Sustaining Identity Change: Macro-Stimuli, Meso-Tracks, and Everyday Configurations

Despite a very extensive body of research, there is little consensus among scholars on the conditions of society wide identity change. This paper/chapter promises both conceptual clarity and empirical advance. It distinguishes individual identity innovation from the sustenance of identity change over time and across society. While individual identity innovation is very prevalent, especially in situations of conflict and socio-political transformation, innovation is not always sustained. This paper uses very extensive micro-level qualitative research to develop indicators of identity change that allow comparison over time. It maps the extent of such change over a fifty year period in Ireland, North and South. It uses temporal comparisons within each case, and societal comparisons between them to analyse the macro-level stimuli and meso-level conditions of such sustained identity shift. The conclusion is that everyday identity innovation and negotiation is very prevalent, but – at least in the cases studied here - it is radically insufficient for sustained incremental change in the social identity configuration. Despite the intensity of individual identity work, identity configurations at the social level change only very slowly, even in the relatively benign political environment of the Irish Republic. State and power change gives impetus to much more rapid identity change, although also allowing reversals. But the sustenance of identity change– whether in the stable Irish Republic or in the rapidly changing Northern Ireland - depends on the meso level.