Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D. & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Not read. The summary is drawn from what the work is standardly cited for. A reading should check it first.
Why this is here
The record held social identity work only as unread fandom papers (LIT-1138, LIT-1133, LIT-1147, LIT-1140) and Pettigrew’s review (LIT-1408), whose recategorization strategy presupposes this theory, without the theory’s own source. CASE-104, a fanbase said to hold one view of its owner, turns on when fans act as a group and when as individuals, which is the shift from personal to social identity the book defines. Smith’s intergroup emotions, which NOTE-552 cites behind THEORY-126, also build on it. The book’s claim that the psychological group is a real level of self-perception bears on social-ontology’s question of what a group is.
Read in its place
The book cannot be read here, so the record holds it at second hand:
- Its own words. Skorich (LIT-1765, NOTE-1295) quotes its definitions, assumptions and hypotheses from chapter 3 (pp. 3, 42–56), and León (LIT-1721, NOTE-1309) quotes pp. 29, 42–51, 66, 103 and 204. Between them they give the self-concept, the three levels, meta-contrast, accessibility × fit, functional antagonism, depersonalization as “the basic process underlying group phenomena”, and the claim that group size is no theoretical restriction.
- Its authors’ later statement. Turner et al. 1994 (LIT-1794, NOTE-1284).
- Summaries. Hornsey 2008 (LIT-1742, NOTE-1253) and Reimer et al. 2020 (LIT-1790, NOTE-1251).
Missing still: the book’s argument for each step; its sub-theories of cohesion, attraction, ethnocentrism, self-esteem and cooperation, which Skorich declines to cover (p. 7); chapter 5 on cohesion, which León cites; and the chapters that Hornsey’s references credit to Oakes (salience, pp. 117–141) and Reicher (crowds, pp. 171–202). A reading of chapters 3 and 6 would close most of the gap.