Identity and Structural Inequality
03 / 11 / 2014
There is always a debate over self-identity. What is it? How is it perceived? Why is it considered an important factor in any sociological, anthropological, or philosophical study? Identity is a concept in which one expresses his individuality. In fact, this definition can be misleading because identity is actually a reflection of one’s race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and/or class rather than the self. To create a self-identity is to reflect structural inequality since these structures are socially unequal as we all know.
In general, societies are masculine. Masculinity has been historically rooted in our societies generation after generation. Man is always linked to power, strength, and heroism while woman is seen as weak, sexy, and shameful. Boys are comfortable to talk about their sexual relationships and be proud of that, but girls are not. Girls are labeled as “bitches” or “sluts” if they have more than one sexual relationship (Pascoe 91). This masculine discourse degrades women and portrays them as a degenerate gender. This is how gender-based identity is perceived. It is perceived and performed based on a false structural fact where women do not deserve to be equal with men. Isn’t this gender inequality a reflection of structural inequality in which women always occupy a lower status in society?
Not only girls are degraded by such masculinity but also boys who have feminine characteristics. Male-hegemonic society used to make fun on those who look or act like girls as a result of a rooted heterosexual education. Words like faggot, pussy, and girl are used to describe those “soft” boys even if they were not homosexual. Thus, being a homosexual is bad. It is a deviation. It is against our “straightness.” Such homophobic perception is “indeed a central mechanism in the making of contemporary American adolescent masculinity” (Pascoe 53). This is absolutely right. In her book Dude You’re a Fag, C.J. Pascoe adds, “fag is not only an identity linked to homosexual boys but an identity that can temporarily adhere to heterosexual boys as well. The fag trope is also a racialized disciplinary mechanism” (Pascoe 53). That’s why some boys try as much as they can to avoid being labeled with “fag” trope. They were structurally indoctrinated that fag is a degraded status.
Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, argues that cultural beliefs are more dominant than anything else in shaping our personalities. Those beliefs are usually expressed through language in a way that may provoke others’ beliefs. This is what he calls “Symbolic Violence” (Bourdieu 191). Symbolic violence is an invisible form of violence. It is a soft violence that people unconsciously carry in their language. It is actually a clear lingual manifestation of what the society already believes. Thinking about language, it is a “mechanism of silencing, domination, and exclusion. The more symbolic violence we have in our language (culture), the more physical violence we commit against others” (Topper 352). Going back to our topic, imagine the impact of such words nigger, faggot, or bitch on people. These words simply represent the sociological structure that shaped our identities. The American Sociologist Carrie Hull demonstrates that such “words act as a general reminder of the unequal society that fostered this language” (Hull 531). Such unequal society often persecutes subordinated groups or minorities, not only by such words, but also by signs, logos, or even facial expressions sometimes. These are symbolic violence that is derived from our pre-existing ideologies, and it could possibly lead to physical violence. It is unfortunately against “be nice, think nice, and say nice” principle that we all should respect and believe in. How can one be nice when he calls a heterosexual straight? The unthinkable of the word straight means that the homosexual is perverse. Is it nice to say to a homosexual, “hey you’re not straight, you’re perverse”? Doesn’t that language provoke certain group’s feeling? Bourdieu says: yes, it does. Indeed, this is a symbolic violence that is derived from a language driven up by social inequality.
Our perception of sexuality can be a good measure of how heteronormative our society is. We always think about sex in a heteronormative way in which sex is viewed as a reproductive process that human being needs in order to create a family. Deconstructing sexuality is useful to know what factors shaped our knowledge on sex. We are institutionalized on the fact that sex is a reproductive process. Family, school, church, media, and other institutional organizations have strongly shaped our perception of sexuality on the biological perspective. Sexuality is always linked to biology. Thinking about sexuality means thinking about male-female relationship. Michel Foucault thinks that behind all those influential institutional organizations is actually one major thing. It is the power that is always imposing its taste and understanding of sexuality on us by force. Whether it is religious, political, or social power, it plays a major role in shaping our perception of sexuality. It creates law to allow a specific kind of sex and forbid others based on a biological perspective. Sex without law is power without king (Foucault 91). Procreation is still the main subject of any sexual operation, NOT the pleasure. This has been rooted in almost every society throughout the history because of the power. Power had enforced us to appreciate the reproductive sex and condemn the fruitless pleasure because of the economic benefits that accompany the procreation and increase of population. Because of that, power defaces any relationship that happens outside marriage, specifically those perverse relationships that happen between two individuals of the same sex since they will not be procreative and beneficial to their society. Foucault adds “Through the various discourses, legal sanctions against minor perversions were multiplied; sexual irregularity was annexed to mental illness; from childhood to old age, a norm of sexual development was defined and all the possible deviations were carefully described; pedagogical controls and medical treatments were organized; around the least fantasies, moralists, but especially doctors, brandished the whole emphatic vocabulary of abomination. Were these anything more than means employed to absorb, for the benefit of a genitally centered sexuality, all the fruitless pleasures?” He smartly asks that “All this garrulous attention which has us in a stew over sexuality, is it not motivated by one basic concern: to ensure population, to reproduce labor capacity, to perpetuate the form of social relations: in short, to constitute a sexuality that is economically useful and politically conservative?” (Foucault 36-37). This is the norm that any power tries to impose on society. Reproductive sex is the only acceptable form of sex that power allows. And that’s how our perception of sex was formed. It was formed based on a heteronormative explanation that was historically imposed by the power, as Foucault believes. Simply, heterosexuality is healthy, procreative, and economically beneficial, while homosexuality is bad, fruitless, and perverse. What a heteronormative thinking!
As Foucault links sexuality with biology, C.J. Pascoe also does the same when she links masculinity to physical appearance. In order to be a “man,” you have to be masculine. You have to have masculine characteristics, appearance, and behavior. It is not about being “man;” it is about acting like a “man.” In other words, a male who looks or acts like a female is NOT a male. He is a “fag.” He is homosexual. He is feminine. He just moved from the superior gender (male) to the inferior gender (female). This structural perception had been also formed by the power since power historically linked masculinity to physical appearance. Man is always linked to hard activities and heavy duties while woman is seen as a sex object only. This is what Foucault also mentions in his powerful book The History of Sexuality. I do not know why Pascoe did not mention Foucault or his book at all although the entire conclusion of her book Dude You’re a Fag is 100% identical with what Foucault deconstructed. Hasn’t she read Foucault?
In structuralism philosophy, Claude Levi Strauss (the godfather of structuralism in the world) simply identifies man as a structure because he is lead by a structure, which is a transcendent system of instructions that precedes human and controls its existence. There is always a structure that leads human’s thoughts and opinions. Religion, sect, ethics, culture, thoughts, ideology, gender, sexuality, language, class, race, ethnicity, and philosophical doctrine are all pre-existing structures that man is fully buried in. We see things through them. We value things through them. We do everything through them. We cannot live without them. (Strauss 50). But Julie Bettie, the author of Women without Class, thinks that although those structures are performative -- performativity refers to the ways in which we are produced by the weighty structures that preexist us (Bettie 192) --, they are NOT inevitable. Structures are actually performances in which they are always changing and in formation. Yes, we all are controlled by our structures, but that does not mean that we cannot perform others, as Bettie believes. We can always create new forms of structures when we decide to perform other identities that are different than our “authentic” ones. This is why Bettie believes that structures are performances even if they are already performative.
One of the important structures that Bettie counts in her book Women without Class is class. Class is a structure that preexists and reproduces us. It is performative but can be changed/performed in case contingent routes to social mobility were found as Bettie thinks. Looking at the cliques at the Waretown High School (the school that Bettie did her research at), social hierarchies have been obviously reflected through those cliques. White middle-class students join prep and white peasants in hicks. Smokers represent white working-class students (called white trash), while cholas includes Mexican-American working class, and so forth. Aren’t these cliques a reflection of structural inequality? Bettie says, yes, but they are NOT inevitable. We also see “prep” student performs a “smoker” and/or a “hick” joins the “cholas” and so forth. Class differences can be found within one group also. For instance, being “prep” does not always mean that you are a “real” middle-class. Same thing with other cliques and groups. Starr, the only white girl in a Mexican majority school, acted like a Mexican and they thought she was a “Chola.” She said, “I wore my hair up high in front you know. And I had an accent” (Bettie 129). But she left the group and joined the “smokers” after she went in a fight with one of her ex-friends. Bettie’s book actually provides tens of such examples. The question is: how can one perform/negotiate class?
Briefly, social mobility is a transformation process in which person/group moves from certain social position to another inside the society. This transformation of social position can be upwardly (for instance, from working-class to middle-class) or downwardly (from middle-class to working-class). Upward/downward social mobility can occur only if some specific conditions were found. First of all, in order for someone to be socially mobile, he/she has to be aware of class difference. Look at how Shelly (One of Waretown High students) started to recognize class difference for the first time. She said, “Marla’s house is huge, you know, and her mom and dad drive newer cars…. When I go to their house, I feel like I can’t sit anywhere you know, and her mom makes me feel so scummy, like I’m a loser or I’m dressed all wrong” (Bettie 123-124). Shelly experienced class awareness when she saw her friend’s social status (Marla). Based on Bettie’s conclusion, one can be upwardly mobile only if he/she first recognizes class awareness and second has to have contingent routes to that mobility such as sports, family stories, private education, and cultural capital (Bettie 145). For instance, a working-class athlete can easily be mobile to be a middle-class since borders among classes can be dissolved through sports. Another can have, for example, solid family stories about how his grandparents were rich and educated. This could better serve to push his social mobility upward. Being in private schools also helps accelerating upward mobility since those schools are usually attended by white middle-class students (rich families). Bettie pays more attention to the concept Cultural Capital as another important route to ensure upward social mobility. Cultural capital (concept coined by Pierre Bourdieu) refers to the cultural resources that some people have such as education, intellect, and specific lifestyle. Those who have such cultural capital can easily be mobile upwardly.
There will be some difficulties for those who experience class mobility and perform another identity. Acting another identity will make them betrayers to their “authentic” one in the eyes of their original group. Think about African-American working-class who performs white middle-class. What would his original group say? They would probably say, “You are acting white?” Let us imagine that a white middle-class performs an identity that is better ascribed to Mexican-American for example. His original group may say, “You act like a Mexican. What is wrong with you?” Those who perform acquired identity are always under their original group’s pressure and accusations. That’s why some of them try to have dual identity. They like to be upwardly mobile to a middle-class and at the same time, they express their proudness of their family and original class. For instance, an African-American can perform whiteness without being assimilated into it. He acts white and tries to distance himself from a working-class community, but he is still proud of his original parents, family, class, and/or race. Bettie says, “such a desire to distance themselves from elements of working-class community while remaining close to and respecting their parents was a difficult process to navigate and often left them speaking in contradictions” (Bettie 148). They actually become confused between who they are and what they want to be. This will put them in a contradictory situation. Such contradictory act reminds me of the French existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre and his famous concept Bad Faith. Sartre argues that such an act becomes an act of bad faith in which the person experiences a hesitancy moment between the “in-itself” existence and the “for-itself” existence. (Sartre 93). Philosophically, the one who tries to leave his original identity (which is symbolically considered his “in-itself” existence) to upwardly mobile and perform new one (“for-itself” existence) will be confused between the “facticity” situation and the “transcendence” situation as Sartre coins it. Facticity existentially means the fact that the person has a certain position, while transcendence means the transcendent position that he vainly tries to reach. This is, in existentialism philosophy, called a “transcendent action” which is equal to the sociological concept “social upward mobility.” In the transcendent action, one tries to change from being “in-itself” existent to a “for-itself” existent. In other words, one tries to create his choices and be what he wants to be. This is not going to be easy at all. Sartre calls this action “bad faith” action in which one can afford neither the transcendence nor the facticity. Sociologically speaking, he may lose his identities, both the original and the acquired. Bettie was right.
At the end, identity is a reflection of what our structures decide. C.J. Pascoe and Julie Bettie had successfully interpreted that connection between us as identity performers and our race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and/or class as performative structures. Because of these unequal structures, we live in a world of social inequalities.
Works Cited
Bettie, Julie. Women without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity. Berkeley and Los Angles: University of California Press, 2003. Print.
Bourdeu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Trans. Gino Raymond & Matthew Adamson. Cambridge: Polity, 1991. Print.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Print.
Hull, Carrie. Poststructuralism, Behaviorism, and the Problem of Hate Speech. SAGE: Philosophy and Social Criticism, (2003), P 531. Web. 14 June 2013.
Pascoe, C.J. Dude You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. Berkeley and Los Angles: University of California Press, 2007, 2012. Print.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1966. Print.
Strauss, Claude L. Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1963. Print.
Topper, Keith. Arendt and Bourdieu between Word and Deed. SAGE: Political Theory, (22 March 2011), p 352. Web. 14 June 2013.
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03 / 11 / 2014
There is always a debate over self-identity. What is it? How is it perceived? Why is it considered an important factor in any sociological, anthropological, or philosophical study? Identity is a concept in which one expresses his individuality. In fact, this definition can be misleading because identity is actually a reflection of one’s race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and/or class rather than the self. To create a self-identity is to reflect structural inequality since these structures are socially unequal as we all know.
In general, societies are masculine. Masculinity has been historically rooted in our societies generation after generation. Man is always linked to power, strength, and heroism while woman is seen as weak, sexy, and shameful. Boys are comfortable to talk about their sexual relationships and be proud of that, but girls are not. Girls are labeled as “bitches” or “sluts” if they have more than one sexual relationship (Pascoe 91). This masculine discourse degrades women and portrays them as a degenerate gender. This is how gender-based identity is perceived. It is perceived and performed based on a false structural fact where women do not deserve to be equal with men. Isn’t this gender inequality a reflection of structural inequality in which women always occupy a lower status in society?
Not only girls are degraded by such masculinity but also boys who have feminine characteristics. Male-hegemonic society used to make fun on those who look or act like girls as a result of a rooted heterosexual education. Words like faggot, pussy, and girl are used to describe those “soft” boys even if they were not homosexual. Thus, being a homosexual is bad. It is a deviation. It is against our “straightness.” Such homophobic perception is “indeed a central mechanism in the making of contemporary American adolescent masculinity” (Pascoe 53). This is absolutely right. In her book Dude You’re a Fag, C.J. Pascoe adds, “fag is not only an identity linked to homosexual boys but an identity that can temporarily adhere to heterosexual boys as well. The fag trope is also a racialized disciplinary mechanism” (Pascoe 53). That’s why some boys try as much as they can to avoid being labeled with “fag” trope. They were structurally indoctrinated that fag is a degraded status.
Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, argues that cultural beliefs are more dominant than anything else in shaping our personalities. Those beliefs are usually expressed through language in a way that may provoke others’ beliefs. This is what he calls “Symbolic Violence” (Bourdieu 191). Symbolic violence is an invisible form of violence. It is a soft violence that people unconsciously carry in their language. It is actually a clear lingual manifestation of what the society already believes. Thinking about language, it is a “mechanism of silencing, domination, and exclusion. The more symbolic violence we have in our language (culture), the more physical violence we commit against others” (Topper 352). Going back to our topic, imagine the impact of such words nigger, faggot, or bitch on people. These words simply represent the sociological structure that shaped our identities. The American Sociologist Carrie Hull demonstrates that such “words act as a general reminder of the unequal society that fostered this language” (Hull 531). Such unequal society often persecutes subordinated groups or minorities, not only by such words, but also by signs, logos, or even facial expressions sometimes. These are symbolic violence that is derived from our pre-existing ideologies, and it could possibly lead to physical violence. It is unfortunately against “be nice, think nice, and say nice” principle that we all should respect and believe in. How can one be nice when he calls a heterosexual straight? The unthinkable of the word straight means that the homosexual is perverse. Is it nice to say to a homosexual, “hey you’re not straight, you’re perverse”? Doesn’t that language provoke certain group’s feeling? Bourdieu says: yes, it does. Indeed, this is a symbolic violence that is derived from a language driven up by social inequality.
Our perception of sexuality can be a good measure of how heteronormative our society is. We always think about sex in a heteronormative way in which sex is viewed as a reproductive process that human being needs in order to create a family. Deconstructing sexuality is useful to know what factors shaped our knowledge on sex. We are institutionalized on the fact that sex is a reproductive process. Family, school, church, media, and other institutional organizations have strongly shaped our perception of sexuality on the biological perspective. Sexuality is always linked to biology. Thinking about sexuality means thinking about male-female relationship. Michel Foucault thinks that behind all those influential institutional organizations is actually one major thing. It is the power that is always imposing its taste and understanding of sexuality on us by force. Whether it is religious, political, or social power, it plays a major role in shaping our perception of sexuality. It creates law to allow a specific kind of sex and forbid others based on a biological perspective. Sex without law is power without king (Foucault 91). Procreation is still the main subject of any sexual operation, NOT the pleasure. This has been rooted in almost every society throughout the history because of the power. Power had enforced us to appreciate the reproductive sex and condemn the fruitless pleasure because of the economic benefits that accompany the procreation and increase of population. Because of that, power defaces any relationship that happens outside marriage, specifically those perverse relationships that happen between two individuals of the same sex since they will not be procreative and beneficial to their society. Foucault adds “Through the various discourses, legal sanctions against minor perversions were multiplied; sexual irregularity was annexed to mental illness; from childhood to old age, a norm of sexual development was defined and all the possible deviations were carefully described; pedagogical controls and medical treatments were organized; around the least fantasies, moralists, but especially doctors, brandished the whole emphatic vocabulary of abomination. Were these anything more than means employed to absorb, for the benefit of a genitally centered sexuality, all the fruitless pleasures?” He smartly asks that “All this garrulous attention which has us in a stew over sexuality, is it not motivated by one basic concern: to ensure population, to reproduce labor capacity, to perpetuate the form of social relations: in short, to constitute a sexuality that is economically useful and politically conservative?” (Foucault 36-37). This is the norm that any power tries to impose on society. Reproductive sex is the only acceptable form of sex that power allows. And that’s how our perception of sex was formed. It was formed based on a heteronormative explanation that was historically imposed by the power, as Foucault believes. Simply, heterosexuality is healthy, procreative, and economically beneficial, while homosexuality is bad, fruitless, and perverse. What a heteronormative thinking!
As Foucault links sexuality with biology, C.J. Pascoe also does the same when she links masculinity to physical appearance. In order to be a “man,” you have to be masculine. You have to have masculine characteristics, appearance, and behavior. It is not about being “man;” it is about acting like a “man.” In other words, a male who looks or acts like a female is NOT a male. He is a “fag.” He is homosexual. He is feminine. He just moved from the superior gender (male) to the inferior gender (female). This structural perception had been also formed by the power since power historically linked masculinity to physical appearance. Man is always linked to hard activities and heavy duties while woman is seen as a sex object only. This is what Foucault also mentions in his powerful book The History of Sexuality. I do not know why Pascoe did not mention Foucault or his book at all although the entire conclusion of her book Dude You’re a Fag is 100% identical with what Foucault deconstructed. Hasn’t she read Foucault?
In structuralism philosophy, Claude Levi Strauss (the godfather of structuralism in the world) simply identifies man as a structure because he is lead by a structure, which is a transcendent system of instructions that precedes human and controls its existence. There is always a structure that leads human’s thoughts and opinions. Religion, sect, ethics, culture, thoughts, ideology, gender, sexuality, language, class, race, ethnicity, and philosophical doctrine are all pre-existing structures that man is fully buried in. We see things through them. We value things through them. We do everything through them. We cannot live without them. (Strauss 50). But Julie Bettie, the author of Women without Class, thinks that although those structures are performative -- performativity refers to the ways in which we are produced by the weighty structures that preexist us (Bettie 192) --, they are NOT inevitable. Structures are actually performances in which they are always changing and in formation. Yes, we all are controlled by our structures, but that does not mean that we cannot perform others, as Bettie believes. We can always create new forms of structures when we decide to perform other identities that are different than our “authentic” ones. This is why Bettie believes that structures are performances even if they are already performative.
One of the important structures that Bettie counts in her book Women without Class is class. Class is a structure that preexists and reproduces us. It is performative but can be changed/performed in case contingent routes to social mobility were found as Bettie thinks. Looking at the cliques at the Waretown High School (the school that Bettie did her research at), social hierarchies have been obviously reflected through those cliques. White middle-class students join prep and white peasants in hicks. Smokers represent white working-class students (called white trash), while cholas includes Mexican-American working class, and so forth. Aren’t these cliques a reflection of structural inequality? Bettie says, yes, but they are NOT inevitable. We also see “prep” student performs a “smoker” and/or a “hick” joins the “cholas” and so forth. Class differences can be found within one group also. For instance, being “prep” does not always mean that you are a “real” middle-class. Same thing with other cliques and groups. Starr, the only white girl in a Mexican majority school, acted like a Mexican and they thought she was a “Chola.” She said, “I wore my hair up high in front you know. And I had an accent” (Bettie 129). But she left the group and joined the “smokers” after she went in a fight with one of her ex-friends. Bettie’s book actually provides tens of such examples. The question is: how can one perform/negotiate class?
Briefly, social mobility is a transformation process in which person/group moves from certain social position to another inside the society. This transformation of social position can be upwardly (for instance, from working-class to middle-class) or downwardly (from middle-class to working-class). Upward/downward social mobility can occur only if some specific conditions were found. First of all, in order for someone to be socially mobile, he/she has to be aware of class difference. Look at how Shelly (One of Waretown High students) started to recognize class difference for the first time. She said, “Marla’s house is huge, you know, and her mom and dad drive newer cars…. When I go to their house, I feel like I can’t sit anywhere you know, and her mom makes me feel so scummy, like I’m a loser or I’m dressed all wrong” (Bettie 123-124). Shelly experienced class awareness when she saw her friend’s social status (Marla). Based on Bettie’s conclusion, one can be upwardly mobile only if he/she first recognizes class awareness and second has to have contingent routes to that mobility such as sports, family stories, private education, and cultural capital (Bettie 145). For instance, a working-class athlete can easily be mobile to be a middle-class since borders among classes can be dissolved through sports. Another can have, for example, solid family stories about how his grandparents were rich and educated. This could better serve to push his social mobility upward. Being in private schools also helps accelerating upward mobility since those schools are usually attended by white middle-class students (rich families). Bettie pays more attention to the concept Cultural Capital as another important route to ensure upward social mobility. Cultural capital (concept coined by Pierre Bourdieu) refers to the cultural resources that some people have such as education, intellect, and specific lifestyle. Those who have such cultural capital can easily be mobile upwardly.
There will be some difficulties for those who experience class mobility and perform another identity. Acting another identity will make them betrayers to their “authentic” one in the eyes of their original group. Think about African-American working-class who performs white middle-class. What would his original group say? They would probably say, “You are acting white?” Let us imagine that a white middle-class performs an identity that is better ascribed to Mexican-American for example. His original group may say, “You act like a Mexican. What is wrong with you?” Those who perform acquired identity are always under their original group’s pressure and accusations. That’s why some of them try to have dual identity. They like to be upwardly mobile to a middle-class and at the same time, they express their proudness of their family and original class. For instance, an African-American can perform whiteness without being assimilated into it. He acts white and tries to distance himself from a working-class community, but he is still proud of his original parents, family, class, and/or race. Bettie says, “such a desire to distance themselves from elements of working-class community while remaining close to and respecting their parents was a difficult process to navigate and often left them speaking in contradictions” (Bettie 148). They actually become confused between who they are and what they want to be. This will put them in a contradictory situation. Such contradictory act reminds me of the French existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre and his famous concept Bad Faith. Sartre argues that such an act becomes an act of bad faith in which the person experiences a hesitancy moment between the “in-itself” existence and the “for-itself” existence. (Sartre 93). Philosophically, the one who tries to leave his original identity (which is symbolically considered his “in-itself” existence) to upwardly mobile and perform new one (“for-itself” existence) will be confused between the “facticity” situation and the “transcendence” situation as Sartre coins it. Facticity existentially means the fact that the person has a certain position, while transcendence means the transcendent position that he vainly tries to reach. This is, in existentialism philosophy, called a “transcendent action” which is equal to the sociological concept “social upward mobility.” In the transcendent action, one tries to change from being “in-itself” existent to a “for-itself” existent. In other words, one tries to create his choices and be what he wants to be. This is not going to be easy at all. Sartre calls this action “bad faith” action in which one can afford neither the transcendence nor the facticity. Sociologically speaking, he may lose his identities, both the original and the acquired. Bettie was right.
At the end, identity is a reflection of what our structures decide. C.J. Pascoe and Julie Bettie had successfully interpreted that connection between us as identity performers and our race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and/or class as performative structures. Because of these unequal structures, we live in a world of social inequalities.
Works Cited
Bettie, Julie. Women without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity. Berkeley and Los Angles: University of California Press, 2003. Print.
Bourdeu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Trans. Gino Raymond & Matthew Adamson. Cambridge: Polity, 1991. Print.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Print.
Hull, Carrie. Poststructuralism, Behaviorism, and the Problem of Hate Speech. SAGE: Philosophy and Social Criticism, (2003), P 531. Web. 14 June 2013.
Pascoe, C.J. Dude You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. Berkeley and Los Angles: University of California Press, 2007, 2012. Print.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1966. Print.
Strauss, Claude L. Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1963. Print.
Topper, Keith. Arendt and Bourdieu between Word and Deed. SAGE: Political Theory, (22 March 2011), p 352. Web. 14 June 2013.
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