| The chapters in this book focus on the experience of identity as a key problem in social organisation. Most commentators on global and local social change can readily acknowledge that ‘identity’ will be fundamental to their social analysis; yet most also find it a perplexing and contradictory concept when trying to capture the force and experience of selfconsciousness and collective awareness. ‘Identity’ is regularly thought of as intimate in its meaning and referents; yet is also often macropolitical in its texture, context and effects. The pathways to and from social identity suggest divergent causal sequences – use is made of the affectual element in intimate bonds in order to source the meaning of binding political ethnicity; reference is made to national political and economic fault lines to explain enforced choices in the primary social roles of gender, employment, caste, religion and citizen. |