This book shows how the individual constructs a self from the thousands of colloquial identities provided by a society's culture, and reveals how the individual actualizes and sustains an integrated and stable self while navigating the sometimes treacherous waters of everyday institutional life.

IKKE-FULDSTÆNDIGT-INDEXERET Modern institutions differ from all preceding forms of social order in respect of their dynamism, the degree to which they undercut traditional habits and customs, and their global impact. However, these are not only extensional transformations: modernity radically alters the nature of day-today social life and affects the most personal aspects of our experience. One of the distinctive features of modernity, in fact, is an increasing interconnection between the two "extremes" of extensionality and intentionality: globalising influences on the one hand and personal dispositions on the one hand and personal dispositions on the other. The aim of this book is to analyse the nature of these interconnections and to provide a conceptual vocabulary for thinking about them.

Scholarly interest in issues of self-identity has exploded across disciplines within the humanities and social sciences in recent years. Common to these concerns are the assumptions that self-identity is not an a priori, not given or fixed, but created in the process of communication. This also assumes that social institutions and values are produced and reproduced by individuals in interaction. To capture the essential characteristics of a person requires analysis of how the social and psychological intersect in moments of communication. Interaction and Identity contributes, theoretically and empirically, to contemporary scholarly interest in issues of identity. Chapters and contributors to this stand alone volume include: "Part/Whole Discovery: Stages of Inquiry" by Thomas Scheff; "Communication" by Gregory Bateson; "Internal Muzak: An Examination of Intrapersonal Relationships" by Linda Lederman; "The Constitution of Identity as Gendered in Psychoanalytic Therapy: Ideology and Interaction" by Margaret Carr; and "The (Reconstruction and Negotiation of Cultural Identities in the Age of Globalization" by Getinet Belay. The multiple disciplines of social research with contemporary interest in identity are ably reflected in Interaction and Identity. The authors are drawn from eight disciplines: anthropology, communication, information science, linguistics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychology, and sociology. This book will be invaluable to scholars in all these areas—above all in communication research as such.

Social identity research has transformed psychology and the social sciences. Developed around intergroup relations, perspectives on social identity have now been applied fruitfully to a diverse array of topics and domains, including health, organizations and management, culture, politics and group dynamics. In many of these new areas, the focus has been on groups, but also very much on the autonomous individual. This has been an exciting development, and has prompted a rethinking of the relationship between personal identity and social identity - the issue of individuality in the group. This book brings together an international selection of prominent researchers at the forefront of this development. They reflect on this issue of individuality in the group, and on how thinking about social identity has changed. Together, these chapters chart a key development in the field: how social identity perspectives inform understanding of cohesion, unity and collective action, but also how they help us understand individuality, agency, autonomy, disagreement, and diversity within groups. This text is valuable to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying social psychology where intergroup relations and group processes are a central component. Given its wider reach, however, it will also be of interest to those in cognate disciplines where social identity perspectives have application potential.

This book examines sociological perspectives on identity, illuminating the perennial problem of defining the human person, and posing an alternative definition of identity.

Why do people enter total institutions – places that confine and control them around the clock – and how does the experience change them? This book updates Goffman's classic model by introducing the Re-inventive Institution, where members voluntarily commit themselves to pursue regimes of self-improvement.