Ministry of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan Baku International Multiculturalism Centre Azerbaijani Multiculturalism Textbook for Higher Education
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Identity and its Forms
There are various indicators and markers to assess the integration trends of multicultural development either internationally as a whole or in individual countries. One such indicator is identity and the relative interrelation of identities and their dynamics. Here, it is important first of all to compare civic and national identity with other forms of identity, because, as Hucbner and Richter say, ‘the nation as a state-political union will retain its significance from the perspective of multicultural development’. Therefore, the terms ‘state’, ‘nation’, ‘national society’ and ‘identity’ are of great importance. Individual identity or the right to self-identify is the human right to imagine oneself a member of a cultural group. These cultural groups may be civil, national, ethnic, religious or civilizational. Thanks to the work of American psychologist Erik Erikson, the term ‘identity’, widely used in the humanities, also became commonplace in cultural studies from the 1970s. Despite the lack of categorical clarity, this term is accepted as referring to what enables an individual to identify his or her place in a socio-cultural environment and in so doing to be oriented in the surrounding world. Thus, identity is the human characteristic of imagining one’s belonging to one or another group. Identity has a complex and hierarchical nature and embraces as its components self-identity, ideas concerning one’s group (‘we’), language, culture, territory, past and ‘statehood’. Cultural identity (ethnic, national, religious, civilizational) is the basis of the nation state. When the national identity of an individual takes precedence over class, confessional or regional differences, ideas about a common past and historical fate for the entire group allow the individual to maintain their ‘specificity’, owing to which the nation exists. Identity can be built both on negative and positive designs. Those who are guided by negative identity are usually very aggressive towards groups they perceive as ‘other’. Those who are guided by positive identity do not see those around them a priori as enemies; they try to reach a compromise and achieve a consensus in intergroup relations by emphasizing the common features rather than the differences and by not imposing their interests on others.
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The tolerant traditions of the Azerbaijani people are an example of positive identity. The immigration problem is posing challenges for a united ‘national identity’ in the West, and it should not be forgotten that the concepts of multiculturalism used here are associated with reductionism; i.e. one of the identities should be more dominant than the others and should act as a criterion for the organization of society into groups with precise differences. It is most probably also true that without a dominant identity the nation state will be an imitation of ethnocultural diasporas. However, when the group (minority) becomes the carrier of identity, if we refer to a systematic analysis, communities become isolated, and the definition of identity and maintenance of specificity for individuals are not voluntary but under pressure from the community, which runs counter to human rights and the principle of equality. This is not multiculturalism, but rather communitarianism, which is reviving in Europe, according to specialists. In such cases Hansen’s Law about immigrant communities as expressed in the 1930s is to be expected. According to this ‘law’, ‘What the second generation wants to forget, the third generation wants to remember.’ In this regard, the present theoretical search for strategies of cultural policy is no surprise. Many researchers think that ethnic identity is usually understood in the modern period as national identity and use the notions as synonyms. This is partially true, because the notions ‘ethnos’ and ‘ethnicity’ are the basic notions for ethnic classifications, while the nation is mostly understood as the state form of the ethnic union of human beings. However, unlike ethnos, a nation is not a result of birth, it is defined by the individual’s efforts and choice. Thus, nation is the individual’s state, social and cultural identity, not their ethnic and anthropological identity. To be fair, it should be noted that historically there have been cases of selection and change of ethnic identity, of the disappearance of the borders of ethnonyms and ethnic unities and the re-appearance of ethnoses. 76
The individual case of ethnic identity is a regional identity chosen by territorial unions and has different levels – city, region, large territorial structure. Meanwhile, the regions can have both formal and informal structures. We should point out the important logic of self-identity discovered during surveys: in the case of strong centrifugal forces, identity is first of a local, i.e. regional or ethnic, nature and then of a civic national nature; and in cases of centripetal forces the nation state comes first, followed by regional identity. As a rule, a nation emerges as a cultural union within the boundaries of a nation state, i.e. cultural unity leads to political affirmation. Also, over time a single cultural identity can be formed within nation state boundaries for all its members. Examples of the first nation state union leading to cultural unity in the history of the national and cultural minorities of some west and north European countries, which already had high level homogeneity, could be seen in the early 20th century. However, today when the west European countries and their national unities have already entered the post-national development stage, the east European countries are undergoing a period of ethnicization of their national unities and, in this connection, the notion of the ‘nation’ remains dominant as an ethno-social organism. Hence, the new states in these regions have seen grave ethnic conflicts that are unknown in the western and northern regions of Europe. It can be concluded from the above that the replacement of ethnic identity with national identity in conditions of modernization and globalization is not proven; they both exist as before, often as two competing forms of group identity. The decisive factor for one of them is cultural unity, while for the other it is political (state) unity. In the era of globalization there are clashes of identity (local, regional, ethno-national, civil, national, religious) at the level of nation states. Added to these is the divergence between the citizens of a country and the individuals that consider themselves
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to be ‘global citizens’, that is, between those who see themselves as patriots, proud of their countries, religions and ethno-social groups and as the bearers of the identity, and ‘global citizens’. There is no widely accepted scientific definition of the identity of ‘global citizens’. At the same time, someone whose supreme priority is tackling common civilizational problems, issues concerning the whole of humanity, or most of them, can be considered ‘a global citizen’. For example, these issues include the protection of human rights, including economic rights, humanitarian issues, multicultural issues, changing the globalization model and so on. Despite the need for caution about the above, the results of a survey held in 45 countries in 2009 show that on average 60 per cent of those questioned consider themselves, first of all, to be citizens of their own states, while 10 per cent think of themselves as global citizens. Twenty per cent of those questioned combine commitment to universal values with national identity. Identity is a very important indicator of multicultural development, and according to the theoretician of the information society, Manuel Castells, ‘globalization and identity act as two symbols of modernity’. In this regard the issues of the social dimensions of identity become more relevant. The following conclusions can be drawn from the above within the context of multicultural society and its concept of development: 1. From the point of view of the sustainability and stability of multi-ethnic societies and the institutions of the nation state (multicultural security), there is a close link between multicultural policy and the identity of the population. Analysis of the association of national (civic, national) and local (ethnic, regional) identities in the system of national ideology facilitates the understanding of development trends and the mechanisms, character and proportions of the self-identification of the population and their logical inclusion into a common national Yüklə 2,25 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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