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Social identity theory developed within European social psychology as a theory of the generative role of the collective self in group and intergroup phenomena. (For historical background see Hogg 2000.) Social identity, as an evaluative definition of the self in terms of group-defining attributes, was viewed as the bridging process between collective phenomena and individual social cognition and behavior.
Although developed primarily by psychological social psychologists, social identity theory has always had the potential to engage sociologists' interests. In the early formulation of the theory, Tajfel drew heavily on sociological constructs to develop his ideas on how societal beliefs about the relationships between groups guide members of particular groups in pursuing a positive sense of distinctiveness for their own group and thus for themselves. According to Tajfel, the social frame provided by intergroup beliefs influences whether people seek social mobility between groups, competition between their own group and another, or creative efforts to redefine the social evaluation attached to their group. Such efforts, in turn, are affected by sociological factors such as intergroup permeability, status stability, and legitimacy.
Although it has engaged core interests of sociological social psychology, such as the relationships between groups, self identity, and social behavior, social identity theory has remained relatively isolated from sociological social psychology. Ironically, the reasons for this isolation probably derive from the very process that social identity theory describes, namely intergroup competition. Sociology has its own well-developed theoretical and empirical tradition of studying self and identity that dates back to early-twentieth-century scholars such as Cooley (1902) and G.H. Mead (1934). The conjunction of symbolic interactionism with role theory in sociology has produced several identity theories such as those associated with Stryker and Burke and those linked to a variety of more strongly process-oriented symbolic interactionists (see Gecas and Burke 1995; Stryker and Burke 2000).
Competition aside, however, the parallel development of the different but overlapping traditions of social identity theory in psychology and identity approaches in sociology calls for mutual intellectual engagement. As we comment below, a growing number of steps in this direction have been taken in recent years. The purpose of this special issue of Social Psychology Quarterly is to further this effort by presenting work in which social identity researchers address sociological processes or...