Negotiating Identities: Developing Adaptative Strategies in an Ever Changing Social Reality

Abstract: The present work is an interdisciplinary and theoretical study on the topic of identity and the development of collective consciousness; an investigation of the ways in which people feel about and operate with their identities today. Identities are seen as a process circumscribed by the continuous struggle between the individual need for self-fulfillment and the demands of social structure and collective consciousness. Identities are considered as subjected to constant negotiations that are here assessed through an articulation of theories, perspectives, concepts and categories in order to create a comprehensive examination of this practice of identity. Globalization, social change, and its consequences over the process of identity construction are the background within which this thesis is grounded. Contemporary Western society – the focus of the study – is a place of broken stability; composed by a system so vast it seems difficult to be experienced as one’s own place, but too tightly woven for one to escape from it. Established ways of relating, living, and understanding are challenged; and the conclusion favors the idea that the more tactical character of our everyday lives points towards a further gain in control over it by the individual.