AN INTERSITUATIONAL ANALYSIS OF IDENTITY WORK: THE CASE OF THE SEXUAL TRAUMA SURVIVOR

Abstract

Existing social movement research acknowledges the situated, interactional nature of internal identity-work processes but lacks a framework for studying their intersituational dynamics. I argue that some identity-related tensions require multiple forms of identity work. Integrating social movements research with studies on meaning making in interaction, I further argue that members need shared, if implicit, patterns of switching among them to navigate these processes successfully. I use the case of the trauma survivor—a nonascribed, invisible, private identity. Twenty months of participant observation and fifteen interviews with an antisexual violence student organization show how members nimbly switched among facilitating survivors’ coming out, constructing survivors as a social identity, and constructing a group identity of survivors and allies. Each form of identity work entailed different interaction styles, went with varying perspectives on the survivor as a shared identity and allowed for various purposes and events in the organization.