Making Sense of Figured Worlds and Identity
How I am making sense of figured worlds
After reading Holland et al. (1998) Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds, I find myself seeing the world of academia, of which I am currently immersed, as a figured world in the truest sense. According to the authors, "figured worlds rest upon people's abilities to form and be formed in collectively realized "as if" realms" (p. 49). Their question of "What if there were a world called academia, where books were so significant that people would sit for hours on end, away from friends and family, writing them?" really resonated with me.
Academia is a figured world, created by those who positioned themselves as more knowledgeable than others and therefore capable of researching, scrutinizing, criticizing, and then writing about others in comparison to themselves and those whom they esteem. Holland et al. (1998) talk about the figured world as "a socially and culturally constructed realm of interpretation in which particular characters and actors are recognized, significance is assigned to certain acts, and particular outcomes are valued over others" (p. 52). Within the world of academia, there exists a hierarchy that positions tenured and full professors at the top, and students - undergraduate and graduate at the very bottom. All of the varying levels of power only matter within the world of academia. Outside of this world, an assistant professor and a tenured or full professor (all different levels within the academy) is "just a professor." Academia then and its actors are all realized within "a space and time established imaginatively - that one can come to sense after a process of experiencing, acting by virtue of its rules" (p. 53).
Academia continues to be a viable figured world because its participants continue to buy in to the experience and the world. The identities of participants within academia "become important outcomes of participation" - academics then talk and write and position themselves a certain way resultant of their acculturation within this figured world. "Peoples identities and agency are formed dialectically and dialogically in these "as if" worlds" (Holland et al., 1998, p. 49).
What is the Relationship between Activity Theory and Figured Worlds?
When thinking of a response to the above question, I begin to think about CHAT - Cultural Historic Activity Theory which is a framework that seeks to gain understanding of goal-directed mediated action and includes the use of tools and artifacts. Simply put, CHAT looks at the relationship between what people think and feel to what people do - specifically with tools. Within figured worlds, artifacts and tools pivot or shift meaning and understanding relative to the imagined world (Holland et al., 1998, p. 50). The example of the tokens used as signifiers of sobriety by AA members and the same tokens holding different meaning for persons who play poker speaks to this relationship.
What Role do Artifacts and Materiality Play in Figured Worlds?
Within the figured world of academia there exist many tools...when I think of tools I think of things like tenure, titles, designations, etc. All of these are coveted tools within this figured world. The tools by themselves are meaningless. However, within the world of academia, participants pivot them into an imagined place of importance. Vygotsky, according Holland et al. (1998), describes this as "[paying] special attention to the role of tangible objects, made collectively into artifacts by the attribution of meaning, as tools that people use to affect their own and others' thinking, feeling, and behavior" (p. 50).Participants within this figured world who attain more of these artifacts are perceived to be of higher importance. Artifacts and materiality seem to be closely related to figurative identities - those that are within the nuclear group or community - "localized figured worlds have their own valued qualities, their own means of assessing social worth, their own "symbolic capital," to use Bourdieu's term" (pp. 128-129).
What Figured Worlds Shape Your Life?
The figured worlds of academia and Christianity and Roman Catholicism shape my life. Within the figured world of Christianity, I am a wife and mother, and a believer in Christ. My participation within this world positions me in such a way that I hold some similar beliefs to other Christians and believe that the world and all of its inhabitants - human and non-human, were created by God; and that God sent his beloved son, Jesus, to die upon a cross for our sins. As a Roman Catholic, I was baptized in the Catholic church as an infant, I took first communion as a young adolescent, and was to be confirmed as a teen. When in church, I recite the Nicene Creed and profess my belief in one God, and his son, Jesus - it is what I do as a Catholic. I pray the rosary and Our Father and believe in the forgiveness of sin and confession.
My decision to become a Christian, and specifically a Catholic, was not my own. I was born into a family wherein my mother was Catholic, as was her mother, and her mother's mother, and her mother's mother's mother. My great great grandmother Blanche Reese recently had a statue erected in her honor at the site of the Catholic church that she attended and supported for many years. As her descendants, we are the "Reese's Pieces" as our Facebook group states and most of us similarly are Catholic and continue to raise our children to be Catholic.
Academia has truly shaped my life. As a member of the academia world I am challenged to read and learn about multiple perspectives and beliefs. I, in a new role and assuming a new identity that positions me as an intellectual, begin to question what I have been taught and have held as truth from the figured world of Catholicism. Perhaps, I have always questioned the imagined world that is Christianity and Catholicism, but as a child I was not allowed to question - that was the way that it was and I was to be an obedient child. Within this new figured world - academia - those rules no longer apply. As an adult, I am also more cognizant of the many contradictions and farces that exist within figured worlds. It is perhaps, just as Vygotzky theorized, that when we enter these figured worlds we "become actors who submit to the game's premises and treat its events as real" when indeed they are not.
I find myself as a quasi-reluctant member of the world of academia though. I want to work with teachers and share with them what I know about educating children who look like me and used to talk like me. Yet, I leave that world to become a member of this world because in order to be taken seriously you have to hold a degree - a piece of paper that says that you are knowledgeable enough to "teach" others. I subject myself to all the trappings of this world - spending less time with my own family, friends, and no longer live or work in the very community I wish to serve - complicit with visiting and researching once in a while. I write about my observations and use language that they - the members of the community I am researching and wish to serve - do not use nor understand, but they accept because I am the academic. I hope to attain a graduate degree and insert myself into this world of elitism, exclusion, rejection, etc. Hence my reluctance. My individuality - I hold on to my individuality and never completely buy in to the illusion that is this world. Hopefully, this will not lead to my demise and dismissal from this world due to failure to comply and follow the rules.
Monica also discussed the figured world of academia, and reading your post I cannot help but wonder how the figured worlds of an Research Intensive university and a teaching university are different. I attended a teaching university for my undergrad in Ghana, and the experience was different. Even how the lessons were structured considering the large sizes are different. Here in Mizzou there is a greater emphasis of ensuring that undergrads develop research skills, know how to search for empirical papers, and write research papers. This figured world in Mizzou as an R1 is different from my experience as an undergrad in a teaching university
ReplyDeleteChristina,
ReplyDeleteAs Edwin mentioned above, I also selected academia as a figured world to pull from this week's post. It is particularly interesting to me the different tools we selected. I leaned more toward the physical items that make up the space which carry meaning for me where I see you look at the more abstract power structures in place that serve as artifacts to the figured world. You've got me thinking more about the ways these shape the world and those in it. I also appreciate your push back on the "armchair professor"/highly theoretical/inaccessible rhetoric that goes hand in hand with this space we occupy.
Christina,
ReplyDeleteYour thinking about how participants within a figured world who have more artifacts are considered to be important, caused me to think about whether this idea alone could be a figured world. Some people roughly categorize the world as "the Haves" and "the Have Nots." While traditionally "the Haves" are put in this group because of the amount of material (artifactual) things they possess. But your discussion about the figured world of Academia made me wonder if "the Haves" are also the people who have the most, as you described, "invisible tools," as well. For example, if you "own the language" within a figured world (I am using "own" here both as possession and expertise) then you are able to position yourself above the "Have Nots" - people who haven't mastered the invisible tool of language.
When thinking about my own figured worlds, I felt as you described about how we submit to the game and treat the events as real. I think the concept of individuality and self and how they fit into the figured world still puzzles me. The readings this week seem to strongly emphasize people as a collective and that individuals choose to enter figured worlds and give up their agency to participate in it. I find that many of the figured worlds I participate in are because they are the tool to something I want to improve myself as an individual. Like you mentioned, I find myself torn between trying to be me but trying to play in the figured world to become a better me.
~Sarah
So we are all aware of this figured world of academia. I think I struggle most right now with this figured world because the rules at the PhD candidate level are so different from the rules at other levels--even Masters. And, honestly, I find it difficult learning the rules, linguistic systems, and artifacts of this new figured world while still living firmly in the other worlds. I think Christina hints that membership into a particular figured world has so many ripples on both our other figured worlds and our lived world (although I have a tough time distinguishing the two right now.).
ReplyDeleteSarah, I would argue that the game and the events are real whether we submit to them or not. So reality is just a mumbled mess of figured worlds overlapping, identities overlapping and forever forming and reforming identities. What a brain-freeze!
And how do we know we belong to a figured world? Monica and Christina's posts make me realize that the time factor is more important than I noticed when reading the articles. Here are times I have been cognizant of figured worlds just today and even built relational identities:
-Christina and Catholicism: Even our status as born into the religion gives us different cultural touchpoints (maybe pivots) in our relational identity that would be different were one of us non-Catholic or converted to the religion?
-Monica and Apple: Noticing how that artifact marks us for membership in academia.
-Office staff and Applebee's Chicken Wonton Tacos: Immediately I realized these were an artifact when someone asked about my lunch today and three members of the staff smiled, sighed, or commented. There was meaning beyond the food itself that could be peeled away by putting both the figured world and the artifact under scrutiny.
-Talking to my "work husband": Andrew and I "co-parent" a young man who comes to see both of us at different times of the day. Our figured world of three has its rules, its artifacts (Andrew brought Lance's coat to me,), and its relational identities.
I will say I am coming to class conflicted tonight. Definitely loving figured worlds as a lens to apply to so many different settings, but feeling a bit like the hypochondriac who sees each new illness represented in their own life.