Social identity is the concept of individuals labelling themselves as members of particular social groups—such as Nationality, Social class, Subculture, Ethnicity, Gender and Employment (Wikipedia 2004). The question to be answered in this assignment is whether we are free to choose our own identity or if identity is socially constructed through ideas like Nationality, Ethnicity, Race and Social Class.
There are two major streams of thought providing an answer to this question(Livesey 2004). On the one hand there is the Interactionist school, which emphasises that we have the ability to reflect upon the nature of the social world and our position in that world. This means that there is a creative dimension of human Consciousness that actively shapes society in our image. On the other hand there is the structuralist view that identity is the product of society. An example of this school of thought is German sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918) who argued that individuals are defined by their membership of individual groups. Simmel emphasises membership of the groups we belong to as a source of our identity.
The majority of sociologists, however, fall somewhere between these two antitheses (Livesey 2004). American sociologist C. Wright Mills, for example, argued that ‘neither the life of an individual, nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both’ (Mills 1959, 3). Anthony Giddens sees a ‘double relationship’ between individual people and society, whereby individuals influence society and vice versa society influences individuals. The below diagram is the best examples of showing how the identity differ in different kind of cultural groups.
社会认同的概念是个人标签本身作为特定的社会团体，成员为民族，社会阶层，文化，种族，性别和就业（维基百科2004）。要回答的问题，在这种分配是我们是否可以自由选择自己的身份或身份是社会结构，通过的想法一样，国籍，种族，种族和社会阶层。
主要有思想流提供这个问题的答案（利维塞2004）。一方面是互动学校，它强调，我们有能力重新fl等性质的社会世界和我们的位置在这个世界。这意味着有一个创意层面的人类意识，积极塑造社会形象。另一方面是结构主义的观点，身份是社会的产物。一个例子，这种流派的思想是德国社会学家格奥尔齐美尔（1858–1918）认为个人的fi内德的会员的个人群体。齐美尔强调会员的群体属于我们的一个来源的身份。
大多数社会学家，然而，介于这两者之间的对立（利维塞2004）。美国社会学家怀特·米尔斯，例如，说，“无论一个人的生命，也不是一个社会的历史可以理解不理解”（米尔斯1959，3）。安东尼吉登斯认为，“双重关系的个人和社会的影响，即个人在社会fl反之亦然社会影响个人fl。下面的图表是最好的例子显示如何身份不同，不同的文化群体。
