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Identity in Question
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Identity in Question

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March 2009 | 248 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
Whilst undoubtedly one of the most controversial but also most established issues in research and debate within the contemporary social and human sciences, as well as in cultural studies, work on 'identity' has undergone dramatic changes in recent years. The aim of this book is to provide a detailed analysis of those changes, by confronting the impact of both substantive challenges, concerning globalization, individualization and commodification, for instance, and theoretical developments, from within post-structuralism, psychoanalysis and post-feminism, for example, upon conceptions and formations identity in the current age.

The main aim of this volume is to outline and interrogate the ways in which contemporary theoretical and substantive developments in our understanding of identity have played out across the major traditions of cultural and social theory prominent today. The result is a decisive intervention into debates concerning identity, subjectivity, and personhood.

The highly distinguished group of contributors comprises Zygmunt Bauman, Drucilla Cornell, Anthony Elliott, Stephen Frosh, Paul du Gay, Charles Lemert, Angela McRobbie, Jeffrey Prager, Janet Sayers, Lynne Segal and Richard Sennett.

Identity in Question provides an invaluable survey of cultural and social theories of identity and will be of interest to students and professionals in cultural and media studies, sociology, social theory, political science and philosophy.


Anthony Elliott and Paul du Gay
Introduction
Zygmunt Bauman
Identity in a Globalizing World
Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim
Losing the Traditional: Individualization and 'Precarious Freedoms'
Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert
The Global New Individualist Debate: Three Theories of Individualism and Beyond
Drucilla Cornell
Heeding Piedade's Song: Feminism and Sublime Affinity
Angela McRobbie
Top Girls? Young Women and the Post-Feminist Sexual Contract
Paul du Gay
The Identities of Self-Interest: Performativity, History, Ethics
Anthony Elliott
The Constitution of the Subject: Primary Repression after Kristeva and Laplanche
Jeffrey Prager
Melancholic Identity: Post-traumatic Loss Memory and Identity Formation
Stephen Frosh and Lisa Barraitser
Goodbye To Identity
Jessica Evans
Cathected Identities: Governance and Community Activism
Janet Sayers
Psy-Art: Re-Imagining Identity

A spectacular collection of essays by the most noted theorists of identity. The book well frames the issues around identity that presently are defining living in the early 21st century … A must read.

Patricia Ticineto Clough
City University, New York

A wonderfully disparate and impressively distinguished set of authors to address the question of identity. The result is exciting and fruitful. No other book connects so elegantly sociological notions of individualization with the psychoanalysis of melancholy.

Scott Lash
Goldsmiths, University of London

A series of cutting-edge papers on the new individualism... an excellent collection that I would recommend to anybody who wants to understand the state of individuality today.

Mark Featherstone
Keele University

adoption feedback should be at least 20 characters long.

Martin Malone
June 12, 2014

This is a useful text which may benefit student learning in a variety of contexts. For this reason I will be adopting the text as supplemental to dedicated module texts throughout the course.

Mrs Haz Hughes
Health , University Campus Suffolk
November 12, 2009

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