Reflexivity and the transformation of gender identity: Reviewing the potential for change in a cosmopolitan city

Abstract

It has been claimed that the conditions of modernity create the opportunities as well as the need for social actors to take greater responsibility for their own identities. Feminist theorists have responded to such `celebratory' views of identity transformation with caution, emphasizing instead the situated nature of critical reflexivity and arguing that the opportunities for transformations in gender identity are far more limited than has been suggested by modernization theorists. In this article, the authors address this issue of the transformative potential of critical reflexivity by drawing upon Frankfurt's (1988) notion of second-order desires and Bonham's (1999) re-working of this in relation to Bourdieu's social theory. Illustrating the argument with data drawn from three case studies from Singapore, the authors show that where second-order desires result from deliberations and public debates — whether these are habituated or institutionalized, or not — transformations in conceptions of gender can and do emerge.