ICA-12-10652
Changing identities as we cross the borderlands:
Communicatively negotiating life course transitions with spirit
(Work in Progress)
INTRODUCTION
This work in progress* involves a research project that focuses on how women draw
upon spirituality to help them make their way through transitional times in their lives.
Specifically, the project is to look at how women negotiate the transition from adolescence
into adulthood (ages 19-22) and the transition of middle age surrounding menopause (about
age 50) with an emphasis upon the spiritual aspects of their lives.
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
Feminist Standpoint Theory holds that because she is “gendered” by her society, a
woman will have a unique angle of vision on her position in relation to her significant others,
community, culture, and societal roles. Her “identities,” including her spiritual identity, are
something she negotiates and manages communicatively because she has the agency to do so,
in part as a response to her gendered position (Collins, 2000, 1997; Hartsock, 1978;
Hirschmann, 1997; O’Brien-Hallstein, 2000, 1999; Wood, 1992).
In the field of communication, “identity" is a construct of individual human behavior
and cognition postulated as being negotiated and managed socially (Diggs & Clark,
forthcoming; Tracy, 2002; Shotter, 1989). “Identity,” says Karen Tracy (2002), “refers to
core aspects of selfhood; identity is something each person possesses; it is stable and fixed….
Identity also reflects the boxes societies use to categorize their members…. Postmodernists
see identity as fragmented and in flux. Identity is an accomplishment, not a thing.
Moreover, people change identities to suit the needs of the moment” (p. 16). With such
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