"They have to take the long way to the shortcut, too": The politics of solidarity and identity

This project investigates the social and psychological processes that produce, or fail to produce, feelings of solidarity and mutual commitment across social groups. Critics of "identity politics" frequently charge identifying strongly along one identity poses a barrier to collective solidarity and coalition building. They allege, for example, that when a black woman develops group consciousness around her particular identities (as a woman and/or African American) two things are likely to happen. First, she will become less likely to feel solidarity with a group in which she is not a member, such as Hispanic-Americans. Second, she will become less likely to identify politically with a broader, more diverse group in which she is a member, such as the one defined by her social class. Similar expectations can be derived from traditional forms of social identity theory. This project offers an empirical evaluation of such claims and contrasts them with competing hypotheses derived from cognitive development theories. It illuminates how individuals develop, or fail to develop, various forms of solidarity as well as how feelings of group identification and group consciousness may influence these processes. In order to address these interpretivist questions, data is drawn from a comparative case study of low-wage service workers with, and without, feelings of group identification and/or group consciousness. Data collection involved 10 months of participant observation in a low-wage service job and 48 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of low-wage service workers. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and then coded and interpreted them with the assistance of a software package for qualitative analysis (QSR N5).