National Identity Over the Course of Time: Peter Sahlins Essay

Stuart Hall defines identity as an ‘already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent’. We should think instead of ‘identity as a ‘production’ which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation’ (Hall 1994 p.392). An individual’s sense of belonging to a particular group, thinking, feelings and behaviour can also be referred to as identity. One’s cultural image can construct identity; such features as hair, skin tone and height. History shapes our identity.

Countries are no exception, their course of history and culture created a unique identity for themselves. Their cultures involves; language, values, belief, religions, and norms that identify who we are. This has caused division and struggles between groups or people, which influence our daily lives. Nevertheless, at the same time makes every person or country a unique culture to learn and explore. As the article, “The Roots of Identity and denial” stated more than 200 years ago there were no borders on this planet. People were able to travel through the hemisphere with no problem or differences.

The world has become modern and global. Identification of the self is a complicated, though, an important problem of every individual. Self- identity is based on inner values and reflections on culture, politics and social interactions. The main point is that people label themselves to any particular group in the society (Worchel etc., 1998). According to Ferguson: “Identity commonly refers to which it makes, or is thought to make

Religious identity can come in two forms, one from a nation of people all believing in the same values and another from the personal view of each individual or family within that nation. In a family or local community sense, it ties the smaller community together against its neighbouring ethnicities. It provides a feeling of togetherness and strength for the society. It is the basis for 'ethnic honour: the excellence of one's own customs and the inferiority of alien ones' (Weber, cited in Bruce 1996, p. 96). Religious identity brings great pride and hope to the citizens of any particular society and lends itself towards social cohesion (Browne 2005).

Whether it is gender, sexuality, religion, race, ethnicity or nationality people’s self-concept is structured around multiple identifiers. Depending on context some identifiers are more predominant than others, however, these identities enable people the ability to understand and differentiate themselves from others. While all identities are important, a crucial dimension of identity often dismissed as a major contributor to self-individuality is national identity (Baldwin, 157). Partaking in a culture, society or community for a length of time the recognition of nationalism begins to diminish. The constant participation of a nationality becomes the “norm” and it is not until withdrawn from a nation that the acknowledgement of national identity occurs. Speaking from personal experience, my national identity had never been as dominant than my time spent studying abroad in the London. While I identified as an American, I never felt American until I came overseas. Customs, language, and practices were foreign to me and fitting into the culture was a learning process. In order to feel as though I belong somewhere in this new community, I found security in identifying with and as an American. Simply, I developed an imagined community to reconnect with my home country. When place in situations where exclusion from people’s nation occurs finding comradeship through imagined communities reproduces the sense of belonging, but also alter one’s self-understanding by unveiling an

Imperialism has long been a point of contention among various nations, as no one country wants to believe that another can rule them. Considering that the fear of imperialism is still a prevalent issue in the modern world, it must be said that imperialism is not the cause of, nor motivation behind the western study of the Orient, but rather that the study is done out of genuine interest. Although Edward Said, in his book Orientalism, has made the argument that the western world merely studies the Orient only to further their own imperialistic goals, this argument faces numerous flaws because of its unwillingness to accept that this might not be the case. Alternatively, arguments made by both Bernard Lewis in Other People’s History, and Ian

In this work, he expresses the belief that the “the so-called objective truth of the white man’s superiority built and maintained by the classical European colonial empires also rested on a violent subjugation of African and Asian peoples (Said, Pg. 37). Said believed that Western history should be viewed from this premise; that our perception of Arab and African history is viewed through a looking glass tinted by these prejudices. Concerning Edward Said, the New York Times wrote in a summary of the century’s achievements was “one of the most important literary critics alive” (Said, Pg. 149). Thirty years after its publication in 1978, Orientalism remains an important ...much debated book. (Said, Pg.

Wetherell M, Lafleche M and Berkeley R (2007), Identity, Ethnic Diversity and Community Cohesion, Sage Publications Ltd, London,

The ground breaking text Orientalism written by Edward Said widened the arena for the post-colonial thinkers to consider the text with a new mechanism in Third World context. Orientalism has developed a purported approach of binary opposition to dismantling the East/West dualism in relation to Eurocentric edifice. The focal point of Said’s study is the ‘West’ and its observation of the ‘East’. The former having all positive traits: white, brave, dynamic, civilized, cultured, educated, rich of the ‘Empire’ identifies the ‘Eastern countries’ as the ‘Other’ with all the negative attributes: black, coward, static, barbaric, natural, uneducated poor people of the ‘Colony’-subjected to their contempt. The post –colonial

Within any group, members will also belong to any number of additional groups. As we become a more globalized world with increasing international communication, trade, and migration, the heterogeneity of a community, whether we speak of a metropolitan area, a region, or a nation, also increases. Further, the complex number of roles assumed by any given person in a society increases heterogeneity of individuals within any particular group and as membership changes and members personally diversify, so too will the nature of the group’s identity. The ongoing process of constructing and reconstructing group identity is not without consequences, as every identity “implies and at the same time masks a particular relationship” (Gillis

Today more than ever, individuals and societies are built as an integration of different cultures and carry different characteristics that construct their unique identity.

On the other hand, Anthony Smith, for example, illustrates that identities have clear deterministic characteristics that shape both small societies, nations and states. There are four major determinants that Smith illustrates in his work: distinguishable characteristics of national as opposed to other kinds of collective cultural identification; the role of ethnic bases in the formation of new nations; the nature and impact of different nationalist ideologies and symbolism of the formation of ethnic political identities; and last, the political consequences of different kinds of national identities (Smith, 1991, p viii). These four aspects are helpful in the explanation and determination whether communities are indeed “imaginary”. Anderson points out that "communities are to be distinguished by … the style in which they are imagined”, imagined because, “in fact, all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even those) are imagined, (Anderson, 2006: 6). However, Smith suggests that it is not only the “style” of other communities that can be different. For example, Friedrich Meinecke (1919) made a distinction between “largely passive cultural communities”, from the “active, self-determining political nations”. Indeed, Ancient Greece, for example, was not a well-determined nation despite the cultural mutuality, it was a well-organized collection of city-states which had common external and internal threats that with the strong

language. If someone is asked to inform us who they are, it is not enough for them to provide

Cultural identity is a part of the psychological self-concept that expresses an individual or group’s worldview and perceived cultural affiliations. The first step in finding a societal fit is to establish a cultural identity; this can be on an individual level and group level. Who am I? And where do I belong? These questions start to form in the human mind from an early age; it drives humans to explore their worldviews and how and where they fit in the world. Rosenfeld (1971) argued it is a deep-seated primal process that has ensured our continual survival. By finding others that think and act similarly we are offered some protection (Erickson, as cited in Carducci 2015). Erickson (as cited in Carducci, 2015) and Maslow (as cited in Mcleod 2007) argued that the need to belong is a basic building block of human development. Whatever the reason, the consensus is that humans have an intrinsic need to find a like-minded cultural group to belong to; this chosen affiliation is their cultural identity. A person may identify with more than one cultural

How can the development of national identity lead to loyalty and conflict for an individual?