). In the same vein, I advance that participants in Kadianaki's study resist the stigmatic representations in the sense that they refuse to adhere to the coercive categorization developed by others trying to disrupting at micro-level of research encounters the dis-identification dynamics that sustain societal divisions at macro levels.

Ultimately, it emerges that the social distance and the dis-identification among the source (i.e., the dominant/native group) and the target (i.e., the immigrant/dominated group) are somehow shortened to the extent to which the “socially sanctioned value judgments” (Howarth, 2002) cover both of them. In other words, the demolishment of stigma is pursued not only contesting the dynamics of identification but also reversing the dynamics of dis-identification among groups that in turn sustain power asymmetries.

This idea sounds consistent with the postulate according to which to change one's belief is to change one's identity (Gillespie & Cornish, 2010). More precisely, such an assumption can be interpreted in the sense that the change of one's beliefs, as well as the overcoming of the contraposition between hegemonic and groups' polemic representations, calls for stimulating reciprocal identification of a given source with a given target (Turner, 2005).