The Embedded Self: A Social Networks Approach to Identity Theory

Despite the fact that key sociological theories of self and identity view the self as fundamen-tally rooted in networks of interpersonal relationships, empirical research investigating how personal network structure influences the self is conspicuously lacking. To address this gap, we examine links between network structure and role identity salience. We identify two features of personal networks that potentially affect how social ties shape identity salience: (1) proportion and strength of ties to role-based others (RBOs) and (2) embeddedness of RBOs, or the breadth of access that a role-based group has to the rest of an individual’s net-work. Across three role identities (student, religious, and work), we find that our measure of embeddedness predicts role identity salience but that the proportion and strength of ties do not. Thus, our study does not support the proposition that identity salience is a product of an individual’s social and emotional attachment to role-based groups. Rather, our findings suggest that a role identity becomes more salient as role-based others become more tightly woven into an individual’s social fabric. Keywords identity, social networks, embeddedness, roles According to most sociological theories of self and identity, roles serve as the inter-face between social institutions and the thoughts, motivations, and behavior of individuals who occupy positions in those institutions. The effectiveness of this link rests on culturally shared meanings and expectations attached to role identities (Burke and Tully 1977; Heise 1979) and that these expectations become internal-ized into individuals ’ self-concept, thereby guiding the behavior of role occupants. The relationship, however, between roles and behavior is complex, often resulting in only a loose fit between role expecta-tions and role performance (Stryker 1968; Turner 1962). In an attempt to rec-oncile this gap, theorists have drawn upon symbolic interactionist thought (Mead 1934), invoking the self as a medi-ating factor between role expectations and individual behavior (e.g., McCal