Social Identity provides a clearly written and accessible introduction to sociological and social anthropological approaches to identity.
Looking at the work of Mead, Goffman and Barth, Richard Jenkins makes clear their relevance to everyday life. Insisting that reflexive social identity is not a modern phenomenon, he argues that individual and collective identity can both be understood using the same model of "internal" and "external" processes. The book provides an essential guide to the concept of social identity, offering critical disucssions of Schutz, Berger and Luckmann, Becker, Anthony Cohen, Giddens, Bourdieu and many others.