Sociological perspectives on identity formation: The culture-identity link and identity capital

This paper lays the groundwork for understanding identity formation in an interdisciplinary fashion by addressing the problem of how culture and identity are interrelated. I attempt to resolve this problem by framing the ''culture-identity link'' with concepts representing three social-structural periods at three levels of analysis (the macro, micro, and psychological). The concept of ''identity capital'' is derived from this framework, depicting how individuals can negotiate Life passages in an increasingly individualistic, complex and chaotic world. These formulations place existing research in a broad perspective and suggest avenues for future work. (C) 1996 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents