‘World-making things’ is how Reicher, Haslam, and Hopkins (2005, p556; Leadership Quarterly) describe social categories and social identities. It captures just how important social identities are to how we see and shape the world – and also why it’s important to study what (and who) shapes social identities.
This is why social identity features in much of our work: we study how the social world shapes how people perceive, feel, and act, and how people in turn try to shape the social world.