To read this content please select one of the options below:

New Frontiers for Identity Politics? The Potential and Pitfalls of Patient and Civic Identity in the Dutch Patients’ Health Movement

Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change

ISBN: 978-0-7623-1318-1, eISBN: 978-1-84950-418-8

Publication date: 3 July 2007

Abstract

This article analyzes the question why the Dutch patients’ health movement, specifically its branch of organizations for handicapped people, increasingly appeals to civic identity, and what consequences this has for the movement's mobilization efforts and effects. To address this question, we first analyze the meaning of ‘identity’ for patients’ organizations. In addition to an internal function (a shared identity as the basis for contact with other patients), the ‘patient identity’ also has an external function: identity movements can also produce instrumental actions. At the same time, it turns out that the specific ‘patient identity’ is being undermined through these instrumental actions, since in particular the instrumentally oriented wing of the movement insists on a broader basis for mobilization than the patient identity alone. This wing propagates citizenship as the empowering core topic, also because it seems to generate a better response in the political arena than the victim-like patient identity. This is a problematic situation. Employing a broad civic identity may appeal to some handicapped people. For other patients, however, this appeal works only in a very limited way, especially as long as citizenship does not take into consideration the differences between citizens, and as long as citizenship is defined in opposition to corporeality.

Citation

Willem Duyvendak, J. and Nederland, T. (2007), "New Frontiers for Identity Politics? The Potential and Pitfalls of Patient and Civic Identity in the Dutch Patients’ Health Movement", Coy, P.G. (Ed.) Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change (Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Vol. 27), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 261-281. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-786X(06)27009-5

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2007, Emerald Group Publishing Limited