Social Identity

A revolutionary new understanding of identity, showing how our groups have a powerful influence on our feelings, beliefs, and behavior - and how these shared identities can inspire both personal change and social movements.

In this sweeping philosophical work, Amartya Sen proposes that the murderous violence that has riven our society is driven as much by confusion as by inescapable hatred. Challenging the reductionist division of people by race, religion, and class, Sen presents an inspiring vision of a world that can be made to move toward peace as firmly as it has spiraled in recent years toward brutality and war.

What happens when your gender doesn't fit neatly into the categories of male or female? Even mundane interactions like filling out a form or using a public bathroom can be a struggle when these designations prove inadequate. In this groundbreaking book, 30 authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary.

The concept of identity has become widespread within the social and behavioral sciences, cutting across disciplines from psychiatry and psychology to political science and sociology. Introduced more than fifty years ago, identity theory is a social psychological theory that attempts to understand person's identities, their sources in interaction and society, their processes of operation, and their consequences for interaction and society from a sociological perspective.