The Politics of Identity

Social scientists have debated the dimensions of class, humanists have elaborated culture and its political implications, but Stanley Aronowitz argues, the ways in which class, politics and culture are intertwined have rarely been examined. In "The Politics of Identity", Stanley Aronowitz begins from the premise that culture is constitutive of class identities. In these essays, some new and some widely cited, he demonstrates that economic identities are partially responsible for how, when and where classes act in the social realm. While feminist perspectives of both race and gay and lesbian movements have drawn out the racial and gender components of cultural elements, Aronowitz argues, class mediations to cultural identity have not been fully explored.