Description
Book SynopsisBringing together leading scholars to investigate trends in contemporary social life, this book examines the current patterning of identities based on class and community, gender and generation, 'race', faith and ethnicity, and derived from popular culture, exploring debates about social change, individualization and the re-making of social class.
Trade Review'This important collection of original essays, using state-of-the-art quantitative and qualitative methods, offers fascinating insights into the complex ways that power relations inscribe contemporary social identities.' - Professor Mike Savage, the University of Manchester, UK
'This is an important book on multicultural Britain. It grounds theoretical debates in richly textured empirical analyses, and parts of the book read like a good novel, with real lives and histories unfolding in front of our eyes. Students and professional academics interested in the changing dynamics of social identities in contemporary societies especially culturally diverse societies such as the U.S, Brazil, South Africa, or India - should read this book. Humanists in particular will find this work done by their colleagues in the social sciences very illuminating, and it will suggest ways that humanists and social scientists can work together to explore topics of common interest. Social identity, the focus of this volume, is clearly one such topic.' - Satya P. Mohanty
Professor of English, Cornell University, and Director of the International Future of Minority Studies (FMS) Summer Institute (www.fmsproject.cornell.edu), USA
'...this edited collection delivers the greatest beneficial impact when read in themed sections; however, it is certainly flexible if the reader only wishes to focus on a specific research project. An essential read for all those interested in contemporary formations of identity in the 21st century.' - Michelle Addison, Newcastle University UK, Sociology
Table of ContentsIntroduction - Negotiating Liveable Lives: Intelligibility and Identity in Contemporary Britain; M.Wetherell Part I: CLASS AND COMMUNITY Individualisation and the Decline of Class Identity; A.Heath, J.Curtice & G.Elgenius 'I Don't Want to be Classed, But We Are All Classed': Making Liveable Lives Across Generations; B.Rogaly & B.Taylor Steel, Identity, Community: Regenerating Identities in a South Wales Town; V.Walkerdine White Middle-Class Identity Work Through 'Against the Grain' School Choices; D.James, D.Reay, G.Crozier, F.Jamieson, P.Beedell, S.Hollingworth & K.Williams Part II: ETHNICITIES AND ENCOUNTERS Ethnicities Without Guarantees: An Empirical Approach; R.Harris & B.Rampton 'Con-Viviality' and Beyond: Identity Dynamics in a Young Men's Prison; R.Earle & C.Phillips Imagining the 'Other'/Figuring Encounter: White English Middle-Class and Working-Class Identifications; S.Clarke, S.Garner & R.Gilmour The Subjectivities of Young Somali: The Impact of Processes of Disidentification and Disavowal; G.Valentine & D.Sporton Living London: Women Negotiating Identities in a Post-Colonial City; R.Cox, S.Jackson, M.Khatwa & D.Kiwan Part III: Popular Culture and Relationality The Making of Modern Motherhoods: Storying an Emergent Identity; R.Thomson, M.J.Kehily, L.Hadfield & S.Sharpe The Allure of Belonging: Young People's Drinking Practices and Collective Identification; C.Griffin, A.Bengry-Howell, C.Hackley, W.Mistral & I.Szmigin The Transformation of Intimacy: Classed Identities in the Moral Economy of Reality Television; B.Skeggs & H.Wood
