Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-767nl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-15T15:43:26.092Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

27 - Conceptualizing the Multiple Levels of Identity and Intersectionality

from Part IV - Current Domains

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2021

By
Leoandra Onnie Rogers  and
Moin Syed
Edited by
Michael Bamberg ,
Carolin Demuth  and
Meike Watzlawik
Michael Bamberg
Affiliation:
Clark University, Massachusetts
Carolin Demuth
Affiliation:
Aalborg University, Denmark
Meike Watzlawik
Affiliation:
Sigmund Freud University, Berlin
Get access

Summary

With disciplinary roots in legal studies and Black feminist scholarship in the United States, intersectionality provides a bird's-eye view of structural inequality and oppression. Yet, as the construct of intersectionality has moved across disciplines, alternate perspectives have come into view and new questions have been asked. Psychological perspectives on intersectionality have centered on questions (and tensions) about how to apply intersectionality in the study of identity – that is, whether intersectionality informs how individuals come to understand themselves and others, and how this may occur. Identity is an obvious link to intersectionality because the categories of difference/inequality that comprise intersectionality are also the identity groups that we study (e.g., racial identity and gender identity). At the same time, identity is (mostly conceived to be) a personal-level construct, which seems to stand in opposition to the structural lens that defines intersectionality. In this chapter, we use empirical data to consider what the study of identity reveals to us about intersectionality as a psychological process. We first define intersectionality and our developmental approach to identity drawing on Erikson’s (1968) psychosocial identity theory. Next, we discuss core challenges that identity researchers in psychology often face when integrating intersectionality: the emphasis on individual-level processes, discrete variables, and linear associations. We then present an analysis of Black and White adolescents’ race × gender identities to conceptualize identity and intersectionality as phenomena that can be measured at the personal, relational, and structural levels. We conclude that this multilevel analytical framework allows us to see intersectionality in identity development.

Keywords

Identityintersectionalityrace and genderqualitative analysis
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Identity , pp. 604 - 626
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anyon, J. (1984). Intersections of gender and class: Accommodation and resistance by working-class and affluent females to contradictory sex role ideologies. Journal of Education, 166, 25–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Azmitia, M., Radmacher, K., & Syed, M. (2008). On the intersection of personal and social identities: Introduction and evidence from a longitudinal study of emerging adults. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 120, 1–16, doi:10.1002/cd.212.Google Scholar
Bamberg, M. (2004). Form and functions of “slut bashing” in male identity constructions in 15-year-olds. Human Development, 47(6), 331–353.Google Scholar
Bowleg, L. (2008). When Black + lesbian + woman ≠ Black lesbian woman: The methodological challenges of qualitative and quantitative intersectionality research. Sex Roles, 59, 312–325, doi:10.1007/s11199-008-9400-z.Google Scholar
Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77–101, doi:10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.Google Scholar
Brown, C. S. (2017). Discrimination in Childhood and Adolescence: A Developmental Intergroup Approach. New York, NY: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Brown, C. S., Alabi, B. O., Huynh, V. W., & Masten, C. L. (2011). Ethnicity and gender in late childhood and early adolescence: Group identity and awareness of bias. Developmental Psychology, 47, 463–471, doi:10.1037/a0021819.Google Scholar
Brubaker, R. & Cooper, F. (2000). Beyond “identity.” Theory and Society, 29(1), 1–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carbado, D. W., Crenshaw, K. W., Mays, V. M., & Tomlinson, B. (2013). Intersectionality: Mapping the movements of a theory. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 10(2), 303–312.Google Scholar
Cielto, J. & Rogers, L. O. (2019, February). Does hair matter? How Black girls integrate physical features in their social identities. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Portland, OR.Google Scholar
Cole, E. R. (2009). Intersectionality and research in psychology. American Psychologist, 64, 170–180, doi:10.1037/a0014564.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Collins, P. H. (1991). Black women and motherhood. In Held, V. (Ed.), Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics (pp. 117–137). New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Collins, P. H. (1999). Moving beyond gender: Intersectionality and scientific knowledge. In Ferree, M. F. (Ed.), Revisioning Gender (pp. 261–284). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43, 1241–1299.Google Scholar
De Fina, A. (2015). Narrative and identities. In De Fina, A. & Georgakopoulou, A. (Eds.), The Handbook of Narrative Analysis (pp. 351–368). Oxford: Wiley.Google Scholar
Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and Society, 2nd Ed. New York, NY: Norton.Google Scholar
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York, NY: Norton.Google Scholar
Frable, D. E. (1997). Gender, racial, ethnic, sexual, and class identities. Annual Review of Psychology, 48, 139–162, doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.48.1.139.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Galliher, R. V., McLean, K. C., & Syed, M. (2017). An integrated developmental model for studying identity content in context. Developmental Psychology, 53(11), 2011–2022, doi:10.1037/dev0000299.Google Scholar
Ghavami, N., Kastiaficas, D., & Rogers, L. O. (2016). Toward an intersectional approach in developmental science: The role of race, gender, sexual orientation, and immigrant status. In Horn, S. S., Ruck, M. D., & Liben, L. S. (Eds.), Advances in Child Development and Behavior (pp. 31–73). Burlington: Academic Press, doi:10.1016/bs.acdb.2015.12.001.Google Scholar
Ghavami, N. & Mistry, R. S. (2019). Urban ethnically diverse adolescents’ perceptions of social class at the intersection of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Developmental Psychology, 55, 457–470.Google Scholar
Ghavami, N. & Peplau, L. A. (2018). Urban middle school students’ stereotypes at the intersection of sexual orientation, ethnicity, and gender. Child Development, 89, 881–896.Google Scholar
Hammack, P. L. (2008). Narrative and the cultural psychology of identity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12, 222–247.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hammack, P. L. & Toolis, E. E. (2015). Putting the social into personal identity: The master narrative as root metaphor for psychological and developmental science. Human Development, 58, 350–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hershberg, R. M. & Johnson, S. K. (2019). Critical reflection about socioeconomic inequalities among White young men from poor and working-class backgrounds. Developmental Psychology, 55, 562–573.Google Scholar
hooks, b. (1989). Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston, MA: South End Press.Google Scholar
Kiang, L., Fuligni, A. J., & Yip, T. (2008). Multiple social identities and adjustment in young adults from ethnically diverse backgrounds. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 18(4), 643–670, doi:10.1111/j.1532-7795.2008.00575.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Killen, M., Rutland, A., & Yip, T. (2016). Equity and justice in developmental science: Discrimination, social exclusion, and intergroup attitudes. Child Development, 87, 1317–1336, doi:10.1111/cdev.12593.Google Scholar
Korobov, N. (2015). Identities as an interactional process. In McLean, K. C., & Syed, M. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Identity Development (pp. 562–583). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kteily, N. S. & Richeson, J. A. (2016). Perceiving the world through hierarchy-shaped glasses: On the need to embed social identity effects on perception within the broader context of intergroup hierarchy. Psychological Inquiry, 27, 327–334.Google Scholar
Kuper, L. E., Wright, L., & Mustanski, B. (2018). Gender identity development among transgender and gender nonconforming emerging adults: An intersectional approach. International Journal of Transgenderism, 19(4), 436–455.Google Scholar
Markus, H. R. & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdams, D. P. & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 233–238.Google Scholar
McLean, K. C. (2016). The Co-authored Self: Family Stories and the Construction of Personal Identity. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McLean, K. C., Lilgendahl, J. P., Fordham, C., Alpert, E., Marsden, E., Szymanowski, K., & McAdams, D. P. (2018). Identity development in cultural context: The role of deviating from master narratives. Journal of Personality, 86, 631–651.Google Scholar
McLean, K. C., Pasupathi, M., & Pals, J. L. (2007). Selves creating stories creating selves: A process model of self-development. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 262–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLean, K. C. & Syed, M. (2015). Personal, master, and alternative narratives: An integrative framework for understanding identity development in context. Human Development, 58, 318–349, doi:10.1159/000445817.Google Scholar
Moffitt, U., Juang, L. P., & Syed, M. (2020). Intersectionality and youth identity development research in Europe. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1–14, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00078.Google Scholar
Rogers, L. O. (2020). “I’m kind of a feminist”: Using master narratives to analyze gender identity in middle childhood. Child Development, 91, 179–196, doi:10.1111/cdev.13142?af=R.Google Scholar
Rogers, L. O. (2018). Who am I, who are we? Erikson and a transactional approach to identity research. Identity, 18(4), 284–294, doi:10.1080/15283488.2018.1523728.Google Scholar
Rogers, L. O. & Meltzoff, A. N. (2017). Is gender more important and meaningful than race? An analysis of racial and gender identity among Black, White, and mixed-race children. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 23, 323–334, doi:10.1037/cdp0000125.Google Scholar
Rogers, L. O. & Nelson, E. P. (2019, February). Who, what, and how: A systematic literature review of identity intersectionality research in psychology. Poster presented at the annual meeting for Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Portland, OR.Google Scholar
Rogers, L. O. & Syed, M. (2021). “I’m just a girl; not a White girl”: Intersectionality and early adolescents? race-×-gender identities. OSF Preprints: 10.31219/osf.io/3kau6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, L. O. & Way, N. (2018). Reimagining social and emotional development: Accommodation and resistance to dominant ideologies in the identities and friendships of boys of color. Human Development, 61(6), 311–331, doi:10.1159/000493378.Google Scholar
Ruble, D. N., Alvarez, J., Bachman, M., Cameron, J., Fuligni, A., Coll, C. G., & Rhee, E. (2004). The development of a sense of “we”: The emergence and implications of children’s collective identity. In Bennett, M. & Sani, F. (Eds.), The Development of the Social Self (p. 29–76). New York, NY: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Schachter, E. P. (2015). Integrating “internal,” “interactional,” and “external” perspectives: Identity process as the formulation of accountable claims regarding selves. In McLean, K. C., & Syed, M. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Identity Development (pp. 228–245). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schachter, E. P. & Ventura, J. J. (2008). Identity agents: Parents as active and reflective participants in their children’s identity formation. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 18(3), 449–476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sellers, R. M., Smith, M. A., Shelton, J. N., Rowley, S. A., & Chavous, T. M. (1998). Multidimensional model of racial identity: A reconceptualization of African American racial identity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2, 18–39.Google Scholar
Settles, I. H. (2006). Use of an intersectional framework to understand Black women’s racial and gender identities. Sex Roles, 54, 589–601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, S. A. (2008). Gender: An intersectionality perspective. Sex Roles, 59, 301–311.Google Scholar
Suárez-Orozco, C., Yoshikawa, H., & Tseng, V. (2015). Intersecting Inequalities: Research to Reduce Inequality for Immigrant-Origin Children and Youth. New York, NY: William T. Grant Foundation.Google Scholar
Syed, M. (2010). Disciplinarity and methodology in intersectionality theory and research. American Psychologist, 65, 61–62, doi:10.1037/a0017495.Google Scholar
Syed, M. & Ajayi, A. A. (2018). Promises and pitfalls in the integration of intersectionality with development science. In Santos, C. E. & Toomey, R. B. (Eds.), Envisioning the Integration of an Intersectionality Lens in Development Science: New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development (pp. 109–117). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Syed, M., DeYoung, C. G., & Tiberius, V. (2020). Self, motivation, and virtue, or: How we learned to stop worrying and love deep integration. In Snow, N. E. & Narvaez, D. (Eds.), Self, Motivation, and Virtue: Innovative Interdisciplinary Research (pp. 7–24). New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Syed, M. & Fish, J. (2018). Revisiting Erik Erikson’s legacy on culture, race, and ethnicity. Identity, 18, 274–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Syed, M. & McLean, K. C. (2016). Understanding identity integration: Theoretical, methodological, and applied issues. Journal of Adolescence, 47, 109–118.Google Scholar
Syed, M. & McLean, K. C. (2018). Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development. In Braaten, E. (Ed.), The Sage Encyclopedia of Intellectual and Developmental Disorders (pp. 578–581). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Thorne, A. (2004). Putting the person into social identity. Human Development, 47, 361–365.Google Scholar
Turner, K. L. & Brown, C. S. (2007). The centrality of gender and ethnic identities across individuals and contexts. Social Development, 16, 700–719.Google Scholar
Walgenbach, K. (2012). Intersektionalität – eine Einführung [Intersectionality: An introduction]. Retrieved May 13, 2021, from http://portal-intersektionalitaet.de/theoriebildung/schluesseltexte/walgenbacheinfuehrung/.Google Scholar
Waterman, A. S. (2015). Identity as internal processes: How the “I” comes to define the “Me.” In McLean, K. C. & Syed, M. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Identity Development (pp. 195–209). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Way, N., Hernández, M. G., Rogers, L. O., & Hughes, D. L. (2013). “I’m not going to become no rapper”: Stereotypes as a context of ethnic and racial identity development. Journal of Adolescent Research, 28, 407–430. doi:10.1177/0743558413480836.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Way, N. & Rogers, L. O. (2015). “[T]hey say Black men won’t make it, but I know I’m gonna make it”: Identity development in the context of cultural stereotypes. In Syed, M. & McLean, K. (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Identity Development (pp. 269–285). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, C. D., Byrd, C. M., Quintana, S. M., Anicama, C., Kiang, L., Umaña-Taylor, A. J, Calzada, E. J., Gautier, M. P., Ejesi, , K., Tuitt, N. R., Martinez-Fuentes, S., White, L., Marks, A., Rogers, L. O., & Whitesell, N. (2020). A lifespan model of ethnic-racial identity. Child Development, 17, 99–129.Google Scholar
Wolcott, H. F. (1994). Transforming Qualitative Data: Description, Analysis, and Interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Yip, T. (2014). Ethnic identity in everyday life: The influence of identity development status. Child Development, 85, 205–219.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×