and personality through adopting a role, assuming a status and learning a set of flexible behavioural principles during social encounters.
             Social categories, or sources of identity, can be and are used for the purpose of generating and maintaining individual and group identities. To clearly explore the ways identity is termed a social construct, this essay will outline several examples that are significant sources of identity; namely: gender, age, and ethnicity. However, before illustrating the various examples, a few sociological perspectives on the social construction of identity will be briefly discussed in order to establish a clear framework.
             Sociological perspectives all agree that identity is a social construct, and reject any notion that identity is innate. Social circumstances and expectations create who we are and cast the identity. These perspectives are rooted in the basic concept, and provide opinions on the manifestation of social identity. The Structuralist perspective places great emphasis on socialization as a means of social identity being a social construct. Socialization is viewed as an influential steering force in terms of the way people are branded o
             ...