Religious Identities and Meaning-making

Abstract

Identities, the personal and inter-subjective experiences of who we ‘are’, result from a complex interplay of multilevel processes. Identities are influenced but not determined by social location and power dynamics; they are shaped and reshaped by subjects who are subjected to social norms and structures and who are also able to reason, to desire and to act. The social construction of individual and group identities is always a ‘work in progress’, a continuous project of affirmation and reaffirmation, as well as contestation and change. In this chapter, we outline the notion of identity and examine how the interviewed Christian and Muslim women in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom talk about their own identities in relation to marriage, motherhood and family, work and education, nationality, citizenship and, of course, religion.

Identities are narratives, stories people tell themselves and others about who they are (and who they are not).

(Yuval-Davis 2006a: 202)