Caltrop Matrix of Identity
social entities, such as a person, community, group, organization, ethnicity, or nationality
(Eisenberg, 2001; Hecht, 1993; Hecht et al, 1993;). The accentuation on dispersion and
independence of the notion of identity was reinforced by (and reinforced) personal anxiety,
segregation, racism, ethnocentrism, social division, and ideological alienation (Eisenberg,
2001).
The intersubjective nature of identity – Externalized subjectivity and perceived
prototypicality
The intersubjectivity of identity is reified by the externalized subjectivity and perceived
prototypicality (Eisenberg, 2001; Gudykunst & Forgas, 1992; Hecht, 1993; Mendoza et al,
2002). The locus of identity is at the perceptual intersection between and among
subjectivities. Such a notion of perceptual entity of identity features the postmodern and post-
positivist schools of thoughts in both social scientific and humanist scholarship. The
externalized or objectified subjectivity such as the feelings of uncertainty and emotional
conditions of anxiety complicates the testing processes and contextualizes the proliferation of
saturated assumptions of social scientific approaches to the realms of human hearts. For
instance, the prototypicality of research subjects is often presumed as the precondition of
validity of many of the quantitative researches (Gudykunst & Forgas, 1992). Other than the
accumulation of axioms and propositions, is there no better ways to approach the
intersubjectivity of identity in a perspective of empirical science.
The dialectic nature of identity – Intergroup comparisons and ingroup identification
Constrained in assumptive conditions, the two components of social identity, intergroup
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Convention