Trends in the Qualitative Study of Social Identities

This article reviews recent developments and trends in the qualitative study of social identities. Recent scholarship emphasizes multidimensionality and challenges notions of identity singularity and coherence. These challenges include critiques of the implicit identity monism of approaches that give master status primacy to a single marked identity attribute along race, class, gender, or sexuality axes or that portray static notions of a coherent single unified self-identity. After analyzing the social bases of collective identities and self-identities, this article examines identity strategies, claims to identity authenticity, identity shifts and transitions, and the contextual situatedness and multidimensionality of self-identities. Recent developments in the sociology of identity focus on the multidimensionality and mobility of contemporary identities. These developments can be understood by separating identity research into its analysis of markedness and unmarkedness, authenticity claims, and the role of mobility and flexibility, in contributing to the multidimensional character of social identities.