POLS 3540 - Politics of Identity and Inequality

What is identity and how does it shape social and political behavior? When, where, and why do identities become politicized? And how does this occur? The notion that individuals possess multiple and overlapping social memberships is a ubiquitous fact of social and political life. This course will focus on what is often called “identity politics,” aiming to understand: where identities come from and how they come into formation in the first place; 2) how identities become salient and politicized; and 3) the myriad consequences identities and identity politics carry for important outcomes like development, representation, and inequality. We will interrogate these questions by taking a comparative approach, immersing ourselves in such diverse contexts as Latin America, Africa, South Asia, Western Europe and the United States across a range of historical time periods.