A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

a daughter, a Scot, a West Coaster, a professional, a young person, a divorcee, before she
identifies herself as a disabled person (I am describing Roshni, one of the participants in my
research). As a disabled person she may well decide to identify herself as blind in distinction
not only to people who have partial sight, but in distinction to deaf people, wheelchair users,
people with mental health issues, people labelled as having learning difficulties, and so on.
As Stryker remarks, the self needs to be recognised as a construct that is complex and
differentiated, albeit organised, rather than as an undifferentiated unity. Identities, he adds,
are „parts‟ of self, internalised positional designations, existing insofar as a person is a
participant in structured role relationships:
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One has an identity when one is placed as a social object by others in the same terms
that one appropriates and announces for oneself. One may have a long list of
identities, limited only by the number of structured relationships one is involved in...
which taken together comprise the self (Stryker, 2002:60).
Identity salience is the process through which a person decides what type of person it is
important he is seen as. He will order discrete identities into a salience hierarchy
such that the higher the identity in that hierarchy, the more likely that the identity
will be invoked in a given situation or in many situations (Stryker, 2002:61).
It is possible, then, or even likely, that when one identity among several is regarded as
signifying inferiority, it will become an identity given less emphasis in a person‟s self-
conception or projection, or even avoided completely. Thus, for many people with
impairments it can be said that they have no disability identity.
A further concept we can make use of in understanding the self is that of commitment:
To the degree that one‟s relationships to specified sets of other persons depend on
being a particular kind of person, one is committed to being that kind of person...
Since entering into social relationships is premised on the attribution and acceptance
of positions and associated roles, then commitments are premised on identities
(Stryker, 2002:62).
If it is regarded as being of more value to be identified by others as a woman, a mother, a
wife, a lover, an artist, than to be regarded as a wheelchair user, one is said to be committed
to those identities and to reject disability identity. When disability is understood in terms of
limitations arising as a result of impairment, it is not unusual for somebody to place more
emphasis on the things she can do as a basis for self-understanding.