Afin d’expliquer comment la mondialisation reconstruit les politiques publiques et les comportements sociaux nous étudions les échanges et interactions entre les acteurs politiques, économiques et sociaux -publics et privés, individuels et collectifs- et la façon dont ils redessinent les relations internationales. Ce cours prend sa source dans les approches sociologique et historique françaises des relations internationales. This course is also available in english version: www.coursera.org/learn/global-studies
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YL
Nov 27, 2015
The prof is very approachable and the course is very interesting
OO
Apr 04, 2019
Je recommande fortement cet enseignement de grande qualité.
À partir de la leçon
Les identités
L’identité est une notion à revoir et à considérer comme une construction sociale et politique.
Enseigné par
Bertrand Badie
Professor
Marie-Françoise Durand
Professor
Let’s move now to identities
in a global world.
This issue is probably
one of the toughest one in the investigation
of the new international order.
Identity is a very difficult concept,
it’s very difficult to define it,
and however it’s commonly used,
and especially in the political rhetoric.
So we have to take care of the way
by which we will try to define it,
to conceive it, to build it as a concept.
But the problem, the issue of identity
is probably one of the crossing issues
of the present debate in world politics
and also in international relations.
First of all we can,
through the concept of identity,
rediscover and reconstruct the concept
of international actor.
What is an international actor?
Is the international actor free
from every kind of constraint?
Or is he determined,
defined by his own culture?
What is the part of liberty,
of freedom of the actor?
And what’s the part of the cultural determinant
of his own action?
Can we consider an individual
in Iraq for instance
as acting as an Iraqian citizen
or as a Shiite citizen, Sunni citizen,
Kurdish citizen?
Or may we consider him
as a Muslim individual?
How the individual is built by himself
is probably one of the most difficult part
of the analysis.
The second point is the nature
of political system.
Can we conceive a Muslim political system,
or a Christian political system,
or a Western political system?
I mean what is the part
of the cultural substratum of a political system?
Is it possible to coin the concept
of Muslim political system
or political system in Islam
as it is commonly said?
It’s clear for instance
that there are different kinds of Islam,
different kinds of Muslim cultures.
So how to connect the concept of culture
to the global concept of a political system?
Is it a way for investigating it
or is it a kind of deadlock?
And the third issue would be:
What about the international relations?
Are international relations made
of a clash of civilizations
as it is pointed by Samuel Huntington?
Can we consider that culture is shaping,
structuring the international relations
in the present world?
Or is the cultural cleavage
one of the possible cleavages among others.
Or is it a construction,
which is an illusion more than a real factor
of international dynamics?
There is also a fourth question
about the context
of international relations.
How can we take into account
an international situation?
Is a situation made by culture
and cultural cleavages?
Or is it made of a conflict,
which is reinterpreted through the culture?
Is this reinterpretation
made by the actor
or it is made by the observer?
So, the status of the cultural factor
and the identity factor is not really clear,
and that’s why it’s important for us
to try to make a synthesis
and to discuss this very important problem.
Let’s start by a definition.
We are probably puzzled
by all these substantial,
essential definitions of identity
like if identity is natural
but in a sociological point of view:
there is no natural identity.
There is no identity,
which could be considered a priori
as shaping the social behavior.
Identity is a social construct.
Identity is pointing on the very sensible
and very important issue
of how to define themselves,
how to define myself
in relation to the others.
How can I imagine, how can I draw up
the line separating myself and the others?
What is my group?
What is the group to which I identify myself?
That’s to say
identity is first of all a decision,
a decision, which is taken by every individual
when he is facing a situation.
That’s why I consider identity as a strategy,
it’s a strategy of self-definition,
and of definition of the others,
that’s to say of the exclusion
those who are not members of my group,
of the group to which I identify myself.
If we consider identity as a strategy
we have first of all
to consider it as instable.
When I define my identity,
it’s not for a permanent behavior
but for structuring my behavior
in a moment of the time,
in a special context,
that’s why it’s instable
and identity is also volatile.
If I define myself one day as a Muslim,
maybe, in another context,
I will define myself as an Iraqi citizen
or as a Sunni or as a Kurd or as a Shiite.
That’s to say this volatility of identity
is probably one of the key problem
of the international, of the regional,
of the national, of the local order.
The future of Iraq will depend
on the strategy of every individual in Iraq
who has to determine in a precise context
what kind of identification he will opt for.
But for this reason,
identity is not only decided by myself,
but also instrumentalized,
also manipulated by political entrepreneurs.
My decision, as an individual,
is never sovereign, I am also determined
by the pressure, by the influence,
by the strategies of entrepreneurs.
And that’s why I would conceive identity
as a kind of transaction between
the individual and all the entrepreneurs
who are competing for shaping
your own identity.
If the entrepreneurs,
the identity entrepreneurs
and the political entrepreneurs
are able to shape your own identity
it means that the entrepreneur’s job
will be also depending
on your own expectations.
That’s to say identity
is shaped by the entrepreneurs
according to their expectations.
If there are no expectations meeting
the influence of an entrepreneur,
the entrepreneur has no chance to influence,
to shape and to structure your own identity.
That’s why there is a clear connection
between identity building and frustrations,
inequalities, stigmatization and so on,
and we don’t wonder when we see
that identity mobilization is especially strong
where the frustrations
and the social expectations
are so important.
With a lot of frustrated expectations,
the chance of the identity entrepreneur
to influence your own choice
will be higher and higher.
Now, if identity is the result
of these kinds of transactions,
we have now to consider
the substance of identity.
When I hope for an identity
I identify myself to a group,
but I am also identifying myself to a culture.
That’s why
the concept of culture is so important
and that’s why also
using the concept of culture
is so difficult and so risky in social sciences.
Culture doesn’t mean values.
In a society, a conflict of values,
a plurality of values is possible
and however this society
is also defined by a common culture.
You can share a culture with other individuals
without sharing the same values,
in every nation,
we can observe this conflict of values.
Conflict of values is not destroying culture,
that’s why culture is at another level
we have to take into account,
we have to consider.
There is a very interesting,
fascinating book written
by this great anthropologist Clifford Geertz.
Clifford Geertz published in 1973
a very important book, which is entitled
“The interpretation of culture”
in which Geertz is pointing that culture
doesn’t mean national character
as it is commonly said
but is a system of meanings,
that’s to say the meanings,
which are shared among a society
and by which individuals
are able to understand each other.
And Geertz is pointing
that individuals in a group
are weaving this system of meanings
of which they are then depending on.
So this system of meanings is probably
the best way for understanding
what culture means,
and he is pointing on the fact that
a society is possible with cleavages,
with a plurality of values,
but it’s not possible without a code,
that’s to say a common system of meanings.
By which politics doesn’t mean,
in Arab word for instance,
what it means in Western countries.
The meaning of political institutions
is changing according to the history,
that’s to say according to the culture
of societies and nations.
But the real problem now
is to consider that there is
no homogeneous cultural spaces
and that in a society there is
a permanent hybridization
between different kinds of cultures.
That’s why culture
is not making a territory
and in a territory
are coexisting different kinds of cultures.
The last concept is identity crisis.
What is an identity crisis?
Something very clear, that’s to say
when there is no coincidence
between the imagined community
as Benedict Anderson said,
and the real community,
when you are living in a system
which doesn’t coincide
to the imagined community
to which you consider to belong.
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