Silva Contested Realities and Identity Destigmatization

Identity Construction in the Culture Wars
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-3-11-147149-5
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 51, 217 Seiten

Reihe: De Gruyter Contemporary Social Sciences

Much scholarship has sought to decode the polarization of American culture. Analyzing public discourse on contested realities (immigration, vaccines, electric vehicles, transgender youth medicine, campus protests of Israel, the regulation of AR-15s, and race and police brutality) reveals that Americans are not governed by coherent, diametrically opposed worldviews. U.S. culture is more fractured than dominant narratives of a polarized society would suggest. Moreover, these cultural disputes result in the generation of materials for constructing identities. Disagreement over how to define reality inevitably leads to a contest over the authority and moral worthiness of the individuals involved in the dispute. analyzes how participants in public discourse stigmatize but also destigmatize their adversaries. This study not only demonstrates that there are people who are seeking to "turn down the temperature" in public discourse but the generic processes by which they do so.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Silva, Eric O.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein

Über Autor(innen)

Eric O. Silva is Professor of Sociology at Georgia Southern University. His research  examines how reality is constructed in contested situations.