social science

Personal identity is a very important part of a person. Personal Identity is a person’s own special identity “the real me”. Identities of place refer to a geographic locations and relate to how people work, live, socialize and establish themselves in them. Group or collective identities are created when people fall into a certain group, for example people may fall into the same age group or same gender. Collective identities play an important role when it comes to who people think they are and who they become. This does in some ways have an impact on societies and how societies function as a whole. This essay will look at social exclusion which refers to inequalities in certain rights of groups of people and social inclusions which refers to people’s allocation to specific rights. Identities of place not only can provide inclusion for the people who live within the place with regards to employment, education etc, but also creates exclusions in terms of housing, environment and status which will be the main discussion of this essay.

As outlined in (Chapter 5, Making Social Lives, Open University, Introducing Social Sciences) Manchester’s population grew rapidly between 1831 and 1841. With the growth of population came its name of ‘shock city’ (Briggs, 1990) and the reason behind this was industrialisation. A large number of people from the countryside went into the city for better incomes and lifestyles. This was a drastic step for people, but people still did it in the hope that there would be better income and better lives. As a result of this, the City got crowded. There were more people, lesser space and this changed life in the city for many individuals and families.

It cannot be ignored that the city provided people with employment, way of life, environment. In the city, people not only made connections with each other, but also with the environment, the space and the things that surrounded them and had to deal with this on a daily basis. This gave exclusions to certain groups of people, these were the people with no employment and people with low wages. These people had to live in places with narrow back roads, with poor sanitation and ventilation. As a result of this there were many health hazards, including infectious diseases. People with low wages or unemployment had no choice but to live in these conditions. This created exclusions for some groups of people, limiting their ways of existence and identities to live with. This was clearly describe by Friedrich Engles who worked as a clerk in Manchester in the 1840s. However, this was in contrast to the people with higher income who could afford a healthier surrounding and better places to live in. This created inclusions for certain groups of people. Particularly for people with more income.

Right from the 1840 up until now, examples of how identities of place brings both inclusions and exclusions for its dwellers can be seen. One such example is outlined in the article which first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated January 21, 2006. In this article a clear picture of exclusions and inclusions can be seen with the debate of whether the countryside welcomes the ethnic minorities or not. This article also outlines steps taken by the government for these communities to visit countryside, including the Mosaic Project which organises ethnic minority outings into the countrysides.

In this article there is a statement of the Racial Equality chairman Trevor Phillips, which stated that there is ‘passive apartheid’ in Britain’s countryside. It also said that the Minority groups were not ‘comfortable’ when visiting the countryside and that they did not feel welcome. The reasons for this could be as stated in the article itself by Hanif Kureishi who said that his family would have never gone walking to the countryside when they moved from Bombay, because there was a notion that it was demining for the middle class Indians to ‘traipse like peasants’. Another example is the statement of of Shabeen Rehman an elderly woman who stated that she did enjoy her day out at the lakes, but also said that many of the elders who visited with her may not visit the lakes again because of the English weather. She said that most of them grew up in places with very hot weather and another reason being that they will not visit individually as they prefer visiting in groups. This does show exclusions for some groups of people visiting the countryside, who will not be able to maintain the identities they have in a larger city. But in contrast to the above paragraph Sean Prendergast’s statement of the Peak District National Park, outlined that ‘Asian families visit the park on sunny days and like to have a picnic at the Dovestone Reservoir’. This is in contrast to the statement made by Trevor