Chapter 8. Participant identities

In the previous chapter, I explored the facilitator identities within this situated context, but in this chapter I turn to the participant identities. While the facilitators focussed on faciliating the dialogue process and maintained their institutional role , participants were free to orient to a wider range of transportable identities, that is those markers of identity that are not situation-dependent (as in facilitator and participant), but rather can be transported from one situation to another – for example national identities, gender, social class, professions, etc. These may or may not become relevant in the interactions, it depends whether they are oriented to by the participants.