Practices, Identification and Identity Change in the Transition to Motherhood

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Gunaratnam, Yasmin; Elliott, Heather; Hollway, Wendy and Phoenix, Anna. 2009. Practices, Identification and Identity Change in the Transition to Motherhood. In: Margaret Wetherell, ed. Theorizing Identities and Social Action. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 19-37. ISBN 978-0230580886 [Book Section]

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How do identities and social action articulate together? This book explores the 'doing' and the 'making' of identity. It describes how identities emerge from the flow of action and organise social conduct. In social research identity is often treated as a static accomplished fact – already owned, finalised and shaped. Drawing on five years of sustained research within the highly innovative ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme, Theorizing Identities and Social Action develops a very different standpoint. The chapter authors take core social actions – such as performing, excluding, mixing, bonding, relating, 'passing', travelling, campaigning and disputing – and demonstrate how social practices and identities unfold together. A wide range of theories of the identity/action relation are accessibly mobilised in ways which will be illuminating for students and experienced researchers alike. These include Judith Butler's notion of performativity, social identity theory in social psychology, relational psychoanalysis, Bourdieu's notion of 'habitus' and conversation analysis.

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