Cultivating Political and Public Identity Why plumage matters [Hardcover]

Public and political life can no longer be seen as simply the pursuit of material gain or even as the struggle for enough food and shelter by which to live. The interests people pursue are shaped by the identities which they both inherit and cultivate. In generating identities, everything is important, from clothing to cuisine, from architecture to language, and to understand why and how people associate in groups and communities, and why they compete and conflict with each other, every aspect of identity has to be taken seriously. Whatever secrets may remain in people's minds or souls, who they are socially is what they say, what they eat, and how they live.

This book is ideal reading for students, lecturers, and the general reader interested in the importance of identity in public life, and in the inherent political momentum in identity cultivation to both equality and inequality simultaneously.

This title will be available as an open access ebook under a CC-BY licence.
1. Introduction

2. Plumage

3. Cultivating identity

4. Top people are different: association and distinction in politics and religion

5. Caps of liberty: the oddity of democracy

6. Reformations, revolutions, continuity, and counter-reformations

7. The plumage of Britannia

8. Conclusion

Index

Rodney Barkeris Emeritus Professor of Government at LSE and Emeritus Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College