Modalities of Identity

'The Constitution of Identity: New Modalities of Nationality, Citizenship, Belonging and Being' by Eve Darian-Smith in Austin Sarat and Patty Ewick (eds) Wiley Handbook of Law and Society (Forthcoming) comments

In recent decades there has emerged a large and diverse body of sociolegal literature engaging in identity politics, or what some theorists call the politics of difference. Drawing on the theories and insights of scholars working in cultural studies, feminist studies, sociology, anthropology, geography, political science, history and law, this literature grew out of the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s and gained momentum through the rise of new social movements and debates over multiculturalism in the 1980s and 1990s More recently, sociolegal literature on the politics of identity has had to expand in scale and reach in seeking to analyze the complex relations between individuals and the nation-state in the context of globalization. This essay outlines the analytical approaches in which notions of identity vis-à-vis the nation-state have been thought about in the past, how and in what ways these approaches may be shifting in the present, and what we may as sociolegal scholars need to be thinking about as we confront the future.