Who Are We?: How Identity Politics Took Over the World

Who Are We?: How Identity Politics Took Over the World

by Gary Younge
Who Are We?: How Identity Politics Took Over the World

Who Are We?: How Identity Politics Took Over the World

by Gary Younge

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Overview

From award-winning journalist and sociology professor Gary Younge, a nuanced analysis of identity politics and why they matter today.
We are more alike than we are unalike. But the way we are unalike matters. To be male in Saudi Arabia, Jewish in Israel or white in Europe confers certain powers and privileges that those with other identities do not have. In other words, identity can represent a material fact in itself.

As Gary Younge demonstrates in this classic book, now featuring a new introduction, how we define ourselves affects every part of our lives: from violence on the streets to international terrorism; from changes in our laws to whom we elect; from our personal safety to military occupations.

Moving between fascinating memoir and searing analysis, from beauty contests in Ireland to the personal views of Tiger Woods, from the author's own terrifying student days in Paris to how race and gender affect one's voting choices, Gary Younge makes surprising and enlightening connections and a devastating critique of the way our society really works.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781645037347
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Publication date: 01/26/2021
Pages: 256
Sales rank: 1,050,561
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.95(d)
Age Range: 13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster and a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester in England. Formerly a columnist at TheGuardian, he is an editorial board member of the Nation magazine and the Alfred Knobler Fellow for Type Media Center. He has written five books: Another Day in the Death of America, A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives; The Speech, The Story Behind Martin Luther King's Dream; Who Are We?, And Should it Matter in the 21st century; Stranger in a Strange Land, Travels in the Disunited States and No Place Like Home, A Black Briton's Journey Through the Deep South. He has also written for The New York Review of Books, Granta, GQ, Financial Times and TheNew Statesman and made several radio and television documentaries on subjects ranging from gay marriage to Brexit. He lives in London with his wife and two children.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Me, Myself, I 19

Apolitical identity in ten parts

2 A Wise Latina 42

The question is not whether we all have identities, but whether we are all prepared to recognize them

3 The Chronicles of Cablinasia 65

Identities do not emerge out of common sense but communities

4 Blessed are the Gatekeepers 91

There is no such thing as authenticity, but there are plenty of people trying to enforce it

5 The Truth in Her Eyes 113

The only certain thing about any identity is that it will keep on changing

6 The Many in One 143

We each have several identities that can be compared but not ranked

7 The Enemy Within 172

Identities make no sense unless understood within the context of power

8 Lost in Translation 203

So long as the global means the erosion of democracy, the local will mean the elevation of identity

Conclusion: Keeping the Wolf from the Door 229

Bibliography 234

Acknowledgements 238

Index 239

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