Er…well, I’m not sure ‘world’ is who I’m actually addressing, but that’s part of why I’m starting this blog. Just how many people read what is written on the web? I know that question needs to be qualified a hundred ways (what site on the web? and how interesting is it?), but I’m really curious to see what sort of audience blogging can generate. More importantly, I want to know how much interaction a blog can facilitate. I have to admit that I’m very skeptical, but I’m hoping your comments will prove me wrong.
Enough with these philosophical ramblings. I’m a second year PhD student, living and researching in the UK, preparing to start my fieldwork. I’ll be interviewing Muslims born and raised in Britain. My research is very theoretical, developing an approach to identity that advocates an interaction between what is personal and what is public. Basically, if I can oversimplify, I’m interested in proving that the way we think of ourselves (our personal identity) is developed in tandem with messages about the groups to which we belong (our public identity). Now, public identity is mostly relevant for minorities in western liberal democracies, since white men, for example, don’t (need to) gather collectively to gain greater political participation or stronger representation. I use ‘white men’ in western societies only as an example, not the norm (although there will be those who could argue for them as ‘the norm’). However, my point is that collective identity, or what I call public identity here, is an identity claimed by minorities as well as attributed to minorities. An example of this from my own work would be the identity ‘British Muslim’, at once an identity claimed by certain Muslims in Britain and a label used to describe them, imbuing them with attributes of varying levels of accuracy.
I could be making this much more confusing than it needs to be. My apologies for that.
This blog is an exercise within my research. I will use it to catalogue the development of my thinking, to record my experiences in interviewing and my reactions to what I find, and to invite those who read it to engage with it–to leave comments, thoughts, arguments or questions, of any length or tone (within reason). I want to start a conversation, to stimulate my own thinking and yours…so let us think of this as a joint effort.
See you soon.
