Nation, Community, Identity and Other'

1
Nation, Community, Identity and Other.

• Outline
• sociological, psychoanalytic and psychological
  accounts of the formation of identity in late
  modern times
• role that social hatred plays in the formation of
  identity
• social hatred and participation in hate crimes
  can create and reinforce social identity.
• role of peer groups, friendships and cliques
• identity formation of young men and
• negative labelling determines identities.
• The dark side of identity acquisition.

2
Psychological Perspectives, Erikson 1965

• Identity formation main psychological task
• "identity crisis". Erikson
• eight developmental stages in human life
• identity crisis is the most important conflict
  human beings encounter when they go through these
  stages.

3
Erikson

• Identity a subjective experience of oneself as
  well as a set of observable characteristics.
• Also the way that other people experience us.
• onset of the identity crisis occurs in the
  teenage years.
• Only individuals who succeed in resolving this
  crisis will be ready to face future challenges
• identity crisis - recurring,
• world demands us to constantly redefine
  ourselves.
• The loss of "a sense of personal sameness and
  historical continuity".
• A healthy subjectivity and identity something
  stable???

4
Erikson and Tribal psychology

• Tribal psychology based on association with
  human subgroups rather than humanity as a whole.
• Pseudospeciation,
• Can, produce atrocities, hatreds and brutality
• Nazism a powerful form of such inhumanity.
• Identifying with subgroups a two-edged sword
• Promotes cooperation within social groups but
  inhibits cooperation between groups
• A psychosocial theory

5
Psychoanalysis Phantasy, Splitting and
Projection.

• Experiences of sexual development in infanthood
  that shape the kind of identities we become
  attached to and the kinds of relationships we
  have with others.
•  "Infantile feelings and phantasies leave, as it
  were, their imprints on the mind, imprints that
  do not fade away but get stored up, remain
  active, and exert a continuous and powerful
  influence on the emotional and intellectual life
  of the individual" (Klein1975290)

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Psychoanalysis 2

• Fantasy usually associated with something
  imagined or unreal.
• Phantasy, for Klein, however a defence mechanism
  (Segal199230).
• Exerts a profound influence on everyday life
• Our subjectivity, is constructed in unconscious
  phantasy.
• Our instincts are always attached to an object
• Our instincts are object seeking.
• Phantasy is not an escape from reality, but can
  produce reality.
• A central part of how we understand the world.
• A world of good and bad objects are constructed
  through a process of projection and introjection.
• We take good objects into our self and project
  bad objects onto others.
• Splitting an unconscious process by which
  positive and negative impulses and feelings that
  are too difficult to be held together spring
  apart and become projected onto different people.
  (Clarke 2002)
• Split between good and bad relieves our doubt.
• a crucial part of the way we understand the
  world.
• A defence against anxiety.

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Phantasy

• phantasy provides a vehicle for the construction
  of our own identity,
• Also, through projection, the construction of
  Others.
• Phantasy involves doing something to some other.
• Other- an object which has become split off or
  separated from the self
• Jean-Paul Sartre's (1976) work, Anti-Semite and
  Jew- phantasy made reality through projective
  identification.
• If the Jew did not exist, then the anti-Semite
  would invent him.
• The Jew a container to hold what is dangerous and
  frightening.
• Processes of othering are central to self and
  group identity.

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  Identity and Hatred in late modernity

• Self a project
• identity is plastic
• what are the consequences of this plasticity and
  fluidity of self
• Globalization -erosion of traditional culture
• Resurgence of aggressive nationalisms
• Globalisation erodes national identities,
  traditional moral frameworks and value systems
• Unifying forces of globalization and the
  fragmenting forces of identity politics are two
  sides of the same coin.
• Localization- bounded entities.
• Bounded countries (nationalism or separatism),
  bounded faith systems (religious revitalization),
  bounded cultures (linguistic or cultural
  movements) or bounded interest groups (ethnicity)
• Roland Robertson, might be glocalization.

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Identity Politics

• Concerns the liberation of a specific region or
  group that has been marginalised reclaiming of
  identity
• Challenges dominant oppressive discourses or
  structures or institutions.
• goal of greater self-determination or autonomy.
• Examples Gay Pride, second wave feminism, Black
  Civil Rights
• Critiques of cultural imperialism
• Recommends the transformation of previously
  stigmatised accounts of group membership.
• Indigenous rights movements worldwide,
  nationalist projects, or demands for regional
  self-determination and autonomy use similar
  arguments.

10
Identity Politics and Globalisation

• Modernisation and globalisation may highlight
  differences and trigger conflict. Inequalities
  are made visible by globalisation
• intensified contact entailed by globalisation.
• Eriksen you do not envy your neighbour if you
  are unaware of his existence.
• Dangers with this argument.

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Cultural Difference and Nationalism

• Martin Barker New Racism the problematisation
  of cultural difference
• Ethnic nationalism, politicized religion and
  indigenous movements all forms of identity
  politics
• In-group often depicted as homogeneous,
• internal differences glossed over
• serves the interests of the privileged segments
  of the group???
• Nostalgic?
• harking back to an imaginary time of cultural
  harmony and economic prosperity

12
Cultural Difference Nationalism 2

• Invokes political symbolism
• Uses myths, cultural symbols and kinship
  terminology
• A notion of a national we or a collective us.
  
• Social complexity in society is reduced to a set
  of simple contrasts.
• Internal differences ignored in the act of
  constructing boundaries and demonising an Other.

13
Peer groups, Cliques and Sub-cultures

• Groups can become containers in the search for
  self-identity.
• Peer groups are markers of status, acceptance
  and success
• Political groups, nations and religious groups
  help us define self against other.

14
Adolescent Girls and the Policing of Identity

• Valerie Hey The Company She Keeps the
  socio-dynamics of girls freindships
• micro-politics and micro-technologies of girls
  friendships usually dismissed as 'garbage' and
  'trivial' or bitchy material.
• Negotiation of friendship among girls something
  that is always constituted in the "socially
  coercive presence of the male gaze" (p. 65).
• Best friendships are the result of cultural
  pressure to convert wider loyalties to these
  individualized sources of power and regulation.
• It is through these close peers that girls
  regulate and are regulated

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Dirty Writing, Dirty games

• Strong incentive to create an "other" for
  working class girls
• Other girls made to carry the 'bad' bits of
  femininity".
• heterosexual desire
• "dirty writing" of girls reminds us that it's not
  so much that boys play "dirty little games" and
  girls don't (Fine, 1989 Thorne Luria, 1986),
  but that boys' dirty games are permitted within
  public spheres and girls' must be done in private
  I

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Otherness, transgression and normalisation

• a whole discourse among the girls about girls as
  predators
• "ventriloquated" voices of girls mimic
  masculinized discourse.
• girls make sense of themselves against other
  girls but "not in conditions of their own
  choosing".
• Policing of transgression
• girls internalise and act out hierarchies of
  domination and collude in their own own
  devaluing.
• Messages from 'outside' value systems are encoded
  in the relationships girls set up with each
  other.
• Male meanings and put downs are available as ways
  of punishing 'transgressive' friendships are
  disciplinary.
• This is a central part of the way that they form
  their identities.

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Conclusion.

• Groups defined in relation to an out-group.
• Mary Douglas, Matter out of Place
• Getting rid of the other
• What Freud called the narcissism of minor
  differences. minor, not major , diffs lead to
  the bitterest disputes. Inflated into lethally
  competing fictional identities.
• Hatred of 'otherness'.
• The group bond is often constructed around hatred
  of an out group
• As Freud puts it " it is always possible to bind
  together a considerable number of people in love
  so long as 'as are other people left over to
  receive the manifestations of their
  aggressiveness'
• Minor not major differences a source of
  antagonism.