Beyond Groupness: Processes and Paradoxes of Identity Change

Abstract

Existing scholarship orients us to the trends of identity change towards group opposition, not to the always coexisting trends of identity change away from opposition. Major advances have been made in understanding the identity mechanisms that lead into conflict but that there is much less understanding of the identity mechanisms that lead out of conflict. This panel includes papers on how social movements, non-movements and historically distinct populations reproduce and open up groupness. It includes a focus on how boundaries become more permeable, and what processes further and counter this. it includes studies of everyday actors – who disengages, who disidentifies, who ameliorates groupness and when; and studies of the appropriate measures for comparative research in the field.