Comparative Approaches to Identity Change: Macro, Meso and Micro Perspectives

Identity is a valuable yet highly contested concept in social sciences. It is premised on self-understandings but conditioned by the representations of others and collective categories. It is constructed, but not at will. While changes in collective categories of identity are often at the core of social and political transformation, the processes of identity change have not been subjected to systematic inquiry. Within political science and international relations, alternative accounts and explanations of identity change can be found in diverse fields such as conflict resolution, Europeanisation, socio-political mobilisation, ethnic studies, migration studies, boundary analysis, feminist/queer theory, and foreign policy analysis. The main objective of this Workshop is to establish a dialogue between these discrete accounts of identity change with the ultimate aim of identifying common dynamics and processes. The Workshop aims to produce added value by creating a sustained discussion between scholars who take different approaches to identity change, in different cases and comparisons, and to suggest ways in which more systematic comparative research on this difficult but important area can be developed.