“Identity, Positioning and Self-Other Relations” is a paper by Eleni Andreouli that seeks of the understanding of the relationship between social representations and identity using the concept of position. This deepens the understanding of how individuals identify themselves with the concept of role.
What is positioning? How does it clarify the relational character of identity?
According to Davies & Harré, positioning is defined as “the discursive process whereby people are located in conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced story lines”. It’s an alternative to the concept of role and the idea of person hood. Discourses among individuals gives them their position, whether from themselves or others. In this perspective, it further clarify the relational aspect of identity, which is how others identify you because other people give them your position from their perspective. Positioning is not fixed to a person but continuous and flexible, meaning it can change through time.
How does positioning explain how marginalized groups negotiate and assert their collective identities in asymmetric social relations where they experience discrimination and prejudice?
The positioning theory is a discourse-oriented framework. There is the communication process involved. We can also understand this theory further by the interactions done by people.
We can understand further how the question when we understand the elements of the positioning theory. These are: position, story lines, social forces and rights & duties. Position speaks of the position of the self and others (basing in the social representation theory). Story lines is the sequences of events that is happening. Social forces is the context of the discourse. Lastly, rights & duties are the things the people in the position element have. These elements form a ‘diamond’ with them at the four corners. The position (the people involved) has their own rights and duties. They interact with context of the social forces. From the interaction, we can tell what the story line can be.
An example of this would be the discrimination caused by the 2019 Novel Coronavirus, also known now as COVID-19. Ever since the pandemic started, the Chinese people are now discriminated just because of their race. They are marginalized in the position of prejudice for they are associated with the virus. In some parts of the world, the Chinese people are shunned just because they look Chinese, even though they do not have the virus.
We can see here that the people involved here, the Chinese and the others are in the position. They have their own set of rights and duties. The virus is the social forces that fuels the interaction of the people involved in the position – which is the story line.
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