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Individuality and the Group
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Individuality and the Group
Advances in Social Identity

Edited by:
  • Tom Postmes - University of Exeter, UK, Universiteit Van Amsterdam, Netherlands, University of Groningen, Netherlands
  • Jolanda Jetten - University of Queensland, Australia


April 2006 | 296 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
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.

Jolanda Jetten and Tom Postmes
Introduction
The Puzzle of Inidividuality and the Group

 
 
PART ONE: EXPRESSING AND EXPERIENCING INDIVIDUALITY IN THE GROUP
John C Turner et al
Reconceptualizing Personality
Producing Individuality by Defining the Personal Self

 
Deborah Prentice
Acting Like an Individual versus Feeling Like an Individual
Cynthia L Pickett and Geoffry J Leonardelli
Using Collective Identities for Assimilation and Differentiation
Matthew J Hornsey
Ingroup Critics and Their Influence on Groups
 
PART TWO: SHAPING INDIVIDUALITY THROUGH CULTURE AND SOCIAL IDENTITY
Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi
Group Status and Individual Differentiation
Jolanda Jetten and Tom Postmes
"I Did It My Way"
Collective Expressions of Individualism

 
Michael J Halloran and Emiko S Kashima
Culture, Social Identity and the Individual
Fathali M Moghaddam
Interobjectivity
The Collective Roots of Individual Consciousness and Social Identity

 
 
PART THREE: THE INDIVIDUAL-GROUP DYNAMIC
Russell Spears et al
The Individual Within the Group
Respect!

 
B Ann Bettencourt et al
Psychological Need Satisfaction through Social Roles
Tom Postmes et al
The Dynamics of Personal and Social Identity Formation
Stephen Reichel and S Alexander Haslam
On the Agency of Individuals and Groups
Lessons from the BBC Prison Study

 
Tom Postmes and Jolanda Jetten
Reconciling Indiviuality and the Group

"For researchers in social psychology, and particularly those familiar with SIT and related theories, this book will make for congenial and straightforward reading. For someone outside the field, some of the terminology might take some getting used to, but I would not hesitate to recommend the book to anyone interested in the interplay of individual and social forces in settings ranging from work life to national and international politics. The text is friendly in the sense that terms are defined and theory is placed in larger social and historical context throughout. Also, the book in its entirety is fewer than 300 pages, and most chapters are between 15 and 25 pages in length, so each "bite" of theory and research, so to speak, is easily digestible. All of the chapters are well written, and each contributes an important part to the whole."

Jeffrey Noel
Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books

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