Tom Postmes – författare

Social identity research has transformed psychology and the social sciences. Developed around intergroup relations, perspectives on social identity have now been applied fruitfully to a diverse array of topics and domains, including health, organizations and management, culture, politics and group dynamics. In many of these new areas, the focus has been on groups, but also very much on the autonomous individual. This has been an exciting development, and has prompted a rethinking of the relationship between personal identity and social identity - the issue of individuality in the group.

This book brings together an international selection of prominent researchers at the forefront of this development. They reflect on this issue of individuality in the group, and on how thinking about social identity has changed. Together, these chapters chart a key development in the field: how social identity perspectives inform understanding of cohesion, unity and collective action, but also how they help us understand individuality, agency, autonomy, disagreement, and diversity within groups.

This text is valuable to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying social psychology where intergroup relations and group processes are a central component. Given its wider reach, however, it will also be of interest to those in cognate disciplines where social identity perspectives have application potential.

This reader brings together the founding texts of the "Social Identity Approach" - a set of concepts, ideas, and principles contained in Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory. This approach originated in social psychology and is increasingly part of the standard curriculum in communication and media studies, organizations and management, sociology, education, and politics. Originally published in the 1970s and 1980s by Henri Tajfel and John Turner, in a wide variety of books and journals, many of these articles have become citation classics, and for good reason: they have lost none of their inspirational quality. The depth and scope of their analysis is unrivalled, and there can be no doubt that the themes they address, such as intergroup conflict, diversity, stereotyping and social influence, are as relevant today as they ever were.