Identity Politics

Abstract

Identity politics refers to the struggle for political recognition by marginalized social groups based on particular affiliations of individual identity, such as gender, sexuality, “race,” ethnicity, and nationality (→ Marginality, Stigma, and Communication; Symbolic Annihilation). Identity‐based movements, as they grew in the west, challenged the limitations of political representation and citizenship offered within the liberal democratic state and institutions. Even as identity politics made visible more dominant social inequities, it also opened the door for rethinking and questioning within social movements based on identity, such as the movements for women's liberation and feminisms in general (→ Social Movements and Communication). At the heart of feminist identity politics are the questions: who is the “woman” that is imagined as the subject of feminism or of women's emancipation, and is there a singular significance to gender identity when the “woman” is embedded in a network of other social identities such as race, ethnicity, religious community, or nationality?

Terrorism: Social capital, social construction, and constructive society?

“…Finally, the mentioned identity clash evident in terrorism supports the concept of identity politics which refers to the struggle for political recognition by marginalized social groups based on particular affiliations of individual identity, such as gender, sexuality, “race,” ethnicity, and nationality (Zacharias, 2008). And, in discursive analysis, othering is often seen as dysfunction, and perhaps it is also that with terrorism, which as targeted at a foe is a counter othering.…”