Lecture 3; gender, sexuality and identity (see notes, a lot of pictures) Flashcards
Detraditionalization
Traditional and authoritarian value patterns have declined in favor of postmodern value patterns, emphasizing self-expression, equal opportunities, and respect for different cultural traditions
“homonationalism
PRR politicians have been including gay citizens among those needing protection, particularly against Islam.
The PRR receives no homonationalist voting bonus in the Netherlands because the lion’s share of these votes is attracted by their mainstream but rather homonationalist competitor—the Conservative-Liberals; the exceptions are the most populist voters.
Identity politics
The relation between personal experience and political stance
Political mobilisation
Political mobilisation = ethnic, religious, class and ideological identities are strong and linked to political behaviour (voting, protest)
White supremacy movement
Right wing people think our ‘’culture’’ are endangered by outsiders. Their culture is dominant, but it can still be swamp away from the inside (boreal world order). This creates an enormous stress because they deeply feel that their world is declining and being taken over, how this is being done is unclear, but according to them something is shifting their worldview.
Status insecurity and deprivation
Alt-right: young teen identity. The more anxious people are, the more extreme they become. Influx of immigrants, social justice by people of colour, feminist movements, and LGBTQ+ pride are perceived as threats to overall white identity, heritage and culture. This creates a threat by ‘others’ and feelings of marginalisation. This creates a longing for fixed securities, group identities. It might help that you belong to a group that tells you who you are, what you believe.
Collective identity
A collective identity is a not given ‘pre-existing’ category, but symbolic representation of ‘commonness’ among a group of people, in contrast to other collectives.
- Flexible boundaries + constant reproduction through social interaction (also creating variation within)
- Reproduction through shared knowledge and recognized social routines (‘common’ behaviour and institutions) = a relevant and meaningful category for its member (regardless whether self-ascribed or ascribed by others)
Social class identity
Some contrast identity politics – activism by status-based social movements organized around gender, race/ethnicity and sexuality – from class-based politics
Class, production and capital
Marx identified social class through proximity to the means of production: ruling classes (owners of capital, distant from production) exploit the working classes (close to means of production) by paying them only fraction of their worth and keeping the surplus value as profit.
Bourdieu 3 types of capital to identify social classes
- Financial capital (e.g. income, wealth, inheritance
- Cultural capital (e.g. knowledge, education, taste of the arts, manners, values
- Social capital (e.g. social network, group memberships)
- Neo-Marxists
culture differs from institutions, politics and the economy.
o Culture is constitutive, structuring and constraining institutions
o Self-transformation is self-indulgent and ‘non-political’ (not related to real divider = class)
- New social movement theorists
separation of culture from class (political economy) ignores that cultural identities are linked to concrete structural and material locations
o New social movements challenge dominant cultural codes and question how societies deal with difference
Ethnic identity
Collective ethnic or national identities (link between individual and groups): aspect of human existence and self-consciousness
Primordial
identity as intrinsic and inherent (importance of blood and descent, religion, language, custom and culture), static, unchanging and unchangeable
o Neo-primordialism: ethnic consciousness is only realised when the group is threatened (culturally, politically, socially) by external forces (fundamental right to self-determination)
Instrumentalist/constructivist:
identity is situational and contextual, a created sentiment, based on social, political and cultural resources, flexible, strategically and tactically manipulative, ever-changing perception of identity at both the individual and collective level, processual, multivocal
