Definition
The concept of Collective Identity has caused some controversy and not a little mystification. Is Collective Identity the same as – representation? The answer seems to be yes and no.
Pete Fraser is OCR’s Chief Examiner:
‘The requirement for candidates is to be able to write about the representation of a specific social group they have studied across media (such as ‘youth’) and to broaden out to a consideration of the wider significance of those representations. This may well draw on sociological and cultural studies perspectives and is meant to encourage debate.’
Julian McDougall is the principal examiner for the course and is more definite but opens up a lot of issues:
‘No we don’t mean representation, we mean collective identity. But how that identity is partly constructed through media representation is a big part of it, yes. But the important point is the shift to Cultural Studies, away from the text - Yes that is the approach we are after and I have been explicit about this at all times, at INSET in the textbook etc.’
So it seems that the examiners want Collective Identity to include a sociological or cultural studies type of exploration of the factors which produce identity, rather than a specific exploration of the way that media texts represent the world. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology...
