This paper considers how identity, a person's sense of self, affects economic outcomes. We incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior. In the utility function we propose, identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave. We then construct a simple game-theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions. The paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace, the economics of poverty and social exclusion, and the household division of labor. In each case, the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis.

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Economics and Identity

Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration.

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E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty‐first Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture

Critical race theory (CRT) first emerged as a counterlegal scholarship to the positivistand liberal legal discourse of civil rights. This scholarly tradition argues against the slow pace of racial reform in the United States. Critical race theory begins with the notion that racism is normal in American society. It departs from mainstream legal scholarship by sometimes employing storytelling. It critiques liberalism and argues that Whites have been the primary beneficiaries of civil rights legislation.Since schooling in the USA purports to prepare citizens, CRT looks at how citizenship and race might interact. Critical race theory's usefulness in understanding education inequity is in its infancy. It requires a critique of some of the civil rights era's most cherished legal victories and educationalreform movements, such as multiculturalism. The paper concludes with words of caution about the use of CRT in education without a more thorough analysis of the legal literature upon which it is based.

Just what is critical race theory and what's it doing in a nice field like education?

The growth of precarious work since the 1970s has emerged as a core contemporary concern within politics, in the media, and among researchers. Uncertain and unpredictable work contrasts with the re...

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Precarious Work, Insecure Workers: Employment Relations in Transition

Assimilation theory has been subject to intensive critique for decades. Yet no other framework has provided the social science community with as deep a corpus of cumulative findings concerning the incorporation of immigrants and their descendants. We argue that assimilation theory has not lost its utility for the study of contemporary immigration to the United States. In making our case, we review critically the canonical account of assimilation provided by Milton Gordon and others ; we refer to Shibutani and Kwan's theory of ethnic stratification to suggest some directions to take in reformulating assimilation theory. We also examine some of the arguments frequently made to distinguish between the earlier mass immigration of Europeans and the immigration of the contemporary era and find them to be inconclusive. Finally, we sift through some of the evidence about the socioeconomic and residential assimilation of recent immigrant groups. Though the record is clearly mixed, we find evidence consistent with the view that assimilation is taking place, albeit unevenly

Rethinking assimilation theory for a new era of immigration.

This is the new, fully updated edition of this now-classic study of working-class racism. Combining classical Marxism, psychoanalysis and the new labor history pioneered by E. P. Thompson and Herbert Gutman, David Roediger's widely acclaimed book provides an original study of the formative years of working-class racism in the United States. This, he argues, cannot be explained simply with reference to economic advantage; rather, white working-class racism is underpinned by a complex series of psychological and ideological mechanisms that reinforce racial stereotypes, and thus help to forge the identities of white workers in opposition to blacks. In a lengthy new introduction, Roediger surveys recent scholarship on whiteness, and discusses the changing face of labor in the twenty-first century.

The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class.

According to conventional wisdom, American social policy has always been exceptional - exceptionally stingy and backwards. But Edwin Amenta reminds the reader that 60 years ago the US led the world in social provision. He combines historical and political theory to account for this fact - and to explain why the country's leading role was short-lived. The orthodox view is that American social policy began in the 1930s as a two-track system of miserly "welfare" for the unemployed and generous "social security" for the elderly. However, Amenta shows that the New Deal was in fact a bold programme of relief, committed to providing jobs and income support for the unemployed. Social security was, by comparison, a policy afterthought. By the late 1930s, he shows, the US pledged more of its gross national product to relief programmes than did any other major industrial country. Amenta develops and uses an institutional politics theory to explain how social policy expansion was driven by northern Democrats, state-based reformers, and political outsiders. And he shows that retrenchment in the 1940s was led by politicians from areas where beneficiaries of relief were barred from voting. He also considers why some programmes were nationalized, why some states had far-reaching "little New Deals", and why Britain adopted more generous social programmes.

Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy

Facing Social Class: How Societal Rank Influences Interaction:

Chapter 1 The Communist Manifesto Chapter 2 On Classes Chapter 3 Class, Status, Party Chapter 4 What Social Class is in America Chapter 5 Some Principles of Stratification Chapter 6 Some Principles of Stratification: A Critical Analysis Chapter 7 Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique Chapter 8 Class Analysis Chapter 9 Women and Stratification: A Case of Intellectual Sexism Chapter 10 Capitalism, Patriarchy, and the Subordination of Women Chapter 11 Theorizing Difference From Multiracial Feminism Chapter 12 Double-Consciousness and the Veil Chapter 13 Race and Class Chapter 14 The Declining Significance of Race: From Racial Oppression to Economic Class Subordination Chapter 16 Racial Formation Chapter 17 Toward a New Vision: Race, Class, and Gender as Categories of Analysis

Social class and stratification : classic statements and theoretical debates

In recent years, the study of class has shaped and been shaped by the flurry of "post-structuralist", "post-Marxist" and "state-centred" approaches that have emerged in historical and sociological scholarship. Yet class analysis has sustained itself as a powerful, refined working tool in helping scholars to understand the complexities of social and historical processes. This volume of original essays provides a cross-section of the body of social theory and empirical research being produced by scholars employing class analysis. The contributors address continuing debates over the relationship between structure and agency, the centrality of class realism and the dynamics of class formation, class culture and class consciousness.

Rhonda F. Levine

Papers

The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class.

Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy

Facing Social Class: How Societal Rank Influences Interaction:

Social class and stratification : classic statements and theoretical debates

Bringing Class Back In: Contemporary And Historical Perspectives