THERE ARE MORE WAYS OF SEEING PEOPLE THAN IN THE STRAITJACKET OF RACE, CREED OR WHATEVER WE MEAN BY 'CIVILISATION'. VARIETY IS THE NAME OF THE IDENTITY GAME - AND A SAFER WAY TO GO THAN CONFRONTATION IN THE NAME OF DIFFERENCE
In: Forthcoming in Ran Hirschl and Yaniv Roznai (eds.), Deciphering the Genome of Constitutionalism: The Foundations and Future of Constitutional Identity (Cambridge University Press)
"In the late 1960s identity politics emerged on the political landscape and challenged prevailing ideas about social justice. These politics brought forth a new attention to social identity, an attention that continues to divide people today. While previous studies have focused on the political movements of this period, they have neglected the conceptual prehistory of this political turn. Linda Nicholson's book situates this critical moment in its historical framework, analyzing the concepts and traditions of racial and gender identity that can be traced back to late eighteenth-century Europe and America. She examines how changing ideas about social identity over the last several centuries both helped and hindered successive social movements, and explores the consequences of this historical legacy for the women's and black movements of the 1960s. This study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of political history, identity politics and US history."--Jacket
In the late 1960s identity politics emerged on the political landscape and challenged prevailing ideas about social justice. These politics brought forth a new attention to social identity, an attention that continues to divide people today. While previous studies have focused on the political movements of this period, they have neglected the conceptual prehistory of this political turn. Linda Nicholson's engaging book situates this critical moment in its historical framework, analyzing the concepts and traditions of racial and gender identity that can be traced back to late eighteenth-century Europe and America. She examines how changing ideas about social identity over the last several centuries both helped and hindered successive social movements, and explores the consequences of this historical legacy for the women's and black movements of the 1960s. This insightful study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of political history, identity politics and US history
This volume examines key questions about anonymity, privacy and identity in an environment that increasingly automates the collection of personal information and uses surveillance to reduce corporate and security risks. Privacy and issues of identity are here examined through an interdisciplinary lens, informed by the results of a major research project that brought together a distinguished array of philosophers, ethicists, cognitive scientists, lawyers, cryptographers, engineers, policy analysts, government policy makers and privacy experts
Stan Grant asks why when it comes to identity he is asked to choose between black and white. Is identity a myth? A constructed story we tell ourselves? Tribalism, nationalism and sectarianism are dividing the world into us and them. Communities are a tinderbox of anger and resentment. He passionately hopes we are not hard wired for hate. Grant argues that it is time to leave identity behind and to embrace cosmopolitanism. On Identity is a meditation on hope and community
In any society, culture unites its members, which are represented by a host of symbols, formulas, traditions, and ways of thinking that are reflected and are present concrete and abstractly through conscious or collective ways of imagination. In this line of thinking we differentiate the concept of patriotism to the one related to national identity. In this eternal search for identity, the question is how much can it change and due to which factors?
The frontiers of identity, and the identity of frontiersThe essay discusses the relationship between group identities (especially national) and the notion of territory and its symbolic significance in the creation of the idea of community. The author examines possible contexts that connect the frontiers of identity with the identities of national state borders, as well as ways in which these connections become symbolic, using the example of the recent plane crash tragedy in Smoleńsk. In the final part of the essay the author refers to Leszek Kołakowski's notion of myth in order to justify the thesis that each nation (also in the first decades of the 21th century) is always a mythical community that is being constantly reactivated through current political and ideological actions. Granice tożsamości i tożsamość granicArtykuł omawia kwestie związków tożsamości zbiorowych, zwłaszcza narodowych, z pojęciem własnego terytorium i jego symbolicznego znaczenia dla budowania dla wyobrażeń wspólnotowych. Na przykładzie tragedii katastrofy samolotu pod Smoleńskiem autor artykułu pokazuje możliwe konteksty, w jakich tytułowe granice tożsamości wiążą się z tożsamością granic narodowego terytorium oraz w jaki sposób zaznacza się symbolicznie ten nierozerwalny związek. W końcowej partii artykułu autor odwołuje się do koncepcji mitu Leszka Kołakowskiego, aby uzasadnić tezę, że każdy naród, także w pierwszych dekadach XXI wieku, jest zawsze wspólnotą mityczną, która nieustannie się reaktywuje również w kontekście działań politycznych i ideologicznych.
In recent years, leading members of Russia's Constitutional Court have adapted the concept of constitutional identity to the Russian legal context, to explain and legitimize the country's authoritarian turn under President Vladimir Putin. This development reflects a broader trend in international politics, where populist and anti-democratic leaders seek to identify "national characteristics" that can be translated into law and legal practices on the domestic as well as international level, in order to deny or restrict certain basic principles such as the rule of law and/or human rights. In Russia, several officials and policy makers, among them Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court Valery Zorkin (2018), have contributed to this discussion. We argue that a constitutional identity discourse has been used by Russian courts to explain the specific relationship between the Russian state and international law on the one hand, and on the other the relationship between the Russian state and its subjects. We place this debate in its wider legal and political context and highlight how it conforms with the amendments to the Russian constitution introduced in spring 2020.
(Originally published in French in elements, 2004, 113, summer.) Contemplates the meaning & philosophies of identity. The problem of identity -- voiced through the question, "Who am I?" -- is representative of modern societies, & identity within traditional & pre-modern cultures is discussed. The concept identity was transformed during the Enlightenment & the relationship between identity & political ideologies is analyzed. Recognition, including mutual recognition, is deemed essential to one's personal & collective identities, & additional complexities of individual & collective identities are identified. The effects of postmodernism & globalization on identity are pondered. L. Collins Leigh
Many authors have discussed issues connected with the EU's quest for more legitimacy through establishing a collective identity. A plethora of publications stress that collective identity contributes in a crucial manner to societal and political cohesion among EU citizens and EU elites. The EU has been trying to construct a collective identity by applying identity technologies towards its own citizens. These identity technologies work in a top-down manner. Adapted from the source document.