Identity provides an essential resource of key statements drawn from cultural studies, sociology, and psychoanalytic theory, and includes three editorial essays, which place the readings in their theoretical and historical context.

Divided into three parts: Language, Ideology and Discourse; Psychoanalysis and Psycho-Social Relations; and Identity, Sociology and History, this book invites readers to compare and contrast cultural studies approaches with psychoanalytic and historical and sociological accounts of identity formation.