The Social Map: Cohesion, Conflict and National Identity

The Social Map is an attempt to formulate an integrative theoretical model of individual and collective identity processes that draws upon sociological, psychological and biological knowledge in an effort to move towards a more comprehensive understanding of key questions surrounding the construction of experience and identification. This article summarizes the key features of the approach and considers the way in which it might offer a useful perspective on key questions relating to identities, power relations, social cohesion and conflict, including the way in which the bio-psychosocial processes that underlie these social phenomena can be seen to mediate if not structure their expression at the macro level within and across societies.