“We are in the same boat”. The dialogue between identification and dis-identification underlying individual and group positioning

Abstract

Kadianaki in this Special Issue offers an interesting conceptualization of the process whereby macro-societal drives organize the dynamic of inter-individual communication with a specific focus on power asymmetries among researcher and researched. The author bridges the notions of identity and power through the theory of social representations inviting scholars to consider the social and cultural context within which research encounters take place. Starting from the “conceptual methodology” posited by Kadianaki, I suggest to go one step further towards a dialogical conceptualization of positionality discussing the key notion of positioning and the articulation between hegemonic, emancipated, and polemic social representations. In particular, the focus on the dynamic nature of consensus, underlying the production of social knowledge, entails to address a societal understanding of the complex dynamics of identification and dis-identification that feed the processes of self-construction and self-placing with both of them meant as a function of inter-group relations of power. Furthermore, some considerations are expanded with concern to the migration field of study. In particular, results from the study of Kadianaki stimulates reflections on the dynamics of resistance towards coercive self-categorization in search for a common identification that may reduce the power asymmetries among native and immigrant groups.