Research Overview

My research is motivated by an interest in illuminating the moral significance of what I call “identifying with social groups.” We identify with social groups all the time: a person can identify with other Democrats, other women, other lawyers, others on an intramural sports team, and so on. Identifying with social groups is central to the important project of forming a self-conception (or, more roughly, “figuring out who you are”), but has not been a similarly central focus of recent philosophical work on social groups. In my dissertation, I offer a model of social group identification which emphasizes familiar experiences of self-discovery and self-determination, including the pervasive experience of identity ambivalence. For a full overview of my current research and future research plans, see my research statement (linked).

Dissertation Chapters

My first chapter, “Finding Your People, Finding Yourself,” has two goals: to provide an account of what it is to identify with a social group and to illuminate the important role this practice plays in the project of self-discovery and self-determination. According to my account, to identify with a social group is to conceive of oneself as significantly similar to people in that group. For example, to identify with the group ‘women’ is to conceive of oneself as significantly similar to other women. This account also provides an explanation as to why identifying with social groups is a central part of “figuring out who we are”: identifying with groups involves taking as significant some way in which we relate to others. This is itself important to how we conceive of ourselves. According to my approach, our self-conceptions are neither fully independent from nor wholly determined by the social world. Thus, answering the question “Who am I?” is neither a fully introspective nor extrospective project. Rather, it is an ongoing, dynamic project taken up in conjunction with others around us. 

My second chapter, “On Identity Ambivalence,” focuses on a phenomenon I call “identity ambivalence”: ambivalence about whether one identifies with a social group. Descriptions of identity ambivalence are pervasive in narratives about self-discovery and self-determination. Yet familiar accounts of social group identity aren’t suited to explain this phenomenon, because they conceive of social group identities as settled, stable, and sometimes innate. I argue that identity ambivalence is better understood as something that arises during a dynamic process of social group identification. According to my account, identity ambivalence occurs when a person has conflicting attitudes about whether they are significantly similar to people in a social group. This account helps to explain the pervasiveness of identity ambivalence, as well as two other apparent features of identity ambivalence: that it is not easily resolved by introspection or by turning to publicly accessible social facts, and that it is compatible with authenticity. I close by arguing that we ought to understand identity ambivalence as central to social group identification and the broader project of self-discovery and self-determination.

New social group concepts and corresponding social group identities pop up all the time. For example, only in the past few decades has it become common to talk about non-binary people and non-binary gender identities. Call these “emerging” social group concepts and social group identities. How and why do these emerge? In my third chapter, “Emerging Social Group Identities,” I argue that social group concepts and corresponding identities often emerge to make sense of what is going on when people identify with one another in ways that don’t yet align with our existing social group concepts. This explanation fills a current gap in the literature on social group identities. Many recent accounts explain social group identities in terms of social norms. On these approaches, which particular group identities a person has—and what makes those identities important—is settled by their relation to norms governing how people in that group are expected to behave and be treated. These accounts can’t make sense of emerging social group concepts and social group identities, which can and often do emerge before corresponding social norms are established. Because I focus on something more basic than and prior to group norms—the similarities we share with other people and the significance they take on—I can better explain emerging group identities and their importance.