Atkinson, David ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2179-1652 (2026) Identity, Becoming and Collective Futures: Toward a MED Theory of Held and Encoded Identity. Other. Zenodo.

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Abstract

Abstract—Identity has become one of the defining concerns of contemporary political, organisational and technological life. Questions of belonging, sovereignty, institutional legitimacy, cultural continuity and artificial intelligence increasingly revolve around competing understandings of identity and its preservation. Yet despite extensive scholarship concerning identity construction, social identity, organisational identity and identity regulation, relatively little attention has been given to the relationship between identity and becoming. Identity is commonly assumed to exist prior to change, with adaptation understood as the subsequent modification of an already constituted self. This paper proposes a different ontological reading. Drawing upon Material Entropic Dynamics (MED), it argues that becoming precedes identity. Identity is neither an essence nor a stable property possessed by individuals or collectives. Rather, it emerges as a temporary stabilisation through which continuity is negotiated within an underlying field of possibility-space. In this reading, identity does not solve the problem of being. It solves the problem of continuity. Building upon this proposition, the paper distinguishes between two complementary forms of identity. Held Identity preserves continuity through orientation towards unrealised possibility-space. Encoded Identity preserves continuity through negotiated material persistence. Their continuing relationship explains how becoming and continuity remain simultaneously possible. The paper concludes by suggesting that many contemporary crises attributed to identity are better understood as crises in the relationship between becoming and its subsequent encoding.

Item Type:	Monograph (Other)
Status:	Published
DOI:	10.5281/zenodo.21237727
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) T Technology > T Technology (General)
School/Department:	York Business School
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/15503

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