Does identity change matter? Everyday agency, moral authority and generational cascades in the transformation of groupness after conflict

Bibliographic Data

ID2059971
AuthorsJ Todd (0000-0003-4023-9553, University College Dublin, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume53
Issue3
Pages571-596
Publication date2024-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheory and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0304-2421 • E-ISSN: 1573-7853
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11186-024-09544-9
OpenAlexW4393902792
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited80

Everyday identity change is common after conflict, as people attempt to move away from oppositional group relations and closed group boundaries. This article asks how it scales up and out to impact these group relations and boundaries, and what stops this? Theoretically, the article focusses on complex oppositional configurations of groupness, where relationality and feedback mechanisms (rather than more easily measured variables) are crucial to change and continuity, and in which moral authority is a key node of reproduction. It uses the normatively weighted concept of transformation to augment existing research on boundary and identity change, while elaborating it to recognise the role of everyday agency in furthering change and moral inertia in impeding it. Substantively, the article compares the processes of everyday transformation of groupness in three cases that are very similar in historical depth, social embeddedness, symbolic opposition and everyday change, but very different in time-scale and with contrasting outcomes: successful transformation of reformation religious groupness; partial transformation of national groupness; and failed transformation of complexly-configured ethnic groupness in Northern Ireland. This allows tracing of the patterns and mechanisms at work. To anticipate, the article argues that everyday identity change can erode the moral authority of groupness. Its impact is generational and dependent on institutional linkages. The article highlights the importance of moral mechanisms as drivers of and obstacles to change; and it suggests ways that the obstacles could be overcome by radical policy interventions

Aesthetics · Conflict transformation · Criminology · Environmental ethics · Moral agency · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Philosophy · Political Conflict and Governance · Psychology · Social Policy and Reform Studies · Social Psychology

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