Elsevier

Journal of Adolescence

Volume 19, Issue 5, October 1996, Pages 405-416
Journal of Adolescence

Regular Article
Identity as adaptation to social, cultural, and historical context

https://doi.org/10.1006/jado.1996.0039Get rights and content

Abstract

Adaptation may be the best way to conceptualize the complex, multilateral relationship between individual identity and sociocultural context, because it recognizes the causal importance of culture yet also recognizes individual choice and change. This argument is developed by considering how several historical changes in the sociocultural context (i.e. increasing freedom of choice, changed interpersonal patterns, loss of traditional value bases, and rising tension between desire for uniqueness and difficulty of achieving it) have led to changes in the nature of identity. Although identity adapts to changes in its sociocultural context, these changes sometimes create new problems, including the specially problematic nature of modern selfhood.

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