Abigail Cowen - After recovering from the second World War, Britain regained it’s strength, building up a strong economy and increasing consumption possibilities. But this period of social stability was not to last. A quote from a miner, John Greaves, who spent his working life in the mines and witnessed the crumbling of the mining industries reflects this- “…odd bits of rubble left of what was the life blood of the local community” (Greaves, 1997, p.29). This essay will explore the breakdown and creation of new identities in relation to social influences.


There are a multiple of different ethnic identities now living in the UK, many of whom own a UK Passport.

From the moment we are born we enter a category- “Is it a boy or a girl?” How our individual identities are developed through our lives is dependent on many social and economic factors, the most dominant being- what social class we are born into, what ethnicity we are born with, the place we are born and what sex we are. We are given our sexual identity through our Birth Certificate and then our Passports. What these official documents fail to include are our ethnicities, be it Irish, native Caribbean or Pakistani, very important factors in our identities, and any personality traits we might carry. There are a multiple of different ethnic identities now living in the UK, many of whom own a UK Passport.

So we see that our sexual and gender, and even to a certain extent our ethnic identities are imposed upon us, but that does not mean to say that we have no control over our identities. The whole advertising industry is based upon people taking control of their identities through identifying with the product being sold. This process is called Interpellation, a concept created by Louis Althusser, (see Althusser in Woodward, K., 2004, p.19) and put to much use after the second World War when women were urged to stay at home in their traditional roles.

With the arrival of new social movements in the 1960s, society`s images of women and black people were challenged. Moreover, in the 70s and 80s other movements such as gay rights, peace campaigns, rights for the disabled, the environmental movement, and more recently the animal rights movement, have all sought to change the identities of their group through protesting with a common voice, something the British seem to do very well.

The sociologist, Max Weber (see Weber in Woodward, K. 2004, p. 100) constructed a theory that all individuals gravitate towards others who they see as similar to themselves, or on the same social status level as them. He refers less to class as did Marx (see Marx in Woodward, K. 2004, p. 97) a socialist revolutionary in the nineteenth century, who saw two clear-cut levels of class- the ruling class and the working class. Weber`s theory can be applied to these new social movements, in that whatever class a person belonged to was seemingly irrelevant when it came to protesting to change a group identity.


A result of Thatcherism was the growing inequality of income distribution.

Governmental policy in the 1970s, and namely Margaret Thatcher, brought with it significant changes in society. Privatisation saw the collapse of many mining and industrial industries throughout Britain.

With these collapses came the loss of identity for many working within these communities, as shown in the quote above by John Greaves. Another result of Thatcherism was the growing inequality of income distribution. Today in the UK the majority of wealth is owned by a very few, with a great many people living on the poverty line. Being poor has a stigma attached so is not a common identity that people will readily take on.

Although there has been the formation of new identities through group action, the rise in consumption has made our identities not only more individual but also more unstable . The idea that we know who we are because of the job we do no longer stands true. Many people have a few jobs at any one time because that is the only way they can get by, and a “job for life” just does not exist anymore. This insecurity can also be seen as an opportunity to carve a new identity, as the stereotypical values of the twentieth century are no longer so visible.

To sum up how social factors influence our identity formation, it would seem it is dependent on many factors. Who is in government, the economic situation, the role of the media in presenting identities and the action of social movements depending on what is credible at the time, as well as the personal life situation of the individual, are all identity forming factors. The driving force behind these changes is happening on a global level and will continue to waver for a while to come.