Negotiating Identities

The present work is an interdisciplinary and theoretical study on the topic of identity and the development of collective consciousness. An investigation regarding the way people feel about and operate with their identities today, having globalization and social change as the new state of affairs. Identities are seen as a process circumscribed by the continuous struggle between the individual need for self-fulfillment and the demands of social structure and collective consciousness. They are considered subject of constant negotiations that are here assessed through an articulation of theories, perspectives, concepts, and categories in order to create a comprehensive examination of this practice of identity. Contemporary Western society - the focus of this study - is a place of broken stability; composed by a system so vast it seems difficult to be experienced as one's own place but too tightly woven for one to escape from it. Established ways of relating, living, and understanding are challenged, and the conclusion favors the idea that the more tactical character of our everyday lives points towards a further gain in control over it by the individual.