Readings for 9/5/13: Identity

This week's three readings all address the issue of identity and its role in creating and propagating the status quo.  Whereas Mapping Identity for Curriculum Work (Congdon, Stewart & White) examines the role of identity in a classroom/education context, The Cycle of Socialization (Harro) outlines how identities are inherited and perpetuated within a larger societal context, and finally Ideology, Confrontation and Political Awareness (Piper) explores the ideologies that constitute an individual's sense of self.

All three articles acknowledge the role of identity in perpetuating accepted norms by situating one group or view in a privileged position with respect to a constructed other; each article also goes on to propose, in varying degrees of specificity, a means to subverting the ways in which we've all been conditioned to subscribe to and further these identities.

Of the three approaches, I'm most drawn to Piper's.  Early in her article Piper posits, "usually the beliefs that remain most unexposed to examination are the ones we need to hold in order to maintain a certain conception of ourselves and our relation to the world."  After exploring some of the ways in which these beliefs are tested and maintained she concludes that, "the result is blindness to the genuine needs of other people, coupled with the arrogant and dangerous conviction that you understand those needs better than they do; and a consequent inability to respond to those needs politically in genuinely effective ways."  Whereas Harro merely suggests that subversion is possible and Congdon, Stewart & White outline an activity through which personal biases might be identified with one's educational practices, Piper proposes a largely introspective review and critique of the self.

I think there's obvious validity to points made in each of the three readings, but am left wondering:  How does this awareness and these acknowledgements of particular biases infiltrate popular culture  to impart change on a societal level?  Are there examples of this? How do you create and consistently maintain a society in which myriad views are accepted and none is privileged?