Identities are a created concept made by the human race Everyone possesses an identity, but its how these

identities came about that we must question. Especially when brought down to gender, we are seen to be either male or female, and within this each has its qualities that society dictates are the norm. The compact oxford dictionary (2009) describes identity to be the fact of being who or what a person or thing is but what this doesnt describe is how do we differentiate what person is. In my essay I am going to show that our identities are defined through gender based authorities and the social actions of society over the years. Identity is becoming a significant focus of research in European Social Psychology (Brown 2000). From the creation of the human being, with a sperm and an egg we can already perceive a distinction that brings about our identity. It is through Moore (2003) idea of anthropomorphism, where we give things human qualities and characteristics, for example colour, when shown a pink room for a newborn baby, it is then assumed that it has been created so for a girl, thus placing gender roles on something as simple as colour. So we can see how the sperm is given masculine qualities and gendered into being male. These gender roles are also bought across through language and discourse (Burr 1995; Harr 1987, 1998;Wetherell and Maybin 1996) when describing the sperm, adjectives such as strong and tough are used, giving them connotations of being male gendered words. Having said all this, we see that we raise children into a world where meaning already exists, so how do we expect them to grow with their own identity if we are pushing it upon them before they have come out of the womb (Lloyd and Duveen (1990, 1992). From conception, we can know whether the child is male or female therefore placing them into gender groups, once again we see that babies are given gender-marked names. (Duveen 2001). We categorise ourselves in groups, within society, dependant on our background, how we have been brought up and the way in which we behave (Turner et al. 1987; Turner and Onorato 1999). These groups have become wider spread over recent years, through the changing society, it dictates to us that although we can class identity through whether we are male or female, the changing times, change the way we see our identity within social groups, and how they are socially represented (Moscovici 1961 and 1976 2nd edition). These representations are social in that they constitute collective elaborations of social knowledge that are shared among people of the same community. Constructionism entails the belief that sexuality, and gender, has no inherent essence but must be understood as a configuration of cultural meanings which are themselves generated within matrices of social (power) relations (Harding 1998:9). It seems that over time our identity has become a way in which we can explain our motives and actions. It is through everyday things such as politics that we can argue that those who are seeking to influence need only to construct a social category that includes both themselves and their audience. A recent analysis (Reicher and Hopkins 2001) of identity construction in the political speeches About nationhood is a good example of showing how identity is argued in the public sphere, in order for people to get what they want, and lead to social action. Here we see that it is not just with individual identity we must compete with, their is the identity of social groups that have to be acknowledged. These Social groups create their own belief of what they feel is the norm and take that as how identity should be. Chryssochoou (2000) said that At the level of the metasystem social regulations are objectified into concrete images, categories and symbols and anchored into familiar knowledge. For example, the European Union can be objectified into concrete images: the flag, the new passport,

the European Commission, the EURO and so on and so forth. These images might change the representation of the categories Europe and European that now can be defined using other criteria than geographical location. This new knowledge can be anchored in already existing knowledge about the functioning of the nations both as political and cultural entities (2000ab). This example here shows that it is not just the willingness to claim Europe or be identified as European but a matter of social recognition from societies. On the other hand it can be argued that Gender comes from Biology, it is the genitals, and what is classified as male and female features, that derive from DNA that make us who we are and give us our identity. Sexuality is that which is concerned with the reproduction of the species or the maximization of each individuals genetic legacy (Jackson 1999:5). Cosgrove (2000) argues that as we cannot escape being gendered, at it is the first thing we receive when we are born, the effects of the social constructions we are brought up with are fragmented. It is appropriate to speak of gendered subjectivity as inevitable the site of multiple and contradictory effects (Cosgrove 2000: 250). Here we see Cosgrove stating that gender cannot be perceived through just one thing, it is complicated and often these effects contradict themselves, this means that no one explanation can be held up as to why we identify ourselves the way we do. But we can see that the human race works on assumptions, through their social status, as to what is classed as male and female and how this is incorporated into fixing an identity for each individual. It is through our active participation in the social world, that we live, that each individuals create a set of, what can be classed as unwritten rules, about the world and themselves, that in turn gives them their identity. To protect from, provoke or respond to changes to this knowledge people act in the name of identity. From this we see that our identity constitutes the social psychological context within which worldviews are constructed. References
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