Practising Identities is a collection of papers about how identities - gender, bodily, racial, ethnic and national - are practised in the contemporary world. Identities are actively constructed, chosen, created and performed by people in their daily lives, and this book focuses on a variety of identity practices, in a range of different settings, from the gym and the piercing studio, to the further education college and the National Health Service. Drawing on detailed empirical studies and recent social and cultural theory about identity this book makes an important intervention in current debates about identity, reflexivity, and cultural difference.

NADIA JOANNE BRITTON Research Assistant, Department of Sociology, University of Manchester
MALCOLM BROWN is writing a PhD thesis in the Department of Sociology, University of Glasgow
BEN CARRINGTON Lecturer in Sociology, University of Brighton
EMMA CLARENCE Research Assistant, Department of Public Policy, University of Central England
IAN COOK Lecturer in Human Geography and Cultural Studies, University of Wales, Lampeter
PHILIP CRANG Lecturer in Human Geography, University College London
LORRAINE CULLEY Principal Lecturer and Head of Health
SIMON DYSON Principal Lecturer in Health Studies, De Montfort University, Leicester
SILVIA HAM-YING Principal Lecturer in Nursing, De Montfort University, Leicester
JOSEPH MAGUIRE Reader in Sociology of Sport, Loughborough University
LOUISE MANSFIELD Senior Lecturer in the Sport Science Department, Canterbury Christ Church College
PAUL SWEETMAN Lecturer in Sociology, University of Durham
SHIRLEY TATE Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Leeds Metropolitan University
MARK THORPE Research Associate, University College London
STEPHEN WHITEHEAD Lecturer in Postcompulsory Education, Keele University
WENDY YOUNG formerly a Research Assistant, Department of Health, De Montfort University, Leicester

Acknowledgements List of Illustrations and Photographs Notes on Contributors Practising Identities: Power and Resistance; S.Roseneil & J.Seymour Cricket, Culture and Identity: An Ethnographic Analysis of the Significance of Sport within Back Communities; B.Carrington Making Your Body Your Signature: Weight-Training and Transgressive Femininities; S.Tate Marked Bodies, Oppositional Identities? Tattooing, Piercing and the Ambiguity of Resistance; P.Sweetman Active Women, Power Relations and Gendered Identities: Embodies Experiences of Aerobics ; L.Mansfield & J.Maguire Contingent Masculinities: Disruptions to 'Man'agerialist Identity; S.Whitehead Racialized Identity and the Term 'Black'; N.J.Britton Caribbean Nurses: Racisms, Resistances and Healing Narratives; L.Culley, S.Dyson, S.Ham-Ying & W.Young Orientalism and Resistance to Orientalism: Muslim Identities in Contemporary Western Europe; M.D.Brown Citizenship and Identity: The Case of Australia; E.Clarence Eating into Britishness: Multicultural Imaginaries and the Identity Politics of Food; I.Cook, P.Crang & M.Thorpe Index