Identity politics

Culture and identity are now key words in political discourse. Identity politics are fostered by multiculturalists and feminists on the left and by nationalists on the right. This British Academy evening event will reflect on the history, meaning and implications of this discourse and will take the form of a panel discussion between Professor Anthony Appiah, Princeton University, Professor Adam Kuper, FBA, Brunel University, and Professor Anne Phillips, FBA, London School of Economics and Political Science. All three proposed speakers (an anthropologist, a philosopher and a political theorist) have published extensively on these topics. Professor Adam Kuper's Culture: The Anthropologists' Account was published by Harvard University Press in 1999. Professor Anthony Appiah’s The Ethics of Identity was published by Princeton University Press in the autumn of 2004. Two recent papers by Professor Phillips are: 'Recognition and the Struggle for Political Voice'. In Recognition Struggles and Social Movements: Contested Identities, Cambridge University Press, 2003 and 'When Culture Means Gender: Issues of Cultural Defence in the English Courts', Modern Law Review 66, 2003. She is currently working on a textbook on identity politics for Blackwell.