“In the bedroom: family negotiations and the construction of the self in conte mporary adolescence(s)” Keynote Conference presented at GeSIPI International Conference Identity: Representation & Practices, FL|UL, Lisbon, September 12th, 2014 Lia Pappámikail Lia.pappamikail@gmail.com When we think of identity a few key words come into our minds. For me, as a sociologist, it immediately refers to a constellation of interconnected concepts that revolve around the idea of the individual: individualization, individuation, autonomy. In fact, although the individual is undoubtedly the basic unity of society, and, ultimately, its primordial research topic, Sociology has struggled, since its foundation, to construct robust theoretical tools to deal with the individual, and, consequently, with his most important characteristic: autonomy. And it is of individuals and how they construct their Identity I came here to speak about. However, and because I believe that in order not to succumb to theoretical flaws and normative biases, we must try to find out why we think things the way we think them, insofar ideas shape the ideals that individuals use to guide their experience, a few notes on how sociology deals with these topics before we take a sneak peek at adolescents bedrooms. We live, as Norbert Elias brilliantly argued in 1987, in a society of individuals, a word that didn’t even existed in the middle age (1993 [1987]). In fact, the idea that everyone could be an individual, with a unique identity, object of duties and rights is rather recent: the possibility that everyone could become an individual was one of the pillars of XVIII century modernity. It is fundamental to underline at this point, that from modernity stemmed the promise of a new Man, free, independent and autonomous. Individual autonomy is indeed one of the two axis that make up the double imaginary signification of modernity, along with rationality, that would enable man to control the relationship with himself and with nature (Wagner 2001) Thus, far beyond a mere operational concept useful to tackle empirical processes, autonomy is indeed the bedrock of philosophical and political