SEMINAR 'Social Movements and Contested Identities: An Analytical Framework'
- When?
- Wednesday 10 October 2012, 16.00 to 17.00
- Where?
- 08 AC 03
- Open to:
- Public, Staff, Students
- Speaker:
- Aidan McGarry, University of Brighton
'Social Movements and Contested Identities: An Analytical Framework'
Identity is a key concept in social movement theory. Yet, despite the ink which has been spilled on the relationship between identity and social movements, we do not possess a clear understanding of this ambiguous concept. Indeed, its ambiguity has been one of its strengths because it retains a malleable quality which can be dug into empirical ground. However, there is a danger that such a concept becomes meaningless if it is too flexible. Certainly, identity acts as an adhesive for nascent and established movements and is significant on subjective and collective levels. Identity helps activists to frame arguments, shore up solidarity and to define “them” and “us”. Whilst research has revealed that identity requires boundary maintenance, consciousness raising and negotiation, it has ignored the essentially contested quality of identities.
Bio
Aidan McGarry is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton. His research focuses on minorities, political representation, Roma, the European Union, and social movements. His research has been published in Nationalities Papers, Social Movement Studies, Critical Social Policy and Ethnopolitics, amongst others. He is co-editor of a book The Politics and Discourses of Migration in Europe (Palgrave: 2013) and his first book Who Speaks for Roma? Political Representation of a Transnational Minority Community was published by Continuum in 2010. He is currently writing a book with James Jasper on social movements and identity. In 2013, he will be a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, New York.
