1. Session 21: Identity and the ‘other’
– Part 1: Personal identity
November 14, 2013
1) Handing back your photo elicitation
assignments;
1) Short lecture: Concepts related to identity and
the ‘other’; gender and sexuality;
2) Guest: Harrison Oakes – Sexual orientation
and place; anti-bullying; Bill 18
Readings: Chapter 8 of Norton Socially Constructed Identities;
Sameness and Difference; Gender; Sexuality; Other Peoples and
Landscapes
Norton, W. (2005). Cultural Geography: Environments, Landscapes, Identities, and
Inequalities. Oxford University Press, Don Mills.
The Forks,
Winnipeg

2. Socially Constructed Identities
“cultures, societies, communities, ethnic groups, tribes, and nations
are coming to be viewed as contingent or even arbitrary creations
rather than essential givens of a human existence” (Lewis, 1991:
605)
Examples from the course so far:
•Sense of Place: what is home to you? – this exercise relates to
your identity
•Muxxi Adam: Refugee; Canadian; Somali
•Papers for critical review: ethnic and national identities
•Paul Cormier: idigeneity; perspectivism (your identity affects
your perspective)

3. What shapes a person’s identity?
- “ethnicity”
- personal ideologies
- nationality
- political perspectives
- gender
- religious beliefs
- class
- sexual orientation
- personal experiences
- interests
- sense of place
- many other human attributes...
- ability
Identity is complex!
- personal mythologies

4. Social constructionist perspective on identity
-reflects a belief shared by phenomenology, symbolic interactionism,
feminism, and postmodernism many truths/realities
Conceptual accounts of identity according the social constructionist
approach are based on:
a) Freudian psychology: as you mature your assimilate persons
and objects into the psyche as a means of reducing tension
b) Symbolic interactionism: the self emerges in relation to the
social world; individuals place themselves in socially
constructed categories  creates identity

5. In relation to place
People interpret themselves and others according to the landscape
that they live in
In cultural geography the analysis of identity is based on twin
claims:
a) that there is no such thing as a static, unchanging
national or any kind of other identity;
b) furthermore, that such a scenario is undesirable

6. Creation of the “other”
- “others” are created through our own social construct
- Has resulted in:
- the perceived inferiority of certain groups of people
- a perceived “right” to intervene in the business, livelihoods,
etc of “others” (e.g. the residential school system in Canada)
The Geography of Exclusion: people excluded from
places based on their identities
-Sibley (1995) believed that this partially comes from the
subconscious mind
-Similar to Cormier’s statement about potentially not being
aware of our own perspectives

7. Gender and sexuality in geography
Geographers have accepted gender as a social construct (concepts
rooted in feminism)
Gender as initially formed through differential treatment of boys
and girls (gender formed based on sex)

11. Queer theory & epistemology
Post-structuralist critical theory built upon feminist challenges to
epistemology
Queer theory emphasizes the fluidity and even hybridity of
identities
Focuses on the different expressions and possible combinations of
sex, gender, and desire
 concerned with empowering those with a lack of power

12. *Gender is (obviously) interwoven with other bases for identity
Strategic essentialism: stressing experiences based on one identity
trait, such as gender
Norton – Landscapes of fear: based on actual or perceived
likelihood of assault  relates to gender, but also to other
identities

13. Burrneshas: Sworn to virginity and living as men in Albania –
article from the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/world/europe/23ihtvirgins.4.13927949.html?pagewanted=all
Photos by Jill Peters (http://petapixel.com/2012/12/26/portraits-of-albanian-women-who-have-lived-their-lives-as-men/)

14. The Geography of Hate – USA
Uses Twitter information as data for prejudices relating
to homophobia, racism, and disability.
http://users.humboldt.edu/mstephens/hate/hate_map.html#

15. Sexuality
Sexuality has been a way of defining social others (definitions often
based on culture and/or religion)
Early 20th Century – the dominant view of homosexuality was
negative
Attitudes currently changing  laws and policies have been
changing accordingly, thereby affecting place and space, and the
political landscape
Harrison Oakes to illustrate this and other concepts...