This collected volume draws together essays written by International Relations scholars from a variety of regional, methodological and theoretical perspectives to confront the challenges of identity-centered analysis. In particular, the contributors seek to elucidate the general meaning and methodological implications of the commonly state yet largely unexamined, assertion that identities are relational, fluid, constructed, and multiple.

"an unpacking of the term identity packed with illustrations from tango to transnationalization. a welcome addition to IR's identity debates in the classroom and beyond." - Professor Cynthia Weber, Lancaster University, UK

"This timely book is a major event in scholarship in identity theory and global politics. Goff and Dunn have assembled an outstanding ensemble of established leading scholars of identity theory as well as a number of highly promising junior scholars. Their collected essays offer the reader essential theoretical insights in addition to wide-ranging original empirical research that will illuminate scholars interested in international relations theory, comparative politics and area studies as well as anyone interested in the salience of shifting social identities in a globalizing world."- Dr. Rodney Bruce Hall, Academic Director, Oxford University Foreign Service Programme & University Lecturer in International Political Economy

Autorentext
PATRICIA GOFF is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Utah. She has published articles in Party Politics and International Studies Quarterly .

KEVIN C. DUNN teaches at Hobart and William Smith College and is the author of Africa's Challenge to IR Theory (Palgrave, 2001) and Imagining the Congo (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)

Inhalt
Introduction; P.M.Goff & K.C.Dunn PART I: ALTERITY Deep Structure, Free Floating Signifier or Something in Between?: Europe's Alterity in Putin's Russia; I.B.Neumann The Power and the Passion: Civilizational Identity and Alterity in the Wake of September 11th; J.O'Hagan Engendering Social Transformations in the Post-Socialist Czech Republic; J.True PART II: FLUIDITY Continuity and Change in South African Political Identity; J.Frueh (Re)Doing Identity in International Relations: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Bengal; S.Arnold The Trouble With the Evolués: French Republicanism, Colonial Subjectivity and Identity; S.Grovogui PART III: CONSTRUCTEDNESS Narrating Identity: Constructing the Congo During the 1960 Crisis; K.C.Dunn Contestation, Complicity and Cultural Entrepreneurship: Agency and National Identity Construction in the Transcaspian Region; D.W.Blum Whose Identity? Some Thoughts on How to Analyze Identity as a Completely Social Construct; P.Jackson PART IV: MULTIPLICITY Time for Politics; E.Manning Rights, Region and Identity: Exploring the Ambiguities of South Africa's Regional Human Rights Role; D.Black & Z.Wilson Competing Regionalisms in North America: Contestation, Spatiality and the Emergence of Cross-Border Identities?; M.H.Marchand Conclusion; P.M.Goff & K.C.Dunn