Identity in Crisis: The Dialectics of Social Identity and Conflict in LGBT Social-Change Activity

• In Event: LGBTQ Around the World: Global Settings

Abstract

Social change activities constitute a deliberate conflict, or even an initiated mini-social-crisis. They are aimed at challenging the existing social-moral order, in an attempt to alter it. Within such interactions social identities act as central factors of interlocutors’ influence on the outcome of the conflict. This case study delves into one social-change activity, as an arena of explicit conflict. It explores the role of collective identity in social conflict. The analysis presented here derives from critical discourse analysis, and is grounded in theories of social-categorization, performativity and conflict-management. Aspects of the socio-cultural context are analyzed based on research of national and ethnic gaps in Israel and of the Israeli LGBT community. Findings highlight the crucial dialectics between social identity and crisis management. They also raises fundamental questions regarding pitfalls of the prevalent liberal paradigms in social change activities, as well as the deep social and political implications of intersectional marginality.

Author

• Noam Gal, Hebrew U