Identities in Practice: The Fixity and Fluidity of Signs of Belonging in Ancient and Modern Britain
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In this paper, I use examples from the Roman past and the Brexit present of the UK to discuss the links between practices, identities and the changing dimensions of imperial power. In both the traditional archaeological context of later Roman Britain and in excavating the roots of Brexit in post-War British politics, analysis of the practical semiotics of identity is the most fruitful way to understand the social processes under way. In each context, the meaning of different practices, articulated through the concepts of identities and boundaries, is crucial to the structuration of, respectively, a late imperial and a post-imperial society. The tensions between imperial and local identities are manifest across a wide suite of practices, the investigation of which provides a dynamic method for understanding how these tensions play out, with consequences for the fragmentation of the Roman Empire, on the one hand, and of the UK, on the other.
Source: Cambridge Archaeological Journal
Author: Andrew Gardner
Institution: University College London
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W4416591007