Incertaines définitions

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En provenance du cours de Sciences Po

Espace mondial, une vision française des global studies

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Sciences Po

Espace mondial, une vision française des global studies

notes

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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Les identités

L’identité est une notion à revoir et à considérer comme une construction sociale et politique.

Incertaines définitions14:34

Le retour du politique14:22

Le danger de l’ethnicisation13:38

Rencontrer les enseignants

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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