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A new report from Amnesty International acknowledges the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians from their homes as a crucial pillar of Israel's apartheid system. It inveighs that (opens in a new w"According to one estimate, Israel has expropriated over 10,000 shops, 25,000 buildings and almost 60% of the fertile land belonging to Palestinian refugees in … Continued

Joshua Thorp finds that disability is indeed an important dimension of political identity for many disabled Americans. While disabled Americans do not appear mobilized along party lines, a sense of belonging to the disability community is associated with ideological liberalism and support for a range of social and redistributive policies.
The post Does Disability Shape Political Identity? first appeared on Center for Political Studies (CPS) Blog.

Arguments over who has a right to speak, Eszter Kováts writes, should give way to discussing what they say.

Its become almost cliche to say that we are now somehow living in an age of identity politics. Controversies ostensibly belonging to that term seem to be piling up at a ferocious rate. Whether it be to do with toxic masculinity in online gaming communities, the tearing down of confederate statues in southern American states, the campaign access to transgender bathrooms, the failure of Hillary Clinton's election campaign to recognize that gender is not a category that excludes the working class, or the right to freedom of speech of members of the so-called 'intellectual dark web,' it seems we're just awash with this intense and rapidly proliferating series of disputes over how we regulate speech and symbolic acts, in the public sphere. Clearly, we do think these debates are important — after all, as any politically-active user on Twitter and Facebook will tell you — we can spend vast amounts of time in arguments about these issues. And we continue to engage in them, even tho they don't seem to change anyone's minds (and reports suggest they are actually not very good for our mental health!).

But how did we get here? What made us suddenly so aware of identity, and why do we feel the need to argue about it? Is there anything redeeming about identity politics, and how — or to what extent — should the left be engaging in it? To discuss these questions and more, our guest for this episode is Marie Moran. Marie is a lecturer in Equality Studies at the School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, in UCD, in Dublin, and she has a piece in the latest issue of Historical Materialism, called 'Identity and Identity Politics'. Based on some pretty compelling research, she lays out an argument in the piece that identity is actually a very new concept in the analysis of social life, and that we need to exercise much greater care in our approach to distinguishing what it is, and what isn't.

As you'll hear in the interview, Marie isn't necessarily opposed to identity politics. Not by any means. But she does believe that we may have taken a wrong turn in our grasp of its political significance. Thus, while we might find it hard not to be put off by the toxicity of today's "call out culture," Moran would remind us that the Black Power Movements who first embraced the concept of identity in the 1960s, did not have an essentializing approach to it. That is, that they didn't see their struggle to secure recognition for their groups in the public sphere as an end in itself (EDIT: Marie has since written me an email asking me to clarify that her position is that identity is "invariably" essentializing "and by definition does" essentialize. I hope the listener/reader will understand my point here, however, which is to follow Marie's own argument that not all identity struggles are carried out for the sake of identity, only). So, this is going to be one of the big topics in the interview you're about to hear — what it means to essentialize identity, and the linkages between today's identity mania, and capitalism's culture of self. Towards the end, we get into a good discussion of the similarities and differences between Marie's approach to the topic, and those presented by Asad Haider in his new book, 'Mistaken Identity' (we posted on this, last week). There's been a lot of controversy about the book online, but I think you'll find Marie's take to be pretty thoughtful.

On a final note, I just want to apologize for the poor audio quality in this interview — due to unforeseen circumstances, we ended up having to record this interview in Skype. I've done my best to clean it up, but you'll definitely hear some echo on the line. Its a shame, but stick with us - this is a really fascinating interview. Marie is a very careful and precise scholar. And I think you'll agree that she's making an important contribution to this debate.

Niki Alsford's recent book, "Taiwan Lives," explores how the Taiwanese people have transformed their home, a product of settler colonialism, into one of the world's most high-tech economies, with a successful and vibrant democracy, and a distinctive cultural identity.

In Understanding Humans: How Social Science Can Help Solve Our Problems, David Edmonds curates a selection of interviews with social science researchers covering the breadth of human life and society, from morality, bias and identity to kinship, inequality and justice. Accessible and engaging, the research discussed in the book illuminates the crucial role of social sciences in addressing contemporary … Continued

In Understanding Humans: How Social Science Can Help Solve Our Problems, David Edmonds curates a selection of interviews with social science researchers covering the breadth of human life and society, from morality, bias and identity to kinship, inequality and justice. Accessible and engaging, the research discussed in the book illuminates the crucial role of social sciences in addressing … Continued

Most research into online misinformation has investigated its direct
effects—the impact it may have on citizens' beliefs and behaviour. Much
less attention has been paid to how citizens themselves make sense of
misinformation as a broader social problem, even though such attitudes are
likely to shape how people respond to anti-misinformation interventions.

In this article we integrated some select theories of narrative, identity,
cultural capital, and social distinction to examine how people construct
the problem of misinformation and their orientation to it.

Hot off the press… the latest publication from the Everyday Misinformation
Project, out now in Media, Culture & Society.

Respecting the linguistic rights of the Amazigh people promotes social integration and allows speakers to freely express their culture and identity, which results in increased civic engagement.

Social media users argue that embracing African traditional clothing is a means of seeking identity and celebrating African styles, suggesting that such a ban contradicts this sentiment.

" ... [I]n prisons, LGBTQ+ people are overloaded with crimes: in addition to the crime committed, they also pay for the social and symbolic crime of their sexuality and gender identity."

For decades, social scientific study of religion has been dominated by the secularisation question: is religion growing or declining? But this has distracted us from asking how religion itself is changing and, in turn, changing understandings of identity, political participation and citizenship for millions of people around the world. Ahead of our upcoming #LSEFestival panel … Continued

According to the latest industry statistics, the global influencer economy grew from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $21.1 billion in 2023 — and it's only expected to grow exponentially from here with advances in artificial intelligence. In 1988, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman investigated how mass media sways audiences to conform to social norms without coercion, or what they called "manufacturing consent." In her new book, "The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media," Dr. Emily Hund investigates how social media influencers have manufactured a new media economy to which we've unwittingly consented.

Hund, a research affiliate at the Center on Digital Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, joins Bethany and Luigi to unpack this new digital landscape where influence has become a powerful currency, shaping not only news consumption and consumer behavior but the very fabric of modern capitalism. Together, they discuss whether influencers are empowered entrepreneurs rewriting market rules or victims of a system that commodifies identity. What are the hidden incentives driving influencer messaging and, thus, the news and content we receive?

Read an excerpt from Hund's book (Princeton University Press, 2023) on ProMarket.

Hello friends! Its beginning to look a lot of like Christmas, and what better way to mark the occasion than with another episode of Fully Automated! Today, we are very excited to bring you this episode with Christine Louis Dit Sully, author of the recent book, Transcending Racial Divisions: Will You Stand By Me? (Zero Books, 2021).



Christine Louis-Dit-Sully grew up in an immigrant family, in the 93rd arrondissement of Paris, Seine-Saint-Denis — an area of France known for its racial diversity, its poverty, and its complicated relationship with law enforcement. She spent nearly 20 years as an academic in the discipline of Biology. She then left the sciences, and turned to the study of politics, focusing specifically on issues of race, identity, social justice and the demand for 'safe spaces' in British and American universities. Today, she lives in the Black Forest region of Germany.



In the introduction to Transcending Racial Divisions, Louis-Dit-Sully writes that, for her, questions about race and racism are both a "political and a personal concern." She goes on to discuss the common belief that the advance of social liberalism in the west has meant real progress for racial minorities. The problem with this myth, she notes, is that today we are much less likely to see members of racial groupings as distinct individuals, with their own unique identities. Instead, we have seen the rise of so-called identity politics, and a tendency to see individuals first and foremost as members of a race. Indeed, she notes, in her personal experience, she is seen once again today as a black woman, whose "opinions and beliefs are apparently determined by her race."



Historically, racial thinking has been a hallmark of the right. However, worryingly, today it is also an increasingly common phenomena on the left. Now, some will say the left has good faith motivations in this turn. After all, given the history of racism, it is not entirely unfair to assume that the victims of racism might have something to say on the matter. Yet, she states, here we run into the problem of anti-politics. Because if we are ever to create real equality, we require the kind of power that can come only from a universalistic form of solidarity. However, the contemporary left's embrace of standpoint epistemology — the belief that an idea can be understood only from the standpoint of a certain group identity — means that groups are seen as immutable, and immune to the passage of time. Whiteness, for example, is equated with original sin, and blackness equated with injury, and perpetual victimhood. If this is true, she says, then politics itself — that is, our very ability to imagine political change — is destroyed. Clearly then, if we are to discover a universalistic basis for solidarity, we must find new ways of understanding the world. And, for Louis-Dit-Sully, this means a return to Marx.

Erec Smith


There is no such thing as a panacea; few things are actual cure‐​alls in themselves, especially when it pertains to social issues. However, the closest thing to a panacea for contemporary social injustice—both actual and perceived—is the concept of individualism. It is the closest foil to what is, arguably, the most dangerous aspect of critical social justice activism: race fatalism, i.e., the idea that especially minoritized groups have no locus of control and are at the mercy of their hegemonic oppressors.
Unfortunately, too many social justice activists embrace this fatalism and, both implicitly and explicitly, demonize individualism as an inherently oppressive, white supremacist concept.
Race fatalism cannot exist without the idea that all people from a given race experience the world similarly (race essentialism), and that we are forever defined by our home environments (linked fate), concepts that could not be more opposed to individualism. Thus, to embrace individualism is to relinquish faith in the fundamentals of critical social justice.
Fortunately, when individualism destroys these fundamentals steeped in powerlessness, it gives birth to agency and freedom conducive to an empowered and fulfilled life.
The most egregious aspects of critical social justice activism—now wryly and/​or disdainfully referred to as "woke" activism—can be considered footnotes of fatalism: skin‐​color and or gender determine if you are a perpetual oppressor or a perpetual victim; racism will never go away and can only be managed; black kids can't learn math like other kids; all people who look the same or live in the same area are bound to a particular outlook and particular fate. All these suggest the "truth" of race essentialism, that racism is always already present, and that even words, if coming from an oppressor, are literal violence.
The power of this fatalism is weakened by the concept of methodological individualism, what can be understood as an embrace of free will with an acknowledgement that we live an interdependent existence, i.e., "no man is an island."
In recent essays, I describe such individualism as an antidote to race essentialism and linked fate. In "Individualism is a Social Justice Issue," I insist that the embrace of individualism can enhance racial justice through its implied refutation of linked fate and its conduciveness to defensive confidence.
Regarding linked fate, I write, "linked fate denotes the use of the social standing of a group as a proxy for one's individual identity, i.e., an individual's fate is inevitably and intricately linked to that of the group. Any individual that seems to escape this fate is considered an exception." Linked fate depends on the debunked stimulus‐​response theory in behavioral science: the idea that people who share the same race or culture experience the world the same way. Senator Tim Scott's passionate rebuttal of linked fate focuses on the idea that educational reform is the thing that can unlink fate most efficiently and instill a sense of agency in students, a sentiment elaborated upon by Ian Rowe.
Agency, or "agential fate," a concept of individual efficacy I support in "Ditching Our Discourses of Doom" (excerpted here), "can be construed as a confluence of pre‐​established circumstances—one's life experiences—combined with free will." This concept necessitates the belief "that each individual in a particular context may react to stimulus in different ways; that they each may have a different desired future state; and that their decisions and choices matter in relation to achieving those future states, we enter into a place of agency, possibility, and hope."
This agency, possibility, and hope imply the concept of defensive confidence I reference in a recent Discourse article. If people have defensive confidence—the confidence that one can successfully defend one's ideas in given situations—they are more likely to engage the world more courageously as individuals unbeholden to a group and is, ironically, more likely to have one's mind changed precisely because of this willingness to engage.
These concepts suggest the benefits individualism can have to a sense of social justice and, especially, in combatting the fatalism of social justice activism. Individuals can think independently, adapt to circumstances, and, therefore, more effectively exercise agential fate and defensive confidence, thus better ensuring an attempt to communicate across differences.
Sadly, the concept of individualism is almost anathema in critical social justice circles, in which group identity is favored and individualism is considered an oppressive concept. Race essentialism, which implies concepts like linked fate and group consciousness, is a foundational concept in critical social justice that is diametrically opposed to individualism.
Individualism is not only the best thing for curing the ills of social injustice; it is also, by nature, the downfall of critical social justice ideology. For this reason, maybe "panacea's" more colloquial synonym, "magic bullet" would be more apropos.