I-Me-Other: asymmetries and current conditions of identity construction processes

Abstract

The starting point of this research is that identity is a ‘process of relational nature’. The social relations that underlie the identity processes are, in turn, inevitably marked by a more or less variable degree of ‘asymmetry’, linked to the roles and the characteristics of each participant. In a society that, according to many scholars, is becoming more and more ‘horizontal’ making use of new factors (the development of the ‘welfare state’, the technological progress and the social networks), it is considered, in the final observations, the not simple urgency to consider a re-collocation of the ‘authoritativeness’ social relationship.