Identity: a geographical perspective

1
Identity a geographical perspective

• Deborah Sporton, Dept. of Geography, University
  of Sheffield. D.Sporton_at_sheffield.ac.uk
• Gill Valentine, School of Geography, University
  of Leeds
• G.Valentine_at_leeds.ac.uk

2

Narrative Approach to Identity

• We are located within narratives not of our own
  making
• (e.g. child, asylum seeker)
• We choose to construct narratives of the self
  that draw on particular interpretative
  repertoires
• (recast available narratives, fateful moments
  etc.)
• Not in a vacuum space and place matter!

3
Identities are spatially constituted

• Identities are actively accomplished in/through
  geographical sites
• Specific identity practices at home, school
  community
• Socio-spatial tensions
• Negotiate competing definitions of identity
  from these sites and wider society
• e.g. adult at home v child at school
• e.g. Somali community identity v achievement at
  school

4
Geographical Imagination

• Identities depend constitutively on difference
  self/other (Said)
• Understandings of self other are shaped through
  mobility
• To travel can consist in operating a profoundly
  unsettling inversion of ones identity I become
  me via an otherTravelling allows one to see
  things differently from what they are,
  differently from how one has seen them and
  differently from what one isTrinh Min-ha 1994
  23).
• Awareness of and attachment to place home,
  tensions between different cultural values.
• Global-local
• Insular or a progressive sense of place (Massey)

5
Implications for other projects

• Role of space and place in identity formation?
• Specific sites in/through which identity
  accomplished
• Socio-spatial tensions in (dis) identification
  processes
• Geographical imagination relational nature of
  identity formation
• Local-global
• Sense of place