“THIS IS NOT WHO WE ARE AS A NATION”: Theorizing Collective Identity in the US

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

Scholarly understandings of collective identity depend upon two related insights: that political communities are imagined and that they are created through rhetoric. Those interested in investigating these processes initially focused on the nation and thus also on the role of elites, especially US presidents, in its creation and maintenance. Studies of national identity have always noted that conceptions of collective identity change over time, offering both important routes of inclusion and also maintaining powerful hierarchies and requiring specific kinds of exclusions. Increasingly, scholars are turning their attention to examinations of how communities within, outside of, and crossing the borders of nation-states constitute identities; sometimes congruently with, sometimes in opposition to, and sometimes ignoring conceptions of national identity. Understanding collective identity, then, requires specific attention to how identity itself is understood, who is empowered to articulate it, and how it is conceptualized and circulated.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationThe Routledge Handbook of Rhetoric and Power
PublisherTaylor and Francis
Pages133-143
Number of pages11
ISBN (Electronic)9781040130032
ISBN (Print)9781032554693
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2024

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Arts and Humanities
  • General Social Sciences

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