Ministry of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan Baku International Multiculturalism Centre Azerbaijani Multiculturalism Textbook for Higher Education

identity,

2. 
   The specific significance of identity in the system of national ideology is related not only to the maintenance of stability in society (acting in accordance with the mutual recognition, tolerance and cultural equality of all peoples), but also to the sustainability of the state. Meanwhile in order to ensure the desired nature of multicultural security and national identity and their inter-relationship, the primordial (original, a priori) aspect of the common ethnicity of the population is not associated with the idea of multicultural society;
   

2. 
   In a multicultural society (country) local identity, including ethnic identity, is as a rule subject to pressure from civic-national (nation state) identity, so the correct multicultural policy of the state increases common national identity, and decreases (or at any rate does not increase) local, i.e. regional identity, and in cases when the authorities raise obligations of a common civilizational nature alongside common national interests, an increasing portion of citizens will consider themselves ‘global citizens’;
   

2. 
   The greater the rating of civic and national (summed up as ‘country’) and common civilizational (summed up as ‘global’) identities, the lesser the ratings of local (summed up as ‘community’) identities, the more desirable the situation from a multicultural perspective. This conclusion is important not only from the perspective of the ratings of the relative identities, but also in term of a comparison of their average global ratings.
   

The final result is interrelated with the other results in that a low rating of ‘local (community)’ identity is as a rule evidence of minor, weak centripetal forces in relation to the more important idea of ‘country’ identity (especially when the identity rating is higher than the average global rating), while a high rating of ‘country’ identity indicates strong centrifugal tendencies, i.e. when local identity is small, civic-national

Section II

Chapter 3

79

Azerbaijani Multiculturalism

identity predominates. The above applies to multi-ethnic countries, as it does not make sense for mono-ethnic countries, where there is no contradiction between local (for instance, ethnic identity) and civic-national identities;


5. Identities play an important role from the point of view


of multiculturalism: the importance of ‘country’ or civic-national identity, its correlation with local (‘community’) and common civilizational (‘global’) identities and its deviations in comparison with the importance of these identities are extremely symptomatic, i.e. the greater the ‘country/ community’ faction and the ‘country/community’ divide are, the more firmly the citizens are united round the centre. In other words, as a nation integrates with its state institutions, the less its association with local and ethnic groups (in multi-ethnic institutions), the stronger the integration of multicultural development in the country. By analogy, the less the ‘country/ community’ faction and ‘country/community’ difference are, the less citizens see a contradiction between their civic-national identities and their understanding of themselves as ‘global citizens’ or bearers of common civilizational values. As a rule, when the majority of a country’s citizens basically agree with the policy of the forces in power and think this policy meets both interests in solving global civilizational problems and also national-state interests, this is to a certain extent an indicator of multicultural development.