Foreword

What does it mean to be human? Perhaps the answer is given away in the question, for the question itself suggests that identities are constitutive of the human experience. As such, they cut across most if not all of the meaningful aspects of human life, including of course the tripartite foci that are reflected in the Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change series.

Associate Professor Landon E. Hancock, my colleague at the Center for Applied Conflict Management and the Department of Political Science here at Kent State University, is an expert on identities and conflicts. He has put that expertise to fruitful use here by compiling an intriguing and ultimately significant volume centered on understanding the busy intersection between narratives of identity and the many influential roles they may play in conflicts, social movements, and the human propensity to change. Just two years ago, Volume 37 of the RSMCC series was focused on how intersectional analyses, which is itself identity-based, enrich our understandings of social movements, conflicts, and change. Now we are particularly pleased that this volume makes its own singular contribution to research on identities with its focus on identity narratives. In so doing, it ably extends the increasingly noteworthy body of scholarship produced in this series since its founding very nearly 40 years ago in 1977.