Rethinking Identity in Political Science
| Author | Scott Weiner,Dillon Stone Tatum |
| Published date | 01 August 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920919360 |
| Date | 01 August 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920919360
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(3) 464 –481
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920919360
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Rethinking Identity in
Political Science
Scott Weiner1 and Dillon Stone Tatum2
Abstract
Political science engages similar types of identity on different terms. There are extensive
literatures describing phenomena related to national, ethnic, class, and gender identity; however,
these literatures in isolation give us little insight into broader political mechanics of identity itself.
Furthermore, many of the theoretical approaches to identity in political science tend to proceed
from the macro-level, without conceptualizing its building blocks. How should we conceptualize
and operationalize identity in political science? In this article, we examine the existing literature
on identity in ethnic politics, nationalism studies, and gender politics to show this disconnect in
conceptualizing identity across research agendas. We then provide an integrated model of identity,
focusing on how gradations of visibility, conceptualization, and recognition form the basis of claims
and conflicts about the politics of identity. We conclude by elucidating a path to overcoming these
issues by opening space for a rethinking of identity in political science.
Keywords
identity, gender, ethnicity, political movements
Accepted: 26 March 2020
In 2015, Spokane, Washington NAACP spokesperson Rachel Dolezal ignited a firestorm
of controversy when, despite being born to white parents, she claimed to identify as
African American. Academics and news commentators took deep offense to this identifi-
cation. They accused Dolezal of racial appropriation and engaging in blackface (Capehart,
2015). Dolezal had violated a norm that disapproves of the idea of “transracialism,”
(Brubaker, 2016) and drew a strong social sanction as a result. Academic discussions of
the controversy were themselves mired in controversy. Rebecca Tuvel (2017), writing in
Hypatia, defended the concept of transracialism as akin to transgender identity. The arti-
cle created so much backlash for legitimizing the term that it was retracted by the journal
with an apology from the editorial board. The retraction itself drew even further contro-
versy and allegations of stifling academic discourse (McKenzie, 2017).
The Rachel Dolezal and Rebecca Tuvel controversies exemplify how identity—
whether ours or someone else’s—has high social and political stakes.1 The social science
1Department of Political Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
2Department of Political Science and Geography, Francis Marion University, Florence, SC, USA
Corresponding author:
Dillon Stone Tatum, Department of Political Science and Geography, Francis Marion University, PO Box
100547, Florence, SC 29502-0547, USA.
Email: dtatum@fmarion.edu
919360PSW0010.1177/1478929920919360Political Studies ReviewWeiner and Tatum
research-article2020
Article
Weiner and Tatum 465
research concurs that identity—the way we orient ourselves in a given community on the
basis of recognizable attributes—is one of the most essential cleavages along which soci-
eties distribution power and resources. Yet, puzzlingly, political science lacks a way of
describing identity as a causal mechanism.2 We understand different types of identity as
incommensurate (e.g. Abdelal et al., 2006a) but still use the term “identity” to describe
them, implying a level of conceptual equivalence. As such, when Rachel Dolezal asserts
that race, like gender is a function of internal identity, political science lacks convergence
around a convincing framework to evaluate this claim. If race and gender are similarly
constructed, in what way are they similar? If not, where do they share conceptual congru-
ence that allows us to call both “identities?”
In short, political science has identity theories but no theory of identity. Our concep-
tions of ethnicity, gender, class, and nationality entail frameworks that are well estab-
lished within their respective subfields. However, we refer to each of these as “identities”
without any justification for why. Existing political theory scholarship on identity, for its
part, describes what identity is at the broadest level but lacks a toolkit for scholars to
problematize the concept (Bernstein, 2005). Our intent in this article is first to demon-
strate the lack of congruence across identity frameworks. We then offer a toolbox for
thinking about identity as political scientists. While we believe this framework has prag-
matic value, we do not make an argument for an essentialism—for example, that gender
identity, racial identity, and so on imply unchanging, static, or “natural” bases. Identity, as
a social force cannot be understood in a one-dimensional way. Rather, we understand
identities as political, contested, and debated.
We draw upon scholarly work in the field of ethnicity, nationalism, and gender to illus-
trate our first argument about incongruence. Each literature draws on a wide body of
cases and has a well-formulated conception of the identity it studies. We identify incon-
gruences in the ways each conceptualizes identity and highlight three important stakes of
these incongruences. First, the lack of a common framework for theorizing identity hurts
the analytical leverage that could be gained from drawing upon insights across sub-types
of identity. Second, this incongruence inhibits possibilities for intra-disciplinary work on
identity because different identity frameworks comprised entirely different components.
Finally, divergent identity frameworks cement the segmentation of conversations within
political science. Scholars studying one identity often do not engage with those studying
another because their frameworks reflect these conceptual incongruences. As we discuss
in this article, even work on intersectionality tends to be firmly located within a single
research agenda (e.g. either race, or gender, or ethnicity, etc), neglecting the ways that a
unified conception of identity might travel across these categories.
With these stakes in mind, we offer a three-level framework that conceptualizes iden-
tity in terms of an individual’s social orientation. Identity orients a person within a broader
social context using a specific set of markers recognized by others. Constructing this
social orientation requires conceptualizing what attributes should be part of an identity,
assessing how visible these attributes are, and confronting challenges to the recognition
of these visible attributes as signifying an identity.
Disciplinary Fracturing: Ethnicity, Gender, Nationalism, and
the Lack of a Common Framework
Political scientists lack a common framework for addressing questions about what iden-
tity is, how it relates agents with social and political structures, and how it changes over
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