Green and Lee define identity work as “the logic and politics of identity, and hence the ways in which various curriculum identities are constructed and maintained…The writer takes up positions within the range of discourses marking the text’s production, with particular, though indeterminate, consequences for a notion of ‘self’” (208, 214)
The authors acknowledge, however, that there is no one subject position, even within a single disciplinary subject. This means that writers are constantly working through the available subject positions, some of which are more accepted than others. For instance, they write, “To learn and succeed at Geography means learning how to take up an authoritative position within a particular scientific-rational discourse. It means to consent to (rather than resist) the performance, display, and resultant (re)production of official curriculum versions of geographical facts and interpretations and their associated forms of textuality. It also necessarily means to suppress whatever does not fit into that category” (220). They assert, then, that “all students must acquire a critical dimension to literacy, one which allows them to adopt various authoritative positions within a discourse or subject area field, yet not assume ‘identity’ with these positions” (221)
The authors imply that men more naturally take up a scientific subject position in their writing while women more naturally take up relational (interpersonal) subject positions.
Research methodology: “What we want to collect data for decides what data we collect” (209).