Social Identity in Question: Construction, Subjectivity and Critique

by Dashtipour; Parisa

• ISBN13: 9781848720800
• ISBN10: 1848720807
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-08-17
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Social identity theory is one of the most influential approaches to identity, group processes, intergroup relations, and social change. This book draws on Lacanian psychoanalysis and Lacanian social theorists to investigate and rework the predominant concepts in the social identity framework. Social Identity in Questionbegins by reviewing the ways in which the social identity tradition has previously been critiqued by social psychologists who view human relations as conditioned by historical context, culture and language. The author offers an alternative perspective, based upon psychoanalytic notions of subjectivity. The chapters go on to develop these discussions, and cover topics such as: self-categorisation theory the minimal group paradigm group attachment and conformity intergroup conflict, social change and resistance Each chapter seeks to disrupt the image of the subject as rational, unitary and whole, and to questions whether human relations are predictable. It is a book which will be of great interest to lecturers, researchers, and students in critical psychology, social psychology, cultural studies, sociology, and media studies.