In this book, contributions in the fields of History, Language, Literature, Sociology and Anthropology analyze the different aspects of identities in conflict since the ancient world to current days. Interdisciplinary perspectives facilitate a completed view attending gender, aging, linguistic, political and cultural tensions that show the different perverse side of the identities.

The urgent need for the study of exclusive identities in conflict is ever more apparent in a globalizing world in which societies are becoming multicultural and complex and in which inter-cultural contact and the co-existence of languages and cultures comes increasingly to bear on the construction of plural identities. The present book considers perversion in the construction of identity and the perverse usage of identity in areas such as social cohesion – xenophobia, racism, ostracism, rejection, ageism, marginalisation – and the mismanagement of linguistic identity, language groups and associated discriminatory practise arising out of historical and culturally based discrimination. The texts were submitted in an international meeting held in the Institute for Identities and Societies of the University on Lleida (Catalonia, Spain) in November 2012.