Looking back on previous articles, I realized that until now, the individuals were depicted by me, as faceless and uniform participants. In this article, I would endeavor to negotiate and start grasping the concept of identity and the distinctiveness of the self.

There is a profound connection between identity and practice. Since, any practice is a social action, occurring through participation in a community then the identity is also constructed socially and through participation in a community of practice. The construction of the identity is connected with the participation in a community or practice. The individual by trying to learn a subject forms gradually the identity of a competent person within that subject.

The individual not only constructs his identity by experiencing what he can do in a participatory activity but also constructs his identity by perceiving how the other participants interpret his experience. 

 

The individual experiences what he can do

The individual experiences both what he can do and the social interpretation of his actions. 

Thus the individual by participating in an activity construct gradually an identity (or aspires to construct an identity valued by the community) by engaging in the practices of the community, by learning to use the cultural tools (reification) and by receiving back how these experiences are interpreted by several other participants. 

Personal perception of how I understand the concept of identity as a layering of participation and reification by which our experience and its social interpretation inform each other. 

The concept of identity can be differentiating it into two forms: the positional (real identities developed through day to day relationships) and the figurative identities (symbolic stories, stereotypical characters, etc). How the individuals take up the figurative identity (whether they accepted of rejected) influences the way they position themselves in a community and how in turn they are positioned by the other participants. For example, a student of architecture will try to fit in the community of his class, by trying to adopt the valued ways of the particular context, by ‘imitating’ the stereotypical character of a professional architect (figurative identity), by adopting several markers of membership (certain form of speech, certain abilities, etc). Concurrently, the other participants (teacher and students) interpret these experiences and position the individual.

The process of constructing an identity, is dynamic not only because is a constant give and take, but also because the individual develops multiple identities through membership into many communities. In each community the members bring other identities (from the past or the present) while constructing new ones. However, the multiple and overlapping identities do not create a fragmented person but a dynamic and coherent conception of self. Thus the concept of identity could be also conceptualized as a trajectory that is constantly in motion, incorporating the past and the future in an ongoing process of negotiating the present.