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Identity Before Identity Politics

Linda Nicholson author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:20th Nov '08

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Identity Before Identity Politics cover

Examines the racial and gender social movements of the 1960s in the context of the traditions from which they evolved.

Places identity politics in its historical framework, analyzing the evolution of the concepts and traditions of racial and gender identity. Linda Nicholson examines how changing ideas about social identity both helped and hindered successive social movements and explains the shift to a new discourse of identity politics in the 1960s.In the late 1960s identity politics emerged on the political landscape and challenged prevailing ideas about social justice. These politics brought forth a new attention to social identity, an attention that continues to divide people today. While previous studies have focused on the political movements of this period, they have neglected the conceptual prehistory of this political turn. Linda Nicholson's engaging book situates this critical moment in its historical framework, analyzing the concepts and traditions of racial and gender identity that can be traced back to late eighteenth-century Europe and America. She examines how changing ideas about social identity over the last several centuries both helped and hindered successive social movements, and explores the consequences of this historical legacy for the women's and black movements of the 1960s. This insightful study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of political history, identity politics and US history.

"...an original framing of the rise of identity politics. Recommended." - Choice
"Identity Before Identity Politics is a richly detailed and complex text that engages both intellectual and social history, and provides a precise account of how structural and demographic change intersected with evolving ideologies." - Women's Review of Books
"Linda Nicholson’s Identity before Identity Politics provides an important historical perspective on the current debates over identity politics." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Linda Alcoff, City University of New York

ISBN: 9780521680486

Dimensions: 228mm x 153mm x 13mm

Weight: 340g

202 pages