Identity: Sociological Perspectives

Questions about who we are, who we can be, and who is like and unlike us underpin a vast range of contemporary social issues. What makes our families so important to us? Why do we attach such significance to being ourselves? Why do so many television programmes promise to revolutionise our lives? Who are we really?

In this highly readable new book, Steph Lawler examines a range of important debates about identity. Taking a sociological perspective, she shows how identity is produced and embedded in social relationships, and worked out in the practice of peoples everyday lives. She challenges the perception of identity as belonging within the person, arguing instead that it is produced and negotiated between persons.

Chapter-by-chapter her book carefully explores topics such as the relationships between lives and life-stories, the continuing significance of kinship in the face of social change, and how taste works to define identity. For Lawler, without understanding identity, we can't adequately begin to understand the social world.

This book will be essential reading on upper-level courses across the social sciences that focus on the compelling issues surrounding identity.