EPISTEMOLOGICAL IDENTITY THEORY: RECONCEPTUALIZING COMMITMENT AS SELF-KNOWLEDGE
- 22 September 2006
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in Sociological Spectrum
- Vol. 26 (5), 491-517
- https://doi.org/10.1080/02732170600786208
Abstract
This article presents Epistemological Identity Theory (EIT) that explains how individuals enhance their knowledge of self and the world by creating and maintaining identities. Using cognitive and affective processes previously ignored by identity theorists, this theory reconceptualizes commitment to an identity as the degree to which that identity organizes and clarifies one's experience of the world and him/herself. The theory is derived from two previously developed theories by Demerath based on epistemological principles. First, Knowledge-Based Affect Theory describes our affective response to gains and losses in meaning, and identifies the determinants of meaningfulness as frequency, stability, and impact. Second, Epistemological Culture Theory extends those principles, arguing individuals actively increase meaningfulness by creating culture as they collaboratively articulate, typify, and orient their experiences to create shared meaning. Extending these principles to commitment, EIT asserts that individuals are committed to organizations, roles, or experiences to the extent those experiences are frequent, stable, and impactful, and to the extent those experiences have been articulated, typified, and oriented. This article outlines the theory in the course of showing how it builds on the insights of previous conceptions of commitment, while providing determinants that are more precise and more unified and grounded theoretically.Keywords
This publication has 27 references indexed in Scilit:
- Emotion Work, Commitment, and the Authentication of the SelfJournal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2001
- A Differentiated Model of Role Identity AcquisitionSymbolic Interaction, 2001
- Identity and the Definition of the Situation in a Mass‐Mediated ContextSymbolic Interaction, 2000
- Revisiting Stebbins: Labeling and Commitment to DevianceThe Sociological Quarterly, 1994
- Knowledge-Based Affect: Cognitive Origins of "Good" and "Bad"Social Psychology Quarterly, 1993
- The Nature of Social Pasts and Their Use as Foundations for Situated ActionSymbolic Interaction, 1992
- An Identity Theory Approach to CommitmentSocial Psychology Quarterly, 1991
- Identity Work Among the Homeless: The Verbal Construction and Avowal of Personal IdentitiesAmerican Journal of Sociology, 1987
- Notes on the Concept of CommitmentAmerican Journal of Sociology, 1960
- Situated Actions and Vocabularies of MotiveAmerican Sociological Review, 1940