Experiencing Identity - Softcover

Craib, Ian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803976925 ISBN 13: 9780803976924

Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1998

Synopsis

Ian Craib is one of the best informed and most penetrating commentators on theory and identity working today. Over many years, he has made notalbe contributions to the study of classical social theory, modern social theory, and psychoanalysis. This volume reflects the full range of his interests. The book is organized around the themes of experience and identity. It begins with a critique of existing sociological accounts of identity, arguing that these are incurably cognitive, treating the people that they study as incapable of experiencing and internal life of internal space. The book moves on to consider the implications of this in social theory and human practice. The argument in divided into three parts. Part 1 traces a Utopian notion of experience developed in Western Marxism, through its steady decline over the first half of the 20th century to the understanding of ambivalence emphasized by modern psychoanalysis. Part 2 offers criticisms of ôgrand theoryö in sociology and of less grand forms of sociology, showing how their lack of concern with lived experience creates unrecognized theoretical and empirical problems. In Part 3, these issues are situated in the context of psychoanalysis, suggesting that psychoanalysis can add to our understanding of experience, but shares the dangers of the other approaches. The book closes with a plea for developing the concept of internal psychic space as a sensitizing concept for sociologists and as a source of personal and political freedom, which has to be protected against theories and practices that would neutralize it. Incisive, compelling, and timely, CraibÆs book will be of interest to students of sociology, social theory, and psychoanalysis.

About this title

Review

`I recommend this book to all readers interested in thinking about the self; I am sure that anyone who reads it will come away with some new ideas′ - Therapeutic Communities

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803976925
• ISBN 13: 9780803976924
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208