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Free keywords:
actor; Erving Goffman; garment industry; Harrison White; identity; market; social configuration
Abstract:
The purpose of this article is to present a theoretical framework for analyzing the formation of identities. Individual and collective actors' identities are formed
over time as a result of positioning and evaluation in what is called social configurations. Social configurations are characterized by order and values
that guide, and are used for evaluation of, actors' behavior. Order in social configurations emerges according to two inverted logics: Status and Standard. Order according to Status in a configuration is a function of the firmness of actors' order of identities, which correspond with a value. Standard means that actors' order of identities is a function of how well they perform against the standard (value) that is used for evaluation. In Status the identities are more entrenched than the value, and in Standard the principle of evaluation (the value) is more entrenched than the identities of the actors. The suggested approach can handle institutionalized as well as pre-institutional aspects of social life. A more general point is that configurations are used to study how social order emerges and how it is reconstructed. The empirical examples come from the global garment industry, which has been studied with ethnographic
methods.
