ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the concept of social identity and present the approach, which is based on the work of Wentholt. It also discusses the importance of social processes of identity formation and of the dialectic processes of ascription and self-ascription. A social category lumps together people who may be very different in all other respects. Social identities related to ethnicity, nationality, race and religion involve more enduring collective definitions and intersubjective understandings. The social world is divided in many different ways and those divisions are used to say something about individuals. Socially defined categories are used for labelling and pigeonholing. Social identity is a public reality – an assignment that divides people on the basis of all kinds of criteria that can be used in different combinations. Social classification leads to positive intergroup differentiation because people want to feel good about themselves and therefore tend to make a distinction in favour of their in-group compared to relevant out-groups.
