Social representations, gender and identity: interactions and practices in a context of vulnerability

Abstract

From the framework of social representations, this study addresses gender and identity in a situated context of recursive vulnerability in the southeast of Mexico. The first section establishes the theoretical premises and presents the common sense relation between social representations and gender. This is followed by the second section where a discussion of the studies of identity and gender identity is elaborated, looking at the relation between perspectives focused on the individual and those oriented towards culture and the social. This gives way to the third section, a triangulated qualitative case study in three phases about gender identities in the port of Celestún in Yucatán that elaborates on two main analytical dimensions: vulnerability and emotional distress. The article closes with a brief concluding reflection. Overall, it addresses the systemic and polysemic richness of representations and gender identities in terms of both process and content at the same time as linking research to action in a community. In addition, from a perspective of interaction, it analyses discursive practices linked to hegemonic social representations of gender identities which given their perverse logic of subjective naturalization and consensus in the structure of social behaviour constitute one of the most resistant obstacles to the configuration of liberating systems that can orient subjects towards a logic of rights and well-being, further exacerbating vulnerabilities.