Individuality and the Group: Advances in Social Identity

Social identity research has transformed psychology and the social sciences. Developed around intergroup relations, perspectives on social identity have now been applied fruitfully to a diverse array of topics and domains, including health, organizations and management, culture, politics and group dynamics. In many of these new areas, not only has the focus been on groups, but also very much on the autonomous individual.

This is an exciting development, and has prompted a re-thinking of the relationship between personal identity and social identity—the issue of individuality in the group.

This book brings together an international selection of prominent researchers at the forefront of this development. They reflect on this issue of individuality in the group, and on how the thinking about social identity has changed.

Together, these chapters chart a key development in the field: how social identity perspectives inform an understanding of cohesion, unity and collective action, as well as how they help us understand individuality, agency, autonomy, disagreement and diversity within groups.

This text will be of value to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying the social psychology of intergroup relations and group processes. Given its wider reach, however, it will also be of interest to those in cognate disciplines where social identity perspectives are adopted and developed.