Role Transitions, Objects, and Identity

Ira Silver*
Northwestern University

ABSTRACT: Most research on role transitions, following a tradition pioneered

by van Cennep, regards these major turning points in the life course primarily
as times when people move between different sets of social networks. While
these studies acknowledge that rites of passage occur within particular physical
spaces in which material objects are present, the importance of such objects
has received little attention. I explore one particular role transition-moving
away to college-and illustrate that objects play a central role in how students
construct their identities. Students at "Midwestern" University make strategic
choices about which objects to leave at home as anchors of prior identities
and which ones to bring to school as markers of new identities. Moreover,
I suggest that the meanings of these two categories of objects differ by gender.
I argue that this case opens up the possibility that objects play a much more
central part in role transitions than social scientists have acknowledged. This
study also challenges existing assumptions about different processes of identity
formation. Therefore, it engenders the need for additional research about how
people reinterpret objects during role transitions, and about the different
meanings that objects may have for the constructions of masculinity and
femininity.

INTRODUCTION
In his classic anthropological study, Arnold van Gennep (1960 119091) demonstrated
that the various stages of the life course are distinguished by a series of role transitions.
During such transitions, he argued, individuals engage in particular acts and ceremonies
that initially separate them from their former roles, and subsequently reintegrate them
into new statuses. He described, for example, male puberty rites among natives of the
African Congo:
He is taken into the forest, where he is subjected to seclusion, lustration, flagellation,
and intoxication with palm wine, resulting in anesthesia. Then come the transition
rites, including bodily mutilations and painting of the body. The trial period is
followed by rites of reintegration into the previous environment.. .. The initiates
pretend not to know how to walk or eat and, in general, act as if they were newly
~~

* Ira Silver, Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, 1810 Chicago Ave., Evanston, IL 60208.
Symbolic Interaction 19(1):1-20 Copyright @ 1996 by JAl Press Inc.
ISSN 0195-6086 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
2 Symbolic Interaction Volume 19, Number 1, 1996

born and must relearn all gestures of ordinary life. Before they enter the relearning
process, which takes several months, the initiates bathe in a stream, and the sacred
hut is burned (van Gennep 1960 [1909], p. 81).

These “rites of passage,” as van Gennep termed them, are characterized by a number
of symbols: the palm wine, the painting of the body, the stream, and the sacred hut.
Moreover, these rites occur in a particular physical space: the forest. Yet, although van
Gennep descriptively attended to the environments where these rites occur, this symbolic
landscape is ignored theoretically in his analysis. He argued that, since role transitions
fundamentally involve a process of becoming integrated into new and distinct social
roles, the crucial aspects of this process are the separation and subsequent
reincorporation of the initiate into the group (van Gennep 1960 119091, pp. 10-13).
This distinction between physical and social spaces has characterized much of the
theoretical and empirical work concerning role transitions. Research on role transitions
emphasizes the importance of existing and newly emerging social networks for the
integration of individuals into new roles (Berger 1963, pp. 59-60; Boyanowsky 1984;
Glaser and Strauss 1971; Hirsch and Jolly 1984; Serpe 1987; Turner 1967; van de Vliert
and Allen 1984). What is more, although many researchers document that role
transitions involve changes and continuities in identity (Becker 1968; Demo 1992; Gecas
and Mortimer 1987; Hormuth 1984, 1990; McAdams 1993; Mortimer, Finch, and
Kumka 1982; Serpe 1987), few study the role that material objects play in such
transitions. This is surprising because many studies indicate that objects contain
meanings that are crucial to identity formation (Belk 1988; Benjamin 1955;
Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981; Dittmar 1992; Furby 1978; Goffman
1961; McCracken 1986; Rochberg-Halton 1984; Wicklund and Gollwitzer 1982).
In this paper, I present data concerning a particular role transition-going to
college-to illustrate that objects and the processes individuals use to reinterpret them
are more central to successful integration into new social roles than existing research
on role transitions acknowledges. I show that because objects are tangible evidence
testifying to the salient characteristics of personal biographies-places, events, and
social relationships-the college students I studied incorporated objects into their new
social roles. In so doing, these students used objects to construct their identities as
coherent and continuous, even though their roles were profoundly changing. I argue
that these data engender a need for researchers to pay greater attention to the importance
of objects during role transitions. Also, while the men and women in my sample engaged
in the same overall process of reconstructing biography, I present evidence suggesting
that there are important gender differences in how people reinterpret objects during
periods of role transition.
A greater recognition of the importance of objects in the construction of new
biographical scripts during role transitions helps to explain the paradoxical finding that
identity is both stable over long periods of time and situationally variable (Mortimer,
Finch, and Kumka 1982). People undergoing role transitions must devise ways to retain
Role Transitions, Objects, and identity 3

continuous identities because such periods involve profound changes in both their
physical and social landscapes. I suggest, therefore, that objects can stand alone as
critical testimony about the self during role transitions because people can invest objects
with meanings that give coherence to these otherwise incoherent and unsettled periods
in the life course (Swidler 1986, p. 279).

TYPES OF IDENTITY
Although scholars think about identity in varied and complex ways, they identify three
types of identity that are especially relevant during role transitions.
The first of these, social identity, refers to the meanings individuals perceive that
others attach to their particular roles, as well as the props associated with those roles
(Blumer 1969; Cooley 1902; Dewey 1922; Hewitt 1976; James 1950 (18901; Mead 1934;
Stryker 1980). Several marketing researchers have identified the importance of people’s
use of objects in order to achieve new social identities during role transitions. These
researchers have adopted Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical perspective in arguing that
objects are “props” that people use to manage the impressions that others form about
the roles they occupy (Andreasen 1984; Mehta and Belk 1991; Solomon 1983; Young
1991). Adelman (1992).and McAlexander (199 1) studied the disposition of possessions
during such traumatic periods as the onset of AIDS and after a divorce. McAlexander
and Schouten (1989) and Schouten (I99 I ) documented the significance of hair style
changes and plastic surgery, respectively, in the constructing of new social identities
during role transitions.
Although these marketing studies document that people use objects to engender new
social identities, these studies d o not recognize the possibility that people undergoing
role transitions may invest objects with meanings that produce changes or maintain
continuities in their identities. This lack of attention given to the complete process by
which people shape their identities through objects stems from the fact that these studies
give little attention to what I refer to as selfidentity-that is, the individual’s subjective
sense of his or her biography being continuous, coherent, and unique. Here, I borrow
from Erikson’s notion of “ego identity” (Erikson 1950, 1959). Whereas new social
identities tend to emerge only when social roles change profoundly, theories about self-
identity construe identity formation as a process beginning in adolescence and
continuing throughout the life course, as individuals reconstruct their biographies in
light of changing information about their pasts and futures (Berger 1963, pp. 54-56;
Erikson 1959, p. 113; McAdams 1985, 1993). Researchers who study this ongoing,
narrative construction of identity call their approach the life story perspective.
The life story perspective has a shortcoming that bears directly on the subject of this
paper. That is, this perspective does not acknowledge that, as individuals move through
their lives, they carry tangible documentation of their life stories. For example, Jones
(1980) argues that individuals maintain stable identities after they have moved great
distances because they reconstruct their life stories in various ways. Yet, she cannot
substantiate that her informants perceive the parameters of their life stories in the same
4 Symbolic Interaction Volume 19, Number 1, 1996

concrete ways that she does, because she derives her argument about their identity
maintenance solely from the interview texts they provided. In other words, her argument
suffers because it is not based on her reading of a text that her informants construct
in their everyday lives. Much of the empirical work in the l$e course perspective
concerning changes and continuities in identity during role transitions suffers from this
same weakness (e.g., Gecas and Mortimer 1987; Hormuth 1984,1990; Mortimer, Finch,
and Kumka 1982; Serpe 1987). However, I am not arguing that the findings of these
studies should be questioned, but rather that such studies could be strengthened by
augmenting them with a (quite literally) more objective examination of identity
formation.
That these perspectives do not consider the physical evidence constituting people’s
identities is significant because several studies do indeed indicate that objects are
especially well-suited constituents of identity, precisely because they provide tangible
documentation of the self (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981; Dittmar 1992;
Radley 1990; Unruh 1983). These findings underscore the need for further exploration
of the importance of objects in the process of biographical reconstruction during role
transitions.
Last, Goffman (1963, p. 57) describespersonal identity as a set of meanings attached
to a person according to biographical information that others know about him or her.
For example, in a study of how the elderly invest particular meanings in objects for
their survivors to interpret after they have died, Unruh (1983, p. 344) argues that family
members are able to preserve the deceased’s personal identity when they know the stories
embedded within the objects that remain.
This perspective on identity combines elements from the other two. It is like social
identity in that both are evaluations of the individual made by the group. However,
the difference is that while an individual can have many social identities, he or she can
have only one personal identity (Goffman 1963, pp. 62-63). Personal identity is like
self-identity because the primary basis for evaluation in each case is biographical
information. In contrast, for social identity such information is regarded solely as a
prop in one’s performance of a given role.
What I am arguing in making these comparisons is that the analytical distinctions
between “personal identity” and either of the other two types are not nearly as sharp
as that between “social” and “self-” identity. Traditionally, the former has been a
symbolic interactionist construct while the latter has been examined mostly by
developmental psychologists. This disciplinary separation has been accompanied by a
set of assumptions indicating that each type of identity formation entails a
fundamentally different process. These are assumptions that I explore in my study of
students undergoing the transition from home to college.

DATA AND METHODS

I use relocation as a paradigm for examining role transitions. The “character of the
situation” (Becker 1964, p. 44) is the most crucial defining aspect of role transitions,
Role Transitions, Objects, and Identity 5

not whether the new role is performed in a different location than the previous one.
Still, changes in identity are likely to be strongest when one’s physical and social
environments have been drastically altered (Berger 1963, p. 60; Hormuth 1984, p. 114).
People may relocate for any number of reasons, including a new job, divorce, the death
of a spouse, or in the case of this study, to begin college.’
I interviewed a snowball sample of 22 students at “Midwestern” University. All of
them live on or near the campus and came to Midwestern from places at least 50 miles
away. At the time that I interviewed them, 11 of the students were freshmen and 1 1
were seniors. I interviewed 14 women and eight men. Eighteen were white and four
Asian-American. I did not explicitly document socioeconomic data about these
students, but nearly all of them can be considered affluent, based solely upon the
material objects in their rooms: computers, televisions, stereos, compact discs, clothing,
and jewelry.2
This sample is, of course, neither socioeconomically nor racially representative of
all college students. Yet, it is not intended to serve as conclusive evidence of how college
students, or any group for that matter, accomplish role transitions. Rather, I use it
to illustrate a theoretical argument about the need for researchers to give greater
attention to the important process by which people invest meanings in objects during
role transitions.
I conducted focused interviews (Merton and Kendall 1946) because they are the most
appropriate method available for examining the strategies that people employ in
reinterpreting their material objects. Using focused interviews enabled me to engage
students in lengthy discussions about how and why they decided to bring certain
constituents of their biographies to college while leaving others at home. Each interview
lasted between one and two hours and took place in students’ dormitory rooms or
apartments. These are the places where students keep many of the crucial components
of their biographies-their posters, photographs, scrapbooks, diaries, letters, and
collections. Initially, I asked students to tell me about their three most cherished
possessions and why these were significant. Then, I probed for the ways in which they
constructed hierarchies of meaning among all of their possessions. In addition, I asked
them to describe their rooms at home, to compare them with their college rooms, and
most importantly, to explain how they determined which objects to bring to college
and which ones to leave at home. Finally, I pointed to particular objects and asked
the students to tell me as much as they could about them. I asked students to tell me
when they got the objects, who gave them the objects, and why the objects were
significant.
I found that students were explicit in discussing how they managed the transition
to college because they saw this as an issue of primary personal concern. All of my
interviews of incoming students were conducted during the first six weeks of their first
semester on campus. I quickly learned that most students did not formulate their
reinterpretations of objects until just days prior to leaving for college.
I started by interviewing freshmen in order to ascertain the social factors that influence
the biographical reconstructions of those just beginning the transition to college. Then,
6 Symbolic Interaction Volume 19, Number 1, 1996

I compared these data to those from an equal number of interviews (1 I) with seniors
to find out whether students’ strategies of biographical reconstruction change as they
become more situated in their roles at college. I wanted to determine if the meanings
students attach to objects differ between those who are just beginning to undergo this
transition and those who no longer have “betwixt and between” statuses (Turner 1967).
While conducting these interviews, I noticed that women were, on the whole, more
articulate in speaking about objects and identities than were men. This observation was
the first indication of what was to become an important finding of this study: that while
the same general process of biographical reconstruction occurs for male and female
students, there may be important differences in how men and women identify with their
material environments.

PACKING THE IDENTITY SUITCASE

In reconstructing their biographies during the transition from home to college, students
distinguished between two categories of objects. Anchors (Mehta and Belk 1991, p.
400; Swidler 1986, p. 281) are those objects that students associated exclusively with
prior stages in their lives, such as childhood or early adolescence. Markers (MacCannell
1976, p. 110; Schutz 1971) are akin to what Winnicott (1957) calls “transitional objects”
(see also Andreasen 1984; Kahne 1967; Nemy 1986; Saile 1985; Seamon 1979).
Moreover, they are related to what Star and Griesemer (1989) term “boundary objects.”
These objects have a “double reading” of meanings (Katriel and Farrell 1991, pp. 10-
11) in that they testify to earlier chapters in students’ biographies and also to the new
stage in their lives brought about by the transition to college. Thus, students construct
these objects as symbolic bridges between different stages in their lives.
Neither of these categories includes objects that students obtain upon arrival at college
because I found that new acquisitions were, in fact, a very small component of most
students’ total assemblage of objects in their college rooms. Furthermore, I do not
analyze these new acquisitions as a separate category because having such objects at
college did not require that students differentiate between prior social roles embedded
within their physical environments at home and new roles emerging at college.
The data document that incoming students regarded objects as crucial constituents
of their identities. Therefore, they believed that it was important to leave certain objects
at home and bring others to college in order to facilitate the role transition they were
undergoing. The important meanings that incoming students invested in markers and
anchors are illustrated by the following statements:
A lot of these things here are kind of proof that certain kinds of unbelievable things actually
did happen; that I actually did this, that I really know that person (woman).
1 tried to throw together some ensemble of my past for me while I was at school-a
reminiscence of past times. It is kind of like carrying around photos in your wallet, though
I don’t have any photos from these trips.. .. Most of these objects were stuffed in a closet
at home. 1 just yanked them out, and they became more by being together as a whole.
1 guess they are sort of a collection (man).
Role Transitions, Objects, and Identity 7

One woman described how she would react if her parents sold the cherished possessions
that she left at home:

I would be really upset because most of the things in my room-the books, play, letters-
are part of that, 18 years of my life. It would feel like those memories were sold away.

Incoming students differentiated between anchors and markers according to how

much (if any) continuity they wanted to retain with the identities embedded within these
objects. Their constructions of these two categories of objects signified a distinction
between their existing social ties prior to college-chiefly with their parents, but also
with other family members and high school friends-and the social networks they
expected to form in their new college environments. For incoming students,
reinterpreting objects reflected a difficult tension between commitments to prior social
networks and efforts to become situated into new social roles-a tension between
maintaining stability and fostering changes in their identities.

Leaving Home
Regardless of how close incoming students felt toward their parents, they carefully
considered how much of their biographies they wanted to leave behind in the settings
where they had lived most of their lives. Seven of the 11 incoming students indicated
that they had left some of their cherished possessions at home. Because they had strong
relationships with their parents, they did not want to feel as if they were permanently
leaving home. One woman commented that even if she had substantially more space
in her dormitory room, she still would have left many of her sentimental possessions
at home:
Because they are sort of a tie to my parents. My parents want to see me in my room at
home because they feel that the room will be empty without reminders of my presence.

Therefore, the anchors that she left at home are tangible evidence of her relationship
with her parents. Another man remarked that he felt ambivalent about leaving home
because he was very close to his mother. Indeed, she started to cry when he began to
pack the posters that he now has on the walls in his room at school:

In fact, she went out and bought a new poster for my room. They keep my room exactly
as it was. It’s like in the movies when a daughter or son dies and the parents retain the
room.. . . I think they would mind if I took everything out of my room. I think they still
want to keep pieces of me there. These things are reminders that I am still around.

I asked all of the students whether it mattered to their parents how much of their
biographies they left at home. Two women had similar answers:

Yes, especially for my mom. I think we’re at the stage where we’re actually becoming friends.
She is very much into family. That’s why I leave many of my things at home; because
I know that 1 always have a place there. It would be hard for my mom if I just took all
of my stuff to school.
a Symbolic Interaction Volume 19, Number 1, 1996

I talk to my mother, and she says that when she drives home, she sees my car in the garage
and thinks I’m home. My mother and 1 have a really close relationship. My parents would
never touch anything in my room, because they know it is important to me.

Settling in at College
The distinctions that incoming students made between markers and anchors were
more influenced by anticipatory socialization for their new social roles at college than
by commitments to prior roles left behind at home. New peers are a more important
reference group than parents, other family members, and childhood friends because
students’ new roles carry a considerably greater amount of uncertainty than do their
former ones. While this is probably true for any role transition, it may be particularly
so for the transition to college because most students enter college with a strong need
for acceptance by their peers (Herr and Cramer 1968, p. 58).3 Therefore, nearly all
incoming students claimed that it was important to have objects around them in order
to establish social identities among their peers:
To me, when someone says that they like the Beatles, it seems more tangible if they have
some posters or music. The material things are necessary to being considered a true fan,
because otherwise one wonders what it is that makes them a true fan. It would be odd
for me to like a group and not collect their music. If you like something, people expect
you to have things related to it. They expect to see something material that reflects and
identifies that liking (man).
Putting these things on the walls gives the room a feeling of personality. I like the fact
that this room kind of represents me. I think I would definitely feel less comfortable if
my room weren’t decorated. It would feel restricting. I would probably feel like I couldn’t
relate to people like I do now (woman).
These posters and other things in my room are an expression of myself, because 1 can’t
tell everyone something about myself. So, the posters tell others what matters to me and
what I like (woman).
My photo album has pictures of people from high school. I brought it here to show people
here who my high school friends are. Those pictures are so that people here can get to
know me better (woman).

One man said that he wished he had brought his record collection from home, and
that he would certainly do so when he returned from Thanksgiving break, because they
“are a cool thing to show to people.” He indicated that he did not bring them initially
because he “did not expect to encounter people who’d be really impressed to see them,”
as was the norm for him at home:
At home, I had a small group of friends who were into music, and we would always try
to outdo each other in how authentic our record collections were. Some of my records
are kind of rare. 1 also have some rare import CDs, but not as many.

Incoming students wanted some of their objects to tell others about themselves.
However, in Goffman’s (1963) terms, they also wanted to prevent their peers from seeing
constituents of their biographies which, within this new social context, might be
Role Transitions, Objects, and Identity 9

regarded as stigmatizing. Indeed, freshmen and seniors were alike in suggesting that
they would have felt embarrassed if they had brought to college those objects that
symbolize earlier chapters in their biographies. In other words, students subscribed to
a set of anticipatory norms about what would be appropriate to have within one’s
physical space at college. These norms pertained to the types of objects that students
perceived would engender either prestige or stigma among their new peer group^.^
Students constructed this distinction between “stigma” and prestige” by investing
different meanings in anchors and markers.
One female freshman, for example, indicated that she did not bring her doll collection
to school because it was a part of her past that she could not easily share with others.
She did, however, bring her compact discs and cassettes because many other students
shared her enthusiasm for music. During the interview, I noticed that magazine clippings
of fashion advertisements about men adorned the walls of her dormitory room:
I guess that is what I am into now. 1 don’t need the dolls now, so they are not important
to me. These magazine photos on the walls are not so important to me, but they are more
relevant to who I am now.

She viewed the magazine clippings, like the compact discs and cassettes, as “more
relevant” to her present identity because she derived prestige from having these socially
acceptable objects in her room. In contrast, her claim that the dolls were a link to her
childhood manifested her effort to manage her identity as a “mature college student”
by not having objects around her which might threaten that claim to identity.
Similarly, a female senior conveyed sentiments of embarrassment in describing her
stuffed animals:

I’ve given a lot of thought to getting rid of them. But, they are all from my mom, and
she’s sent them to me when I’ve been upset. I do not really sleep with them anymore. This
one, because I was sleeping with it all the time, I got attached to and brought it home
during breaks. f was never into stuffed animals until way past the age (her emphasis).

Her emphasizing that she “was never into stuffed animals until way past the age”reflects
her attempt to break apart the association that adolescents and adults often make
between particular collections of objects and their childhoods. Several other women
brought stuffed animals to school, but none of these women brought more than one
or two objects from their larger collections. With this tendency, these women seemed
to be telling their peers that these particular objects were significant to them but that
they no longer had enthusiasm for their entire collection of these childhood objects.
The woman whose mother kept sending her stuffed animals, however, viewed these
objects as particularly stigmatizing, because she had never had an enthusiasm for stuffed
animals even as a child. Moreover, her sense of embarrassment was compounded by
the fact that she did not strategically choose whether or not to have these stuffed animals
with her at college as she did, for example, with her sticker collection, which she never
considered bringing to school even though she “was really into them for a while” when
she was a child.
10 Symbolic Interaction Volume 19, Number 1, 1996

One male senior said that when he began college, he never even considered bringing
the baseball cards stored in his closet at home. In part, this decision resulted from the
fact that he had not looked at them since he was 1 1 or 12. Yet, this collection was
still significant to him because it reflected a particular set of physically and socially
situated enthusiasms embedded within both previous and forthcoming chapters in his
biography:
They still have a lot of significance to me because I was really into it at the time, and
1 always wondered if my collection was worth anything. I think I won’t throw it out, but
not because it’s something I want now. Rather, for the future it might be important, and
maybe for my children. I d o not really have any desire to look through it now or to spend
the time to put them in any meaningful order. I would imagine that at some point in time
I’ll want to organize them more.

This student kept his baseball cards at home because in that location they were an anchor
for an enthusiasm he had as a child. He did not want the baseball cards to serve as
a marker at college because within that context they might become a source of stigma.
However, he indicated that when he has children, his efforts to forge an identity with
this collection will engender prestige because the baseball cards will facilitate his taking
on the identity of father. That is, he will be able to reestablish a prestigious connection
to these objects because they will become attached to his child’s period of growing up
rather than to his own.
Another incoming male student indicated that he did not bring high school
memorabilia, such as his football team plaques, to college because they symbolized a
“closed chapter” in his life. Moreover, he differentiated his inactive comic book
collection at home, which he associated with an enthusiasm temporally situated within
an earlier chapter of his biography, from his active collection at school of artifacts
acquired during various visits to the Southwest and Mexico:’
At one time the comics were my life. They were what I loved to do. But, I’m kind of out
of that now. It does not interest me as much as that collection over there [he points to
the artifacts]. I’m sure I11 get tired of these things too, and move on to something else.

In this section, I have focused on four accounts. These accounts reveal the important
influence of stigma and prestige with regard to how and why the students distinguished
between anchors and markers. Moreover, the striking similarity between freshmen and
seniors in reference group socialization (Shibutani 1955)-as evidenced by their similar
rationales for reinterpreting some objects as anchors and others as markers-suggests
that, throughout the college years, students remain concerned about the ability of objects
to “speak for” their identities. In these accounts, the two seniors and the two freshmen
attributed similar importance to the link between objects and impression management.

Gender Differences and Objects

While I found no measurable difference between freshmen and seniors in how they
differentiated between markers and anchors, my data do suggest that the meanings of
Role Transitions, Objects, and Identity 11

“marker” and “anchor” differ by gender. I noticed that men and women had different
genres of objects that they considered anchors. All seven of the students who, as children,
collected dolls and stuffed animals were women. In contrast, eight of the 10 students
who used to collect baseball cards, comic books, models, and stamps were men. These
six types of collections, therefore, indicate gendered definitions of “stigma.” A woman’s
effort to manage the potential stigma of being identified by others as a “girl” has different
objective referents than a man’s attempts to avoid being labeled a “boy.” In short, the
objects that connote “stigma” differ for men and women. This observation suggests
that the meanings which link, for example, dolls to girls and comic books to boys are
also different. However, further research is needed to substantiate this latter claim.
In contrast to these data concerning gender differences in the genres students defined
as anchors, I noticed no such differences with markers. The two genres that students
most frequently had in their rooms as markers were photographs and music. Of the
14 students who had photographs, six were men and eight were women. Of the seven
students who had music collections-that is, records, tapes, or compact discs-four
were men and three were women. While these frequencies do not substantiate gender
differences in the genres students constructed as markers, I did notice that women and
men spoke about these two genres with different degrees of enthusiasm. Consider the
following examples of how they spoke about photographs:
I wanted pictures of the people I feel close to-my family, cousins, best friends, prom
date. I also brought other prom pictures which are in my desk. I wanted a collage of all
the people I really cared about so I looked through the [photo] album and found pictures
which were really good, and made this collage two nights before coming here (woman).
These pictures on the desk are of my sister, best friends from high school, and dog. 1 brought
them here because these are the most important people in my life. 1 also have a photo
album, but the pictures which are on the desk are my most important ones (woman).
These (photos) on my desk are from a date party last year, a trip to New York, and my
fiance. 1 also have this photo album which I keep on a shelf. Those photos in the album
are more shots of where I’ve been. 1 do not know if they are less important, but they are
currently not as important (man).
These are relatively old pictures. 1 d o not have an album, but 1 just have folders of old
pictures from the prom, my trip to Israel, etc. (man).

Now, consider the following examples of how they spoke about music:
1 only brought the tapes from home that I listen to. 1 don’t really feel that 1 need music,
but I still buy it because it is more of an older thing in my life. I didn’t buy music when
1 was younger (woman).
1 used to be really immersed in music, but 1 do not listen to most of the music that I
used to because it is too depressing. Music plays a big role in my life in a lyrical sense,
rather than in a musical sense. Therefore, I d o not read and listen to music simultaneously.
I usually only listen to music when I am doing something trivial or getting dressed (woman).
I had a stamp collection which I sold because 1 needed the money. I was never totally
into it. My music collection, on the other hand, is something different because music is
so central to my life (man).
12 Symbolic Interaction Volume 19, Number 1 , 1996

The most important thing in my room is my music collection. I’ve been collecting records
since freshman year. I had tapes before that. Freshman year, I did stuff with WNUR (the
campus radio station). I was a DJ, and the guy that produced my show was gung-ho about
buying records to use on the show, and 1 started doing that too. That sort of turned me
on to records more so than I was before (man).

These comments indicate that although women and men constructed photographs
and music as markers with similar frequencies, women were more enthusiastic about
photographs and men were more enthusiastic about music. Thus, the very same genres
of objects appear to contain meanings which have different implications for the
constructions of masculinity and femininity during the transition to college. These data
suggest, therefore, that women and men use objects differently in the construction of
gender. For instance, the greater emphasis that women placed on photographs may
indicate more concern for commemorating relationships with others. However, at the
moment, this interpretation is speculative, and its investigation must await more
systematic conversation analyses of how men and women talk about objects during
role transitions.
There was another example of how students’ constructions of anchors and markers
had gendered meanings. The woman who adorned her walls with fashion advertisements
about men appeared to be invoking a set of anticipatory norms about what would be
appropriate for a woman to have within her college room, While she regarded having
Barbie dolls at college as a stigmatizing symbol of childhood, she seemed to believe
that displaying fashion advertisements would engender prestige because it would
“announce” to others-both to women and men alike-that her interest in men was
a crucial part of her identity. Again, further inquiry is called for, but this interpretation
is consistent with Holland and Eisenhart’s (1990) finding that collegiate women derive
a much larger sense of their identities from the culture of romance on campus than
do men, who typically construct their identities around academics, athletics, and the
attractiveness of the women they date.

Fusing Physical and Social Space

While the students revealed a concern for impression management by bringing to
school certain objects that peers viewed as appropriate, they also sought to establish
their individuality. One man, for example, described his posters as follows:
The Dali [print] is original and creative, and that is basically what I’m trying to show of
myself. The Beatles poster ... well, I’ve seen lots of posters of the Beatles, but this one
is so original. You don’t see it in a lot of music stores. I don’t live to copy. I want to
get things that others don’t have (ellipsis in original).

Similarly, another woman made the following observation:

My room says a lot about who 1 am. Honestly, it’s as much for me as for others. I was
going to get the James Dean poster, but everyone else has it. So, I simply couldn’t bring
myself to getting it. This room does not completely reflect who I am, but it’s the only
extension I have of myself. This IS my home here, so it might as well be enough like me
Role Transitions, Objects, and fdentity 13

as it can be. When 1 say “be me,” 1d o not mean what I had been. That stuff (left at home)
is not the me that 1 am now. Now, “me” is the friends that I have here.

When speaking about his record collection, another man placed great emphasis on
developing a unique taste in music:

I think the most important thing about my record collection is that my taste in music
is something I’ve worked hard to develop. When I think about people who do not like
certain types of music, I do not get the feeling that they’ve worked at it. 1get sort of arrogant
about it because I’ve gone out and tried different things and searched for my own tastes.
There have been times when I’ve bought things which were not played on the radio, or
listed in Rolling Stone.

Although these students strived to express their uniqueness to others, they still used
conventional genres-posters and music-to do so. Students sought to manage the
impressions they made in the eyes of their peers by bringing to school certain genres
of objects that fit within their perceptions of what was appropriate for a college room.
Nonetheless, within these parameters of stigma and prestige, the particular objects that
they brought simultaneously added to and changed their ongoing life stories.6
Consider that all six of the students who brought scrapbooks and collages
(compilations of photographs, letters, ticket stubs, and other symbols of childhood and
adolescence) assembled them just days prior to leaving home. These scrapbooks and
collages reflected their strategic efforts to redefine their biographies in light of the
transition from living at home to moving away to college. Put differently, these
scrapbooks and collages helped the students adjust to the transition from living within
previously existing social networks to forging new ones. These assembled collections
of significant childhood and early adolescent mementoes served as props in students’
performances of new social roles. Still, the particular objects that each of them did
or did not include in such assemblages constituted tangible evidence (or the suppression
of such evidence) concerning changes and continuities in their self-identities.

CONCLUSIONS
These data concerning the reinterpretation of objects during role transitions are not
exhaustive. Nonetheless, they offer a compelling case for reconsidering the traditional
distinctions social scientists make between the physical and social spaces where role
transitions occur. Moreover, these data suggest that people live in heterogeneous worlds
of meaning that reflect complex relationships between material objects and social
networks. Role transitions are not merely about rituals and ceremonies, although these
social practices are, of course, vital components. Role transitions are defined, rather,
as much by the narrative processes of storytelling about the self as by the performances
of new roles.
Therefore, these data challenge the prevailing theoretical assumption that the physical
spaces where people enact role performances are analytically separate from, and indeed
less important than, the social spaces through which those undergoing role transitions
14 Symbolic Interaction Volume 19, Number 1, 1996

progress. The data presented here reveal that college students reinterpret the meanings
of their material objects as they move between social networks at home and at college.
What is more, by reinterpreting the meanings of their material objects, students seem
to facilitate the role transitions associated with going away to college. Hence, as a
qualification of the tradition fostered by van Gennep, I challenge the assumption that
people live solely in a world of social relationships. My data provide an illustration
that such relationships are established, maintained, or changed within particular
physical spaces comprised of meaningful objects.
This is not to say that studies of role transitions in the tradition pioneered by van
Gennep are unimportant. Rather, 1 argue that such studies have not considered the
theoretical significance of the claim I make here: that the various changes in social
networks that occur during role transitions hinge on the presence or absence of
particular objects and on how people use these objects to construct their identities.
Therefore, a thorough understanding of how people achieve new statuses throughout
the life course cannot be reached unless the physical environments where these role
transitions occur are given greater attention.
This illustration of how students manage the transition from home to college opens
up the question of what importance objects have in role transitions more generally.
Consequently, my data engender the need for further investigations of the relevance
of objects during role transitions. Other researchers ought to study more
socioeconomically and racially diverse samples of people than I have here to see if objects
are as central for these groups as they were for the students at Midwestern University.
When students construct distinctions between markers and anchors, they attempt to
ensure that they have objects around them that testify to an unblemished social identity
as “mature college students.”This adoption of the perspectives of their peers is manifested
by their relying upon only certain genres of objects-such as photographs, music, and
posters-as markers, while leaving other genres-such as baseball cards, comic books,
dolls, and stuffed animals-at home as anchors for social networks embedded there.
However, students do not make meaningful distinctions between anchors and markers
solely for the sake of impression management. Rather, it is the particular objects within
these genres of anchors and markers that serve as crucial, tangible documentation for
their ongoing life stories. A collection of baseball cards left at home is meaningful not
only because it testifies to the social context in which a man became a collector but
rather because it has a unique story attached to it-a story about gender and one which
differentiates this man from all others, including those who used to collect baseball cards.
A college dorm room can serve as a context for identity formation that is
simultaneously physical and social. Students furnish such spaces with objects that
function as one currency for both social interaction and life-story construction. One
shortcoming of the life-story perspective is that it does not account for gender differences
in strategies for identity formation. Gilligan (1982, pp. 1 1-13) qualified Erikson’s (1950)
eight-stage theory of psychosocial development by arguing that male identity forms
in relation to the outside world of things, whereas female identity is based on
Role Transitions, Objects, and Identity 15

relationships of intimacy with other people. This critique is important because the
present study reveals that men and women incorporate different genres of objects into
their ongoing life stories; the study also suggests that men and women speak about
these genres with different degrees of enthusiasm. Despite these differences, my findings
do uphold the core of the theory advanced by Erikson, and more recently by McAdams
(1993), that identity formation is, for both men and women, a continuous narrative
process. Still, the claims this study makes about gender differences are merely suggestive,
so there is a need for more systematic analyses of how men and women undergoing
role transitions compare in the ways they attach meanings to objects.
That people undergoing role transitions may turn to objects to provide concrete
evidence about their identities suggests that role transitions are contexts where objects
are particularly important as constitutive elements of identity formation. McCracken
(1988) offers a rationale for why objects have such important meanings for the self
during role transitions. He argues that all of a person’s significant objects are linked
together in a complementary relationship-what he calls the diderot unity. “The
symbolic properties of material culture are such that things must mean together if they
are to mean at all” (1988, p. 121). This notion implies that it is difficult for people to
reinterpret only particular objects because, in order to do so, they must necessarily
reinterpret others too. Within the context of my data, objects are not easily
reinterpretable, because they represent social meanings. In other words, their meanings
are conventional rather than idiosyncratic. If people could randomly alter the meanings
of objects, then objects would lose their special status as evidence concerning the
uniqueness, stability, and coherence of the self.
Ultimately, then, my data reconfirm the enduring validity of Blumer’s (1969, p. 2)
three fundamental principles:

That human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the
things have for them;
That the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social
interaction that one has with one’s fellows; and
That these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive
process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters.

Acknowledgment: Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Annual

Meetings of the Midwest Sociological Society in St. Louis, March 1994, and at the
Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association in Los Angeles, August
1994. Helpful suggestions came from Mara Adelman, Nicola Beisel, Wendy Espeland,
Kent Gra-won, Angela Irvine, David Shulman, Arthur Stinchcombe, Adam Weinberg,
and three anonymous reviewiers. Special thanks to Arlene Daniels for her supervision
of this research and to Kenneth Dauber for the invaluable advice that helped to inspire
many of the ideas contained in this paper.
16 Symbolic Interaction Volume 19, Number 1, 1996

NOTES
I. Many researchers have sought to determine at what points throughout the life course role
transitions are likely to occur (Adams, Hayes, and Hopson 1976; Eurich 1981; George 1980;
Levinson 1978; Sheehy 1974; van Gennep 1960 I1909)).There are many disagreements among
them, in part because role transitions are less culturally determined in our society than in
many others (Mehta and Belk 1991; Schouten 1991). Going to college, however, certainly
entails a significant role transition, even for those who continue to live at home, because
college creates opportunities for involvements in new activities and for the formation of new
social networks (Goodman and Feldman 1975; Herr and Cramer 1968; Moffatt 1989).
2. I base this argument upon Goffman’s (I95 I , p. 296) claim that social class refers to “discrete
levels of prestige and privilege” and that, therefore, it is difficult to measure it more
substantially through quantitative inquiry.
3. In developmental terms, peers are a more significant reference group for incoming students
than are parents. because while parents signify childhood identifications, peers represent the
incipient stage of identity formation (Erikson 1959, p. 113).
4. “Prestige symbols” are the antithesis of “stigma symbols” in that they are symbols from which
one derives an unblemished social identity within a particular context (Goffman 1963, pp.
4 3 4 4 ) . Prestige symbols are not necessarily “status symbols”-objects that reflect one’s
relatively privileged socioeconomic status-though often they are. For a discussion of status
symbols, see Aldrich (l988), Bourdieu (l984), Coles (l977), Davis (l958), Douglas and
Isherwood (1978), Goffman (1951), Halle (1991), Laumann and House (1970), and Veblen
( 1899).
5. My use of these terms, “inactive” and “active,” is analogous to the analytic distinction I make
between markers and anchors. Inactive objects are anchors for completed chapters in
students’ biographies, and therefore students leave these objects at home. Active objects are
markers that socially situate students within their new roles at college and provide them with
stories about self-continuity during a period of profound changes in social roles. It is
important that this distinction not be characterized as one between living and dead objects
because, as Berger and Luckmann (1966, p. 75) argue, symbols are only “dead” when they
are no longer “‘brought to life’in actual human conduct.” Objects that students leave at home
d o not become dead when students move to college. While they cease being markers testifying
to present social roles, they persist as anchors for the cumulative development of identity
across different stages of the life course. Therefore, they may “come to life” when the student
is back at home amid them. In addition, anchors are not dead because students might
reinterpret them as markers during a future role transition, as the student who used to collect
baseball cards indicated he might d o when he has children.
6 The distinction between genres and particular objects is borrowed from a theoretical analysis
by Dauber (1992).

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