Crossed Concepts: Identity, Habitus and Reflexivity in a Revised Framework

Abstract

Identity is in almost all discourses, perceptions and paradigms, from the social sciences to politics, the media and daily life, like a floating signifier for multiple meanings. In this sense it is less a concept than an umbrella term for different, even competing perspectives of individuals, collective bodies, ties and processes. Thus it represents, rather, a label or a gate for wider issues presupposing crossed concepts. Or concepts that we must cross in that conflation of reflexive lines, searching for a cohesive framework for our identities, plural and pluridimensional. Based on sociology, this text attempts to cross the notion of identity with two concepts – habitus and reflexivity – associated with the legacies of Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens, respectively, and similar circles. A way to articulate and update them with other authors and debates on contemporary culture, the individual and the biographical approach, which bring new insights into the personal and social production of difference(s).