Beyond unities of identity in high modernity

Abstract

This paper explores contemporary approaches to identity within modernity with reference to the influential recent work of Anthony Giddens (1991, 1994) and recent debates on hybridity and diaspora developed within what may be termed a postmodern framework. Unlike Giddens’ focus on the unitary self of high modernity, whose political project is self‐actualization, and unlike the focus on cultural social forms found in debates on diaspora and hybridity, I argue that social divisions lie at the heart of modern societies. The social divisions of gender, ethnicity, “race,” and class must therefore be prime concerns in sociology because they lie at the very heart of the modern social order. They are central in terms of constructions of identity and otherness and in terms of producing differentiated and complex social outcomes for individuals and groups (Anthias 1998a).