Negotiating liveable lives: intelligibility and identity in contemporary Britain

Abstract

[About the book] Identity in the 21st Century reports from the front-line of identity studies. This collection brings together leading scholars to describe and address trends in contemporary social life. The chapters examine the current patterning of identities based on class and community, gender and generation, 'race', faith and ethnicity, and derived from popular culture. The contributors explore debates about social change, individualisation and the re-making of social class. They examine the evidence for new 'convivial multicultures' in ethnically diverse urban metropolitan centres and the manifestations of more 'fragile' white identities in the provinces. This book results from five years of sustained empirical investigation within the highly innovative Identities and Social Action programme, and this collection provides a rich account of the raw materials people draw upon to build 'liveable' lives