Identity Matters: A Social Psychology of Everyday Citizenship

Abstract

This paper takes as its focus the need for psychologists to take issues of culture seriously. In doing so, it is important that psychologists adopt a critical approach to many widely held and taken-for-granted assumptions about culture and cultural processes. In particular, there is a pressing need to explore the ways in which constructions of culture routinely feature in the marginalisation of minority group members. Using examples drawn from the UK, I explore how cultural diversity can be represented by majority group members to question others’ belonging within the national community. In turn, I consider the implications of this for minority group members’ everyday (informal) experiences of citizenship (e.g. their ability to be heard in discussions about the nation and the challenges it faces). I also consider minority group members’ experiences of such marginalisation and the various ways in which exclusionary constructions of culture and belonging may be contested.