ABSTRACT
Individual identification emphasises uniquely embodied differentiation. During primary and subsequent socialisation, in everyday interaction and in institutionalised labelling practices, individuals identify themselves and are identified by others, in terms that distinguish them from other individuals. Individual identification is, however, necessarily about similarity too. Selfhood, for example, is a way of talking about the similarity or consistency over time of particular embodied humans. And, as Simmel understood (1955), public individuality in the interaction order is, at least in part, an expression of each person’s idiosyncratic combination of collective identifications.
