>> But, at the same time I do see people, especially those very
>> constrained, day to day doing some very astute thinking and negotiating of
>> multiple possible identities.
>
>Your example seems an excellent one, and I can't wait to hear Doug's reply.
Here's another one, I meant to include but forgot: A friend just finished a PhD in anthro. here. He studied how a local community has done a bang-up job of self-fahioning for external consumption. The community is an fast-growing urban area, orignally settled by migrants from a region of Boliiva. To become a member of the community, one must become, in essence, a displaced person from that region, participate in that region's holidays, etc. Everyone here holds the community is from that region, when in fact perhaps only half the prople are from there. But never mind.
The folks there are vey well organized, and have done extrememly well at fashioning a collective identity that allows them to pump thousands of $$ out of donor agencies. They have been profiled in various donor agency documents as a model recipient community: needy, but not indigent; low skilled, but with initiative, etc.
The more righteous among you might protest: but that's manipulation! Bull. It's knowing your comparative advantages and practicing flexible specialization in niche markets. You sell flavors of neediness; they buy relief from guilt by helping the *deserving* poor (or soemthing like that). It's not the revolution, but who are we to begrudge folks a livlihood?
Point here: this is a very clear case of strategic, subaltern, colletive identity making and practice, clearly conditioned by economic constraints. And a final note: *this* PhD seems like a very frutiful way for thinking/researching to go in using identity stuff NOT divorced from material constraints.
>My first reaction is to say that's pretty cool. But my second reaction is
>to think of Burawoy's stuff on the games people play to get through factory
>work, and the similar games people play to get through school. The games
>may make the day-to-day experience tolerable, but they leave the
>intolerable situation unchanged. So, I guess I'm confused.
>
>Doug
Right, it is confusing when approached as a problem of politics. The classic study is Learning to Labor (from the 1970s, before the hoopla started in the academy), which showed how youthful working class rebellion at the end of the day reproduced class structures, attitudes, etc.
The theorists I like posit both the pitfalls of this identity process stuff (willy-nilly accomodation to and reproduction of a shitty system) and the liberatory potential it may hold.
Tom
Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: tkruse at albatros.cnb.net