Identity Politics

Identity politics is a term most frequently used in disciplines with strong roots in poststructuralism—feminist theory, queer theory, and multicultural theory, among others. During the second wave of feminism, and the 1970s and 1980s more generally, there was increasing attention given to those categories of people who had long been left out of the view of study. There was a concern to give voice to those who had long been silenced. Intersections of race, sex, class, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and nationality were among the many identities that began to draw the attention of social scientists. This focus on cultural identities represented a marked shift from the economic and political based analysis that had dominated the sciences to this time. This assertion of the individual, and ...