Politics Of Identity Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Identity for most people derives from personal history, family relationships and friendships, neighborhood, region, and country. Generally, the sense of self is validated by membership in a group or affiliation with something intangible such as a culture or religion. In this sense, politics of identity refers to political attitudes or positions that focus on the concerns of social groups identified mainly on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.

The scope of political movements that may be described as politics of identity ranges from the struggles within Western capitalist democracies to indigenous rights movements worldwide to nationalist projects and demands for self-determination. In general, the politics of identity has developed around the idea of empowering the oppressed to articulate their oppression in terms of their own experience.

In the twentieth century, organizing around a shared identity challenged the conventional organization of politics around beliefs or programs. Politics since then has become as much about identity as about self-interest or policy. Particularly during the second half of the twentieth century, large-scale political movements based on claims about the injustices done to particular social groups, such as feminism, minority civil rights, and gay and lesbian liberation, emerged. In this sense, identity has driven politics, if not always explicitly.

In a 2007 publication C. Heyes contends that feminist identity politics has underlined the task of articulating women’s understanding of themselves and of men without reducing femininity to biology. According to feminists the experiences women share do not necessarily result from sexual differences but rather from social injustice. In this sense feminist politics of identity as a social and political movement has been based on the argument that although sex may be biological, gender is socially constructed. On the other hand, liberal-reformist gay and lesbian activists have struggled for the full acceptance of gays and lesbians in the institutions and culture of mainstream society.

Aronowitz notes that the politics of identity has been criticized by orthodox and revisionist Marxists and socialists. They have argued that groups based on shared identity, other than class, have diverted attention from more fundamental issues, such as class conflict in capitalist societies. However,

other scholars, including Wallace and MacClancy, have contended that—irrespective of the ideational debates and criticisms—in reality the politics of identity has become part of daily life and politics and become influential in many areas of people’s political behavior from shopping to art and voting. Politics of identity is proved to be an important factor in voting behavior as experienced in 2008 presidential elections in the United States.

Politics Of Identity And The Nation-State

National identity is privileged within the context of the so-called Westphalian state system. Therefore, national identity, as a mode of identification with a unique and distinct community, is given institutional recognition and sustained by nation-states as well as by the internationally established legal code that provides the criteria for the formal recognition of states.

In the Westphalian system national identity was structurally privileged. Globalization combined with other factors represents a great challenge to the Westphalian state system. Nationally defined territorial bounds reinforced by the insecurities of states placed obvious constraints on the ability of other modes of identification such as ethnic, religious, cultural, and gender identities to mobilize. Several recent developments have challenged this system. First, as cultures and societies are becoming interconnected, societies have become increasingly multicultural. Minorities who were incorporated into states have become more assertive, demanding compensation or autonomy. This has resulted in tensions within states and in demands for international measures for minority protection, as seen in indigenous peoples’ demands for self-government—the way that Quebec ensures self-government for the Québécois—for example, Inuit demands for self-government in the north of Canada and Indian peoples’ demands for self-government on reservations in the United States. Furthermore, immigration and asylum have increased the ethnic and cultural diversity of most states. In this context, the politics of identity manifests itself in claims for secession, autonomy, self-government, and federalism by national groups and in claims for ethnic rights for immigrants and refugees.

It is generally assumed that, politically, the nation-state remains the anchor of belonging since a shared language, culture, social and political institutions, and norms are derived from it. For a long time, national identity has appeared as a central issue for politics. Regarding collective identities like national identity, the politics of identity is considered a process of negotiation between interest groups. Being English, Irish, or Danish is a consequence of a political process, and it is that process, not the label, that symbolizes it. Thus, identity is an outcome of a labeling process that reflects a conflict of interests at the political level.

As noted, the politics of identity has resulted in national identities’ competing with a wide range of claims for recognition from groups that include women, gays and lesbians, aboriginal peoples, immigrants, and ethnic groups. Contemporary patterns of politics of identity stimulate claims, and claimants pursue gender-based, ethnic, regional, and other modes of identification that compete with national identity.

These developments bring forth a heightened concern with identity and the recognition of uniqueness, equality, and equitable valuation. People from different ethnic and religious backgrounds seek recognition of both their unique and national identities. In the early twenty-first century, many of the concerns that excite public discourse are driven by questions of national identity and politics of identity.

In essence multiculturalism stands in contrast to assimilation, which imposes a single culture on minority groups. Some multicultural states such as Britain and Canada have praised the variety of cultural identities of their residents and wish them to be preserved rather than assimilated, despite the concern that the values of such states may be at odds with the values of those they claim to protect. In these cases, the strong emphasis on national identity has proved difficult to reconcile with the notion of multiculturalism, which claims equality for different cultures and identities.

Conflicts due to different ethnic and cultural identities lead to a sort of politics of identity, in which a marginalized community or its members are involved in the reaffirmation of identity. It is the struggle over definitions of, or claims to, politically and culturally sensitive categories of ethnic and religious identities. In the early twenty-first century, the concept of ethnic minorities is identified exclusively with nonwhite ethnic groups, who are mainly the product of immigration into Western societies during the past half century because of persecution or poverty and poor economic opportunities in their countries of origin. The reason ethnic minorities are significant for the politics of identity is not that they are different but the way they are treated by other ethnic groups, particularly by the white majority. Issues of identity and allegiance can be complicated for ethnic minorities, and many immigrants have continuing positive sentiments toward their countries of origin. The United States, which has had a relatively successful program of education to integrate immigrants into the American way of life, nonetheless contains Irish American, Spanish American, Polish American, and Jewish American communities. Similarly, there exist thriving Polish, Italian, and Ukrainian communities in Britain. Werbner points out that these dual identities show that allegiances are not mutually exclusive and that it is possible to be black or Asian and British or American.

Since the 1990s, religion as a marker of identity has been gaining prominence. Religion has played one of the central roles in the politics of identity. Particularly among Muslims, membership in the ummah (Muslim community) brings about the Islamic identity. Recent developments show how Islam or its militant adherents have waged jihad, or holy war, against those seen as enemies. Cases such as the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and suicide attacks elsewhere, including Britain and India, have highlighted the role of religion in instances when believers see the issue of identity as a matter of life and death.

In the case of Muslim identity vis-à-vis the West, religion rather than ethnicity comes to the fore because the Muslim aspect of the identity is perceived as being under attack. Furthermore, Islam appears as a more useful vehicle for political mobilization. Choudhury points out how this mobilization is also considered a reaction to discrimination and socioeconomic deprivation. The increasing self-identification of second and subsequent generations of immigrants in Western societies as Muslim rather than as certain ethnic labels has developed in reaction to their external rejection by the white majority. The public devaluation and disparagement of Muslims and Islam have led to increased in-group solidarity and identification on the basis of religion.

Diasporic identities have also played a significant role in the politics of identity and the challenge to national identities. A diaspora, a transnational network of dispersed subjects connected by ties of coresponsibilities across the boundaries of empires and political communities, is a deterritorialized, complexly spatialized imagined community. Diaspora communities and identities are viewed with suspicion and are the target of racial and nationalistic imaginings. Generally, they have been identified with ethnic or national identity categories such as Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, and Palestinians. However, the categorization of Muslims as a diaspora is a new phenomenon. For Muslims, instances of transnational mobilization, including the Rushdie Affair (1989), the two Gulf Wars (1991–1991 and 2003–), and the Danish cartoon crisis (2006) have been key moments in the development of a global Muslim consciousness. Such mobilizations have been part of the learning process of becoming a politically effective diaspora.

Politics Of Identity And Identity Formation In International Relations

Since the end of the cold war in 1991, the interest in identity has increased considerably in international relations. The rise of constructivism as a challenge to mainstream international relations theories has promoted identity as a factor in shaping international politics. Identity is considered an asset of international actors that generates behavioral dispositions.

The concept of politics of identity in international relations shows differences from the general concept of the politics of identity, which generally refers to the empowering of oppressed identities. The politics of identity in international relations comes to the fore in the formation of collective, post national identities as opposed to national identities.

Throughout history, nation-building has been marked by struggle, by people’s actively seeking recognition for their particular culture, history, language, and identity. Nation-building has always been a struggle for recognition of a particular national identity to ensure that it is recognized by the world around it and by those who see themselves as part of it. Since the end of the cold war, the formation of collective identities at the international level has also become an issue. The question of identity in the European Union, with particular emphasis on the question of the emergence of a European identity, illustrates the issue of the politics of identity at the international level. In the European identity formation case, tensions between the universalist drive for equal dignity and the particularist drive for difference and uniqueness are embedded at the international, European, and national levels. The politics of identity in the emergence of a European identity brings about reassertion of national identity, a transformation of national identities, and the emergence of a postnational identity. There are numerous examples of claims for recognition of unique identity within Europe. Much of the skepticism to the integration process voiced by, for instance, the Danish populace stems from the felt need to protect a unique Danish ethnic identity, Dutch national identity, and even a British one in Europe. However, there are indications of a major identitive transformation in Europe. National identities are becoming more inclusive, and there are signs of an emerging inclusive conception of European identity particularly among the members of the European Union. The latter is far more akin to a postnational than a national type of identity.

The development of postnational identities, the further strengthening of international civil society, and the nonnationally oriented drive of the politics of identity have contributed to a postnational type of politics of identity, especially with regard to the development of a democratic consciousness and the individual identity of citizens. This move toward a postnational politics of identity in international systems brings the challenge of understanding how identity formation takes place in the contemporary world. Debates remain regarding how much identity matters as opposed to material structures and how far the study of discourse as opposed to that of material factors allows better understanding of international relations.

Constructivists have argued that, theoretically, identities are constructed based on the dividing lines between individuals and others. It is argued that the dividing line is not geographical, like state borders, but cognitive. In this regard, politics of identity in international relations goes beyond the formation of national identities and includes the formation of collective and transnational identities as well. Constructivists view social facts as depending on the attachment of collective knowledge to physical reality by way of collective understanding and discourse, as in the case of the classification of self and other.

Based on the nineteenth and early twentieth-century arguments of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx that relate the question of identity formation to the conceptual pair of self/other, the collective identity formation and respective politics of identity are considered dialectical. Hegel’s formulation of identity formation is both dialogical, reflected in the relative to changing culture and the other, and dialectical, the self ’s reaction to the other and the tension between the self and the other.

Marx incorporated Hegel’s idea in his reformulation of Hegelian dialectics and focused more on the dialectical principle. His reformulation of Hegelian dialectic with identity formation has become the most popular version of identity formation. For Hegel and Marx, everything has self-identity, being-in-itself, but nothing is merely self-identical and self-contained except what is abstract, isolated, and static. All real and concrete things are part of the world of interaction, motion, and change—that means things not merely are self-subsistent but exist essentially in relation to other things.

The logic of contradiction suggested by dialectical thinkers has been significant in terms of identity. Based on the dialectical nature of identity formation, Alexander Wendt introduced the concept of identity and collective identity formation in international relations theory in the late twentieth century. Wendt’s model is based on the principle of interaction, which argues that the self/other relation evolves through interaction. This interaction between self and other and the existing international environment puts identity at the heart of the approach. According to Wendt, international politics is the process of states’ taking identities in relation to others, casting them into corresponding counter identities, and playing out the result. Using this model, Wendt built an interactionist model of the social processes, which focuses on how identities and interests are constructed as dependent variables at the unit (state) level and are winnowed at the macro (international) and population level. Within this context, identities and corresponding interests are learned in response to how they are treated by significant others. That means that international actors see themselves as a reflection of how they think others see or appraise them. For example, if the other treats the self as if it were a friend according to the principle of reflected appraisals, the self is able to internalize this belief in its own identity vis-à-vis the other, or vice versa. Based on the representations of self and other, a definition of situation is constructed by both self and other.

To show how identities are produced and reproduced in the social processes, Wendt has developed an evolutionary model of identity formation. Through repeated interaction, self and other identify themselves with each other negatively or positively. The debates occurring in the early twenty-first century on the future of international relations in Northeast Asia clearly illustrate how the politics of identity works in international relations. Memory, national identity, and history play important roles in Northeast Asia’s new strategic alignments and emerging international tensions. The history of contemporary Northeast Asian international relations is closely linked to new notions of national identity and legitimacy as well as to the questions of power and cooperation. Rising nationalism in China is a symptom of a nation in need of a new identity in the wake of global communism’s collapse. China’s search for a postcommunist identity has coincided with the rise of neonationalism in Japan, which advocates returning to a pre-1945 world of statehood. On the other hand, in South Korea there exists a new generation of leaders seeking to heal the wounds of national division inflicted by the Korean War by reconciliation with North Korea. Jager notes that Asia’s modern history has left a deep-rooted imprint on these societies’ views of the world and each other. Thus, it is normal to assume that the politics of identity continues to play a significant role in shaping the future relations of states in Northeast Asia, where the perceptions of the past and the politics of identity have direct consequences for political action and international relations.

Bibliography:

Aronowitz, S. Identity: Class, Culture, Social Movements. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Choudhury,T. The Role of Muslim Identity Politics in Radicalisation (A Study in Progress). Durham, N.C.: University of Durham, 2007. www. communities.gov.uk/documents/communities/pdf/452628.pdf.
Hegel, G.W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Heyes, C. “Identity Politics.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta.Winter 2007. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2007/entries/identity-politics.
Jackson, P., and B. Holbrook. “Multiple Meanings: Shopping and the Cultural Politics of Identity.” Environment and Planning 27, no. 12 (1995): 1913–1930.
Jager, S. M. The Politics of Identity: History, Nationalism, and the Prospect for Peace in Post–Cold War East Asia. Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, 2007.
MacClancy, J., ed. Contesting Art: Art, Politics and Identity in the Modern World. New York: Berg, 1997.
Marx, K. Early Writings.Translated by Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton. New York: Penguin, 1977.
McSweeney, B. “Identity and Security: Buzan and the Copenhagen School.” Review of International Studies 22, no. 1 (1996): 81–93.
Peele, S. “The Politics of Multicultural Britain.” In Developments in British Politics 8, edited by Petrick Dunleavy et al., 193–210. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Pulitzer, E., and J. F. Zipp. “Identity Politics, Partisanship and Voting for Women Candidates.” Public Opinion Quarterly 60, no. 1 (1996): 30–57.
Wallace, K. R. Relative/Outsider:The Art and Politics of Identity. Westport, Conn.: Ablex, 2001.
Wendt, A. “Collective Identity Formation and the International State.” American Political Science Review 88, no. 2 (1994): 384–396.
Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Werbner, P. “Divided Loyalties, Empowered Citizenship? Muslims in Britain.” Citizenship Studies 4, no. 3 (2000): 307–324.

This example Politics Of Identity Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.