Essay from the year 2005 in the subject Sociology - Politics, Majorities, Minorities, grade: 1,5, University of Leicester (Department of Sociology), course: Identity and Society, language: English, abstract: The issue about “race” is still of great significance in today’s societies. Recent incidents like racist slurs at football games show how deep racist tendencies are still embedded in people’s minds – in spite of consistent awareness raising and information. However, these examples show only the peak of racist tendencies. Racial imagery in media and arts is central to the organisation of the modern world (Dyer 1997: 1). Furthermore, the scientific “foundation” of theories of “race” continues to be a disputed question for biology as well as for the social sciences (Lang 2000: x). This essay is about the implications of the term “race” and the coherence of “race” and identity. It implements a postmodern approach to the understanding of identity and applies this concept to the representation of "the other" in a recent newspaper article.

"Identity" is one of the most hotly debated topics in literary theory and cultural studies. This bold and groundbreaking collection of ten essays argues that identity is not just socially constructed but has real epistemic and political consequences for how people experience the world. Advocating a "postpositivist realist" approach to identity, the essays examine the ways in which theory, politics, and activism clash with or complement each other, providing an alternative to the widely influential postmodernist understandings of identity. Although theoretical in orientation, this dynamic collection deals with specific social groups—Chicanas/os, African Americans, gay men and lesbians, Asian Americans, and others—and concrete social issues directly related to race, ethnicity, sexuality, epistemology, and political resistance. Satya Mohanty's brilliant exegesis of Toni Morrison's Beloved serves as a launching pad for the collection. The essays that follow, written by prominent and up-and-coming scholars, address a range of topics—from the writings of Cherrie Moraga, Franz Fanon, Joy Kogawa, and Michael Nava to the controversy surrounding racial program housing on college campuses—and work toward a truly interdisciplinary approach to identity.

New Perspectives on Racial Identity Development brings together leaders in the field to deepen, broaden, and reassess our understandings of racial identity development. Contributors include the authors of some of the earliest theories in the field, such as William Cross, Bailey W. Jackson, Jean Kim, Rita Hardiman, and Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe, who offer new analysis of the impact of emerging frameworks on how racial identity is viewed and understood. Other contributors present new paradigms and identify critical issues that must be considered as the field continues to evolve. This new and completely rewritten second edition uses emerging research from related disciplines that offer innovative approaches that have yet to be fully discussed in the literature on racial identity. Intersectionality receives significant attention in the volume, as it calls for models of social identity to take a more holistic and integrated approach in describing the lived experience of individuals. This volume offers new perspectives on how we understand and study racial identity in a culture where race and other identities are socially constructed and carry significant societal, political, and group meaning.

Focusing on the broad range of attitudes Black people employ to make sense of their Blackness, this volume offers the latest research on racial identity. The first section explores meaning-making, or the importance of holding one type of racial-cultural identity as compared to another. It looks at a wide range of topics, including stereotypes, spirituality, appearance, gender and intersectionalities, masculinity, and more. The second section examines the different expressions of internalized racism that arise when the pressure of oppression is too great, and includes such topics as identity orientations, self-esteem, colorism, and linked fate. Grounded in psychology, the research presented here makes the case for understanding Black identity as wide ranging in content, subject to multiple interpretations, and linked to both positive mental health as well as varied forms of internalized racism.

Culture and Identity engages students with autobiographical stories that show the intersections of culture as part of identity formation. The easy-to-read stories centered on such themes as race, ethnicity, gender, class, religion, sexual orientation, and disability tell the real-life struggles with identity development, life events, family relationships, and family history. The Third Edition includes an expanded framework model that encompasses racial socialization, oppression, and resilience. New discussions of timely topics include race and gender intersectionality, microaggressions, enculturation, cultural homelessness, risk of journey, spirituality and wellness, and APA guidelines for working with transgendered individuals.

The issues he explores: Identity and narrative, identity and difference, identity and the unconscious, culture and identity, consumer identity and commodity esthetics, race, ethnicity and nation-ness, post-colonial criticism, the conditions of postmodernity.

Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller! Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn't practice yoga or cook Chinese food? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only white people can be racist? Are you confused by these ideas, and do you wonder how they have managed so quickly to challenge the very logic of Western society? In this probing and intrepid volume, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay document the evolution of the dogma that informs these ideas, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields. Today this dogma is recognizable as much by its effects, such as cancel culture and social-media dogpiles, as by its tenets, which are all too often embraced as axiomatic in mainstream media: knowledge is a social construct; science and reason are tools of oppression; all human interactions are sites of oppressive power play; and language is dangerous. As Pluckrose and Lindsay warn, the unchecked proliferation of these anti-Enlightenment beliefs present a threat not only to liberal democracy but also to modernity itself. While acknowledging the need to challenge the complacency of those who think a just society has been fully achieved, Pluckrose and Lindsay break down how this often-radical activist scholarship does far more harm than good, not least to those marginalized communities it claims to champion. They also detail its alarmingly inconsistent and illiberal ethics. Only through a proper understanding of the evolution of these ideas, they conclude, can those who value science, reason, and consistently liberal ethics successfully challenge this harmful and authoritarian orthodoxy—in the academy, in culture, and beyond.