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Managing Our Identity Stacks
I’ve spent a good amount of time lately diving into David R. Samson’s intriguing new book, Our Tribal Future: How to Channel our Foundational Human Instincts Into a Force for Good.
While I can’t say I agree with all of Samson’s conclusions, I did find the book to be chock full of good information and interesting ideas.
One useful concept I came across was the idea of an “Identity Stack” (from page 320). This is a ranked list of all the categories that make up your particular identity: those social groups that contribute to your sense of self.
In other words, if a stranger came up and asked “Who are you?”, what would your answers be, and which answers would be most important to communicate?
(If you’d like more information about identity stacks, Samson offered this web page as a reference.)
In hindsight, I realize I constructed a sort of identity stack for myself in a recent piece declaring that “We Are Multi-Tribal.”
Samson’s concept of an identity stack goes farther than my list, though, suggesting that you rank each social identity category based on its strength for you, from not strong at all up to very strong (with slightly strong and somewhat strong in between).
