Identity Assemblages: An ANT-based Analysis of Educational Practices and Modes of Ordering in a University College: PhD dissertation

The study aims at exploring how identity is enacted within the context of a
two-year programme in Service, Hospitality, and Tourism Management
(SHTM). This research thus investigates how students and educators go about
their daily lives in different educational contexts both on and off campus. It
describes classroom practices and follows the students as they venture into
internship positions. Based on a series of qualitative data collection techniques
such as interviews, observations, and textual analysis of blog posts, the study
attempts to reconstruct SHTM practices on and off campus. Hereby, the
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analysis unfolds the relational understanding of identity by introducing the
concept of ‘identity assemblages’, that is, complex actor-networks of the
human/non-human and material/immaterial. Furthermore, the analysis
describes how the enactment of identities is made possible or hindered by
organisational patterns, that is, modes of ordering (Law 1994). This is, in
essence, an argument for identities as organisational effects.
The study’s main contributions may be structured in three categories. First, it
explores the applicability of ANT to identity studies and thereby serves as a
contribution to the body of literature of ANT-based studies. Second, it
contributes to existing identity theories by exemplifying a socio-material
approach to identity issues. Third, the study enables reflections upon how
educational institutions as fundamentally identity-producing organisations
acknowledge and bridge the gap between theory and practice, student and practioner.