Practising Identities : Power and Resistance

Practising Identities is a collection of papers about how identities - gender, bodily, racial, ethnic and national - are practised in the contemporary world.

Who am I?
Who do I want to be?

Questions of identity - individual and collective - confront us at every turn at the end of the twentieth century. Practising Identities is a collection of papers about how identities - gender, bodily, racial, ethnic and national - are practised in the contemporary world. Identities are actively constructed, chosen, created and performed by people in their daily lives; identities are complex, multiple, fragmented and always changing. This book focuses on a variety of identity practices, in a range of different settings, from the gym and the body-piercing studio, to the further education college and the National Health Service. The question of power and the possibilities of creating identities of resistance are to the forefront throughout the book. Drawing on detailed empirical studies and recent social and cultural theory about identity, this book makes an important contribution to current debates about identity, reflexivity, and cultural difference.