Self-Identity and Its Discontents: Sociology in the 1990s (original) (raw)

Why Identity and Why Identity in the 1990s? To celebrate the 50 th anniversary of the journal Sociology, the Editorial Board have decided to publish four e-special issues to showcase the depth of material in its archive. After some discussion the Board agreed that these should be grouped by both time period and theme: the other e-special issues are '1967-1979 Sociology and Social Class' edited by Ryan and Maxwell, 'Sociology in the 1980s-The Rise of Gender' edited by Roth and Dashper, and 'Sociology in the 21 st Century-Reminiscence and Redefinition' edited by Jawad, Dolan and Silkington.Identity was chosen as the focus for the present e-special issue as the 1990s was an important period in the development of public and sociological discussions around this slippery concept. This was an era when the politics of group identities came to the fore (around sexuality and ethnicity to name but two). It was also, as we discuss below, the decade when the notion of the 'individualization' of self-identities was widely discussed in sociology and beyond. Sociologists' interest in the topic of identity has waxed and waned over the years. Much of the work of classic social theory, including Durkheim, Marx, and Simmel, was concerned with the impact of the shift from traditional to modern society on people's sense of self and on the relationship between individual and society. Decades after, the fathers of symbolic interactionism, Mead and Cooley, explored the inherently social processes by which personal identities are formed. Later Goffman's extensive work considered how unwritten rules of interaction inform social identities and their presentation. In spite of this rich tradition, identity did not figure as a topic when David Morgan and Liz Stanley, the editors of Sociology, organized a collection around key debates within British sociology to celebrate the journal's 25 th anniversary in 1992. The chapters, written by current or recent members of the Sociology editorial board, discussed social mobility; women and class; organisational structures; 'industrialism'; inequalities within the household; power; ethnomethodology; and gender (Morgan and Stanley, 1993). The term 'identity' was missing from the contents and index of this collection. Yet within a few years it was ubiquitous across the sociology curriculum and has remained so. This embrace of the term 'identity' did not come without