being an undegraduate: the interaction of agency and structure through social roles
The aim of this essay is to support this claim by showing the interaction between agency and some of these structural influences, taking as an example my role as an undergraduate IT student at Queen Mary College of London in 2004.
In particular, I will focus on three aspects of this experience: the influence of gender in subject choice (Information Technology), the economic and ethnic factors entangled with the choice of the institution (Queen Mary) and the collective identities built around the college societies.
Information technology is centered on the study of computer hardware and software. It belongs to the realm of the scientific subjects, which are generally considered as ‘masculine’, with male students outnumbering and outperforming female students. In my case, more than 80% of the students enrolled on my course were male (Davis, 2006).
In fact, gender-related patterns in subject choice and in academic performance are present since primary school, with girls performing better in humanities and boys prevailing in science and technology (Gove and Watt, 2004, pp.61-64).
Research has pointed at different causes to account for this phenomenon: biological differences between the two sexes (Kimura, 1992), social factors such as gendered activities and interests as well as teachers’ perception of gendered identities (Murphy and Elwood, 1998), have all been considered.
Nevertheless, the presence of female students in my course and the fact that none of us failed, clearly shows that we can actively challenge this gender gap in performance and subject choice, a gap that, according to statistics, is already narrowing in primary and secondary education (Gove and Watt, 2004, p.62-63).
My choice on which university to enroll in was largely influenced by economic factors. Coming from a low income background, Queen Mary College appeared to be the more convenient solution, as it offered me the highest grant.
However, I discovered that for some of my fellow students, who came from Asian countries, ethnicity also played an important role. For them, Queen Mary was an attractive option because of its large percentage in Asian students, as well as its location, which is in an area of East London were these communities have a strong presence (Tower Hamlets Research and Scrutiny, 2005). The university itself was clearly aware of this and its prospectus offered often images of cheerful, successful Asian students, seeking explicitly to interpellate this kind of audience.
An important aspect of the student life was also socialization by means of joining one or more
societies, voluntary groups funded and run by students within the university. Most societies at Queen Mary represented ethnic communities, while others were based on religion and a minority on leisure activities, thus suggesting a hierarchy of importance in the factors that influenced the creation of group identities within that institution.
Choosing to join a group was entirely voluntary, as long as prospective members shared the aims of the society. Therefore students were likely to be members of the societies they most identified with, shaping and taking up for themselves these collective identities.
Furthermore, there was no limit in the number of societies a student could be member of. For
example a Jewish student was also member of the Palestinian society, which shows firstly that
individuals have multiple identities, which may well be in conflict with each other, and secondly how agency can challenge stereotypes and assumptions, in this case the perceived incompatibility of being a Jewish who supports the Palestinian cause, thus promoting a change in the structures that impose such definitions.
In this essay I have described some of the most common ways in which structure and agency
interact in shaping our identities, with reference to my university experience.
Firstly, I have focused on the relationship between gender, subject choice and academic performance and how these are both being challenged. I have also pointed out how structures influence each individual differently, showing how income influenced my choice of university, while for other students this choice was based more on ethnic considerations.
With regards to university societies as sources of collective identities, I have stressed how joining a society is strongly based on the similarity among its members and that by joining different societies individuals can take up multiple identities, even though these may be perceived in contradiction with one another.
Thus, individuals exercise their agency in shaping their identity and may challenge the structural constraints imposed on them.
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