17. Identities

Identity is at the heart of political beliefs and political behavior. People have multifaceted identities, and a person’s identity is informed by somatic characteristics (a person’s age, race, gender, etc.) and social characteristics (a person’s party affiliation, class, religion, etc).

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, theorists focused on social identities such as class and party membership, while tending to ignore somatic characteristics. In the 2010s and 2020s, the world is seeing a resurgence of somatic identities in politics, but social identities remain at the core of politics.

Every person has their own mixture of somatic characteristics which significantly influence how it will interact with the real world. As a result, some of your decisions might be rational and conscious, while other decisions will be influenced by aspects of your identity which you might not be fully aware of. Classes, parties and politicians are not emotionless machines – they are people, and their emotions and identities can be as significant in policymaking as their rational choices.

Identity is fluid; it changes constantly as a result of new life experiences and external influences. You are not the same person that you were five years ago, and you will be even more different five years from now. Group identities are equally fluid – the working class in 1900, 1950, and 2000 have some similar characteristics but also enormous differences. The nature of working-class employment has changed from heavy industry and manufacturing to service jobs and retail, while the relative size of the working class has decreased in the last 100 years.