Showing results for "The Politics of Identity" in Money & Finance

“Identity politics” is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom. But the “identity politics” so compulsively referenced bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, “identity politics” is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.

Identity Economics bridges a critical gap in the social sciences. It brings identity and norms to economics. People’s notions of what is proper, and what is forbidden, and for whom, are fundamental to how hard they work, and how they learn, spend, and save. Thus people’s identity—their conception of who they are, and of who they choose to be—may be the most important factor affecting their economic lives.

Sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification in the 1960s to mark the displacement of working-class residents in London neighborhoods by the professional classes. The Death and Life of Gentrification traces how the word has far outgrown Glass's meaning, becoming a socially charged metaphor for cultural appropriation, upscaling, and the loss of authenticity.