Philip Hammack Narrative and the Cultural Psychology of Identity
This article presents a tripartite model of identity that integrates cognitive, social, and cultural levels of analysis in a multimethod framework. With a focus on content, structure, and process, identity is defined as ideology cognized through the individual engagement with discourse, made manifest in a personal narrative constructed and reconstructed across the life course, and scripted in and through social interaction and social practice. This approach to the study of identity challenges personality and social psychologists to consider a cultural psychology framework that focuses on the relationship between master narratives and personal narratives of identity, recognizes the value of a developmental perspective, and uses ethnographic and idiographic methods. Research in personality and social psychology that either explicitly or implicitly relies on the model is reviewed. In 1948, a nation emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust. The sandy shores, fertile soil, and mountainous beauty of their original homeland once again welcomed them. For the Jews, there was at last a beacon of light at the end of the darkest of nights. This brave group of men and women—survivors of perhaps the single greatest tragedy in human history—took an underdeveloped land to new heights in the 20th century, becoming a model for democracy and economic ascendance in a region known for exotic habits, the ways of an old world, and tired cultural institutions impervious to social and economic evolution.
This article presents a tripartite model of identity that integrates cognitive, social, and cultural levels of analysis in a multimethod framework. With a focus on content, structure, and process, identity is defined as ideology cognized through the individual engagement with discourse, made manifest in a personal narrative constructed and reconstructed across the life course, and scripted in and through social interaction and social practice. This approach to the study of identity challenges personality and social psychologists to consider a cultural psychology framework that focuses on the relationship between master narratives and personal narratives of identity, recognizes the value of a developmental perspective, and uses ethnographic and idiographic methods. Research in personality and social psychology that either explicitly or implicitly relies on the model is reviewed. In 1948, a nation emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust. The sandy shores, fertile soil, and mountainous beauty of their original homeland once again welcomed them. For the Jews, there was at last a beacon of light at the end of the darkest of nights. This brave group of men and women—survivors of perhaps the single greatest tragedy in human history—took an underdeveloped land to new heights in the 20th century, becoming a model for democracy and economic ascendance in a region known for exotic habits, the ways of an old world, and tired cultural institutions impervious to social and economic evolution.
This article presents a tripartite model of identity that integrates cognitive, social, and cultural levels of analysis in a multimethod framework. With a focus on content, structure, and process, identity is defined as ideology cognized through the individual engagement with discourse, made manifest in a personal narrative constructed and reconstructed across the life course, and scripted in and through social interaction and social practice. This approach to the study of identity challenges personality and social psychologists to consider a cultural psychology framework that focuses on the relationship between master narratives and personal narratives of identity, recognizes the value of a developmental perspective, and uses ethnographic and idiographic methods. Research in personality and social psychology that either explicitly or implicitly relies on the model is reviewed. In 1948, a nation emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust. The sandy shores, fertile soil, and mountainous beauty of their original homeland once again welcomed them. For the Jews, there was at last a beacon of light at the end of the darkest of nights. This brave group of men and women—survivors of perhaps the single greatest tragedy in human history—took an underdeveloped land to new heights in the 20th century, becoming a model for democracy and economic ascendance in a region known for exotic habits, the ways of an old world, and tired cultural institutions impervious to social and economic evolution.
This article presents a tripartite model of identity that integrates cognitive, social, and cultural levels of analysis in a multimethod framework. With a focus on content, structure, and process, identity is defined as ideology cognized through the individual engagement with discourse, made manifest in a personal narrative constructed and reconstructed across the life course, and scripted in and through social interaction and social practice. This approach to the study of identity challenges personality and social psychologists to consider a cultural psychology framework that focuses on the relationship between master narratives and personal narratives of identity, recognizes the value of a developmental perspective, and uses ethnographic and idiographic methods. Research in personality and social psychology that either explicitly or implicitly relies on the model is reviewed. In 1948, a nation emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust. The sandy shores, fertile soil, and mountainous beauty of their original homeland once again welcomed them. For the Jews, there was at last a beacon of light at the end of the darkest of nights. This brave group of men and women—survivors of perhaps the single greatest tragedy in human history—took an underdeveloped land to new heights in the 20th century, becoming a model for democracy and economic ascendance in a region known for exotic habits, the ways of an old world, and tired cultural institutions impervious to social and economic evolution.