SIGNS OF IDENTITY

The Anatomy of Belonging

Martin Ehalo

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Titie: Signs of idenriry : the anatomy of belonging / by Martin Ehala.
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1.

Typeset in Bembo
by Taylor & Francis Books
To Kersti, the love of my life
CONTENTS

List of illustrations
Preface xl

Introduction
Oueruiew oJ the book 3
The core of the argument 5
Our different assumptions 5
Language as a model 7
Essentialism and structuralism 8
Values and ethnocentrism 10
Interpellation 11
Emotional attachment 13

1 The conceptions of collective identity T6

The foundations of identity research 16
Miuo-leuel approaches 19
Social Identity approach 19
Optimal Distinctiveness theory 23
Social Identity Complexity Theory 25
Macro-leuel approaches 27
Early macro-level approaches 28
Recent macro-level approaches 31
Two-leuel approaches 35
Summary 38
viii Contents

The nature of social phenornena 42

Communication 43
The concept of sign 45
Icon, index and symbol 48
Social phenomena as symbols 50

Identity as sign 56
Identity communication 57
The structure of collectiue identity 61
Identity language 65
Social stratifcation 68

Identity signals 74
Human diuersity 74
Types of signals 7 5
Inherited features 75
Entrenched features 77
Elected features 78
Categorization 80
Cender and race 82
Ethnicity and nation 85
Boundary permeability 86

Identity rneanings 91
Core ualues 97
Types of core ualues 93
Stereotypes 96
Ethnocentrism 98
Meta ualues: unity 100
Meta ualues: authenticity 103

Identification 108
Personal idenffication 108
The Self 110
Disidentifcation 112
Recognition 115
Intersectionality 118
Double idenffication 119

Identity negotiation 125

construction 125
Social
Deconstruction 727
 Contents ix

Communiution accommodation 1 29
Groryting and contrasting 1j0
The power of narratiue lj j
The Bronze Soldier cae 135

8 Hot and cold identities 142

Collective emotions 742
Fear venus security 144
Flope venus despair 145
Pride venus shame 146
Anger versus gorlt 147
Identity fusion 148
Cold groups 149
Hot groups 151
Confiicts in core ualues 151

9 Epilogue 1,57
What next? 157
The changing world 157
Anatomy of belonging 159
Paradox of libenl multiculturalism 161
Prognosis 76j

Index 166
ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures
1.1 Reduction of identity complexity (adapted from Roccas and
Brewer 2002, p.90) 26
1.2 Components of the national idendry on the macro level JI
2.1 Sign stnrcture 46
3.1 The tripanite structure of collective identity 62
7.1 Grouping and contrasting _tJ I
8.1 Collective emotions and types of behavior 150

Tables
5.1 Identity rypes and core values 93
5.2 Fractioning of core values in Moldovan identities 103
 PREFACE

The idea this book elaborates - that identity is by nature a sign - was conceived in
2006 rvhile readingJohnJoseph's insightful book Language and identity In the book,
he writes that "a national identity - 'ltalian', for example - becomes the signifier of
a signified that exists at first only as a desire" (1r. 106). Through the years that followed,

I have tried to figure out how exactly identity exists as a sign, and what implica-
tions this has for the way it is studied. I have many people and institutions to thank
for their help and support, and indeed for fueling my inspiration, starting withJohn
Joseph, whose work has influenced my thinking significantly.
It is certain that this work would not have been possible wichout funding. The
argument presented in this book developed during the projects Ethnolinguistit uitality
and identity construction: Estonia in the Baltic background supported by the Estonian
Science Foundation grant no 7350, and Sustainability oJ Estonia in the era oJglobalization,
suppoted by the Estonian Research Council gnnt IUT20-3. I would also like to
thank the Andrew'W. Mellon Foundation for a grant that enabled me to spend the
spring term of 2006 in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the
University of Edinburgh, where - exactly as their motto promises - these ideas
started to grow. It took nine years until they were ready for the fint draft, which I
r'vrote during the spring terrn of 2015, while a Fulbright visiting scholar in the
Department of Communication at the lJniversity of Califomia, Santa Barbara. I
would like to thank the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program for a grant that made it
possible.
Several passages in chis book are based on my ear-lier writings One section in
Chapter 1 is largely based on "Sustainability of double ethnic identity in majoriry-
minority settings: The case of Estonian and V6ro," first published in l-anguage and
identi4t in the Finno-Ugrit world, edited by Rogier Blokland and Cornelius Hasselblatt
(Maastricht: Shaker Publishing, 2007), some text in Chapter 7 is modified from
"The Bronze Soldier: Identity threat and maintenance in Estonia," Journal oJ Bahic
xii Preface

Studies, 1,2009, and some text in Chaprer 8 is modified from "Hot and cold eth-
nicities: Modes of ethnolinguistic vitality,"
Jotuual of Multilingual attd Multiultural
Deuelopment, 1, 2011, both published by Taylor & Francis Ltd, r,vww.tandfonline.
com. I thank the publishers for their pennission ro reuse and modi$' these rexrs.
Most of all, I owe a lot to the people rvho have helped my understanding of
identity to grow during these years. There are too many to name them all, yet I
especially want to thank Howie Giles for lengthy discussions abouc inter-group
communication during my stay in Santa Barbara, and John Edwards, Mati Hint,
Cynthia Kaplan, Kadri Koreinik, Kalevi Kull, Maarja Siiner, Don Taylor and three
anonymous revier,vers for reading and commenting on the first draft. Your
feedback has motivated me to substantially revise the book, which I hope has made
it more comprehensive and clearer. Yet it rvould still not have been as smooth
without the help of Richard Adang, who edired rhe whole manuscript for
language and clariry.
There is one important thing that I
have become increasingly aware of while
working on this book, an old truth that perhaps has been forgotten in late
modernity, when everybody's utmost loyalry and energy is devoted to rhe project
of self-idendry. The old truth is that 1 is meaningless without we. I have increas-
ingly come to appreciate that I am what I am because of my family, my friends, my
colleagues, my compatriots and any other we I share a sign of identity with. I thank
the most special group of belonging - my family - which has shaped the growth of
my self the most. My deepesr gratitude goes to Ker:ti, who has been with me for
over 30 vean. and to whom this book is dedicated.
INTRODUCTION

In the contemporary r,vorld, we are obsessed with identity.

A successful male athlete discovers that for his whole life his physical constitution
as a man has been in conflict with his deeply perceived female identity, and goes through

transgender surgery with the rvhole society applauding and supporting. A single white
mother with rwo mixed-race children discovers that her tr-ue racial identity is black,
tans herself,, gets an Afro hairstyle and becomes a successful black activist, until her
parents blolv her "cover," with the whole sociery stunned and critical.
Schools and universities set restrictions on Ha-lloween costunes, banning wearing
feathered headdresses, Mexican hats, turbans, black-face, red-face, yellow-face,
blue-face, rainbow-face and anything else that can be seen as cultural appropriation;
those who see this as unnecessary are verbally abused by fiercely intolerant groups
of activists fighting for greater tolerance Groups of students demand that universiry
teaching be changed radically, because the concept of a university and the way it
operates, created by white heterosexual males, is incompatible with their cultural
identities, so they feel alienated and less successful there.
'Western European universities have rejected
Large numbers of graduates from
the national identities of their countries of birth, and in a search for their tme
identity traveled to Syria to join ISIS, some of them have later intentionally blown
themselves up in support of the core values of this identity. Hundreds of thousands
of Russians in Crimea are still celebrating the annexation of Crimea as a "retum to
Mother Russia" despite the economic devastation caused by intemational sanc-
tions, the dramatic decrease in tourism, the shortege of electricity and water, and
losing their only land connection, through Ukraine, to the rest of the world.
Thus, identiry issues have become increasingly contentious in the modern world'
yet our understanding of identity is a mess. The notion is used loosely by politi-
cians, minority activists, artists, writers, journalists and the general public. It is used
as a teml in personal, cognitive, social and political psychology, in sociology,
2 Introduction

cultural anthropology, philosophy and several other fields of the humanities. In

each of these traditions, it is understood in its o',vn way. Research on idendry is
like the tale of the five blind men describing an elephant: from one perspecrive it
seems like a pillar, from another perspective a rug, and fi-om anocher perspective
like a baskec. Even rvorse, the five men describing this identity don't even listen
much to each other.
The anrbiguiry rnd obscunry of identiry have led some scholars to rejecr the
temr altogether as too imprecise for scholar\' analysis. For some research pur?oses,
this rnay be a sound approach, but rejecting the concept obscures the phenomenon.
This is the cr-ucial point: is there a phenomenon of identiry, or is rhe r,vord just a
handy shortcut to lump togecher a plethora of distinct and unrelated things? Has
the world become obsessed by something that does not exist? This book tries to
answer these questions.
Consider the notion oflanguage. Language is by no means less complex
than identity. Yet Iinguisrics is a separare discipline. and even though it is
divided into a large number of sub-disciplines, linguists hardly doubt that lan-
guage exists. Despite each sub-branch of linguistics dealing with diflerent
aspects of language, the thorough study of which is so specific that two lin-
guists could not fully follow the details of each other's rvork, all of them are
familiar with and agree on the general foundations of language science. Fur-
thermore, even most laypeople have been taught the basics of linguistics -
gtammar - in elementary school, and have some common understanding of it.
For this reason alone, our understanding of language as a phenomenon rs
much less obscure than that of identity.
Unlike linguistics, there is no science of identics or identology, but perhaps
there should be. The disciplinary fracturing of identity studies without there
being a general study is the reason why there is no core understanding of
identity. The acknowledgment of the fact of partial perspectives on identity
should at least motivate us to combine the disciplinary perspectives into a
broader picture. This broader picture would be simplistic in many respects and
poorer in detail compared to disciplinary perspectives, but it would help to keep
everybody on the same page regarding to the basic propefties of the phenomenon.
This book aims to provide such a broader picture, diawing on the findings of identity
studies from difrerent disciplines and using the basic concepr of semiotics the
sign - as its central notion.
As the scope of the book is trans-disciplinary, the approach is not specialized.
The exposition of the topic, and the outline of the basic properties of identity,
its constituent parts and the reiations betr,veen them are presented in plain lan-
guage that should be understandable to undergraduates from different dis-
ciplines. The book also plovides an outline of an original argument regarding
the nature of identity and, in connection rvith this, occasionally crirically dis-
cusses various alternative approaches. I hope that, as a result, it may be of some
interest to the scholars of identitv.
 Introduction 3

Overview of the book

The book begins with an outline of a selection of prominent theories of identiry to
give the reader an introduction co the scope of the phenomenon and the richness
of approaches to it. The outline is organized inco three sections. Miclo-level
approaches focus on how identities are manifested in individual people, in their
behavior, self-understanding, beliefs and emotions. These approaches are common
in social psychology, Macro-level approaches focus on the structure and content of
identity, and how different identities relate to each other in sociery. These are
common in social sciences and the humanities. Two-level approaches tackle the
hardest issues: how individual identifications relate to the identiry as a group
phenomenon, how individual identificacions influence the content of identiry on
the macro level and, vice vena, how groups are fonned from individuals or how
groups disappear when individuals cease to identify.
As the main claim of this book is that identiry is a sign in the way this notion is
understood in semiotics and linguistics, Chapter 2 provides an introduction to
identiry as a sign. While the range of signs is immense, the prototypical manifestations
are human language words, for example the word cat. Erch word, and eny other
sign, has two pafts: the signal paft (the signijer) and the meaning part (the signifieQ.
Ihe signal paft is how we perceive signs. In the case of words, it is their phonetic
shape. The meaning is, of course, rvhat the signal stands for. In the case of cat, it is
"a small pet, relaced to tigen."-Words are called symbol rypes of signs, in which the
relationship between the signal and the meaning is arbitrary and based on social
convention. Fo:: example, there is no reason why the sound sequence car should
mean "cat." According to the philosopherJohn Searle, a1l social institutions function
as symbols. For exarnple, the institution of rnoney is based on a social convention

by which a relatively useless piece of figuratively printed paper (a 20-dollar bi1l, for
example) is assigned a specific amount of value, which in this example is large
enough to buy a meal. Here the bill is the signal side, and the value is the n-reaning
side of the symbol. Identities have the sane s[ructure, and operate in sociery in a
similar manner.
Chapter 3 outlines the structure of identities as signs. The basic argument is that
people understand the identities of others in ways similar to how they understand
linguistic utterances. In other words, if one hears the sound sequence cat, one
understands that it means a type of beloved pet. Sinrilarly, if one sees a person with
a particular appearance, e.g. wearing an offensive, torn T-shirt and having a spiky
Mohar.vk hairstyle, one can draw a conclusion about this person's identiry: that he
or she is "a person who likes punk music, and has a mrldly anarchistic world view."
In this way the sign of idenciry, like a linguistic sign, has trvo parts: the signal and
the meaning. By reading the identiry signals thac other people send, people reach
conclusions about the beliefs, attitudes and likely behaviors of the people who send
these signals, i.e. about their identities.
Chapters 4 and 5 outline the types of identiry signals and identiry meanings in
more detail, providing a wide range of examples of their manifestation. Unlike
4 lntroduction

using language, where one can freely choose whether to send a signal or not, i.e. to
say something or remain silent, in the case of identicies this choice is much more
limited, at least for some types of idencities. For example, if one does not express
one's political views openly, one can quite eflectively abstain from signaling his or
her political identity. Obviously, abstaining from signaling one's racial idencity is
much harder. As in the case of pronounced rvords, identiry signals are associated
with meanings. In the center of the meanings ar:e core values, i.e. what people wirh
these identities are supposed to think and believe, in broad terms. For example,
both Christian identity and feminist identity have their specific core values, some
of which are the same, and sonre of which (particularly regarding abortion) are
diflerent. Core values provide a moral scale to assess and evaluate ocher identicies:
whether individuals having these identities behave in a lespectable manner, whe-
ther they are warrn or cold in social relations, and whether they are competent or
not. These assessments form the basis of stereotypes, which fonn the informal
"grammar" of identities that people Llse to exercise power over others.
'While
the above examples suggest that idencicy is very much what rve are in our
essence, this is an illusion. Identities are not what we are, but what we possess, as
we possess money. The relationship betrveen individuals on the micro level and
signs of identities they are related to on the macro level is discussed in Chapter 6.
The central notion here is authenticiry. As signs of identity are conventional, i.e.
there is broad social agreement regarding what a prototypical representative of an
identity should look like, how he/she behaves and what he/she believes, every
individual clairning a certain identity must fulfill these criteria at least to a certain
extent. This propercy of rhe anatomy of belonging does not support the widely
held opinion that the penon him,/herself is the utrnost authoriry on his/her
identity, and everybody should accept the identity that an individual asserts. As the
book shows, the way i.dentities work is a bit more complex than this kind-hearted
inclusive statement leads us to believe.
Chapter 7 deals with how signs of identities as socialiy shared mental representations
come into being: how an identity, such as a national identity, emerges The chapter
stafts with an ovelierv of the phenomellon of sociai constmction: a process in
which people, by sharing their experiences through language, create a shared
underscanding of what the rvorld and the phenomena in it ale about. As our lools
of experience (e.g. microscopes and telescopes) and the extenc of our travels (e.g.
around the world and to Mam) have expanded, we have reconstructed our
understanding of the world. For example, most of us no longer believe that the
world is flat. The same process of social construction underiies the emergence of ail
identities, and in fact all social institutions, e.g. traflic r-ules, univenities and states.
Some socia-l constmctions are vely purposeful and conscious, whule some are largely
intuitive and subtle. Most identities start to emerge from very subtle processes
of behavioral accommodation, and may at some point turn to highly conscious
identity politics, able to engage large masses of people.
The final chapter focuses on what makes people believe that they form a com-
munity, and why they act together as a distinctive collective entity. At the core of
 Introduction 5

this is the sense of emotional attachment that people have regarding their signs of
identity. Basically, it is a commitment to an idea, to a mental representation. For
people in some groups this feeling of attachment is low; they may acknowledge
rheir menbership, but it does not mean much to them. If the majority of group
nrembers experience their identicy in this rvay, their group can be considered cold.
This does not mean that mernbers of such groups are not capable of collective
action, but these members' contributions arc based on their rational self-interest, or
the fear of punishment. If the majority of menrbers feel strong emotional attachment
to their sign of identity, the group can be considered hot. Some membem of hot
groups are ready fol great sacrifices in the name of their identity and for the benefit of
their group. Group temperature is highly irnportant in inter-group relations,
pa::ticularly if rher:e is a conflicc in core values. In the contemporary globalizing
rvorld, groups with cold and hot identities and with very diverse core values come
increasingly inco contacr. Knowing the anatomy of belonging helps to understand
and to forecast probable outcomes of such contacts, r.vhich is discussed briefly in
the epilogue of the book.
This book has two main aims. First, it is a broad introduction to the main rspects
of colleccive idendry. Second, it presents an original argunlent about che nature of
identity, based on the concept of sign. Because of the latter, the book has implica-
tions to what identiry is, how it should be studied, and how u'e should address
identiry matters. In places, this understanding is incompatible rvith some widely held
assunptions in idendry studies. I do not think these are majoriry views, identiry
studies are far coo diverse for this, but chey are prominent enough to deserwe
discussion In the next section. I oucline some of these controversies in a nutshell.

The core of the argument

O ur different ossumptions
Current identiry studies fall roughly into micro-level and macro-level approaches,
rvhile interdisciplinary two-level approaches, such as that of David and Bar-Tal
(2009), have only emerged recently. The assumptions scholars working on the
micro or macro level have about the nature of identitv can be quite different. A
good example is che quest for national character.
In macro-level studies, the search for national character has been one of the
leicmotiG from the beginning, long before the term identitl, was even coined. These
fir:st macro-level scudies emerged in Germany and focused on Vdlkerpsythologie (folk
psychology), with the aim of describing whac rvas known as rhe Volksgeist: a term
that in ou1' current understanding roughly corresponds to national character
(Klautke 2013). One of the main proponents of this approach was 'Wilhelm
Wundt, the founder of exper:imental psychology. Yec his monumental 10-volume
set Vdlkerpsychologie ts virtually forgotten today, not because it is not important, but
because the phenomena it focuses on (language, customs, myths, etc.) could not be
studied by the methods of experinrental psychology he himself founded. Hor'vever,
6 Introduction

the method suwived and became elaborated in the works of Durkheim. who laid
the foundation for sociology.
The study of national character fell into obscuriry after World War II, for
obvious reasons, but the notion lived happily on in the popular consciousness until
psychologists finally took it up for scientific scrutiny at the turn of the millennium.
Basing their research on a solid foundation of penonaliry psychology, they aimed
to test whecher national character exists. The research design was simple: to study
the distribution of the Big Five personaiity traits among the populations of different
nations in order to find out whether there were statistically significant differences in
how neuroticism, extraversion and other traits were manifested among members of
difFerent nations. It turned out that chere were no significant difGrences, which led
to the conclusion that "perceptions of national character thus appear to be
unfounded stereotypes" (Terracciano et al. 2005).
What is important here is not so much the results, but the assumption that
narional character only has a foundation if it can be shown to be a statistical sum of
the personality traits of the members of a nation, i.e. that the macro level is just an
epiphenomenon of the micro level. Furthennore, as the Big Five personaliry traits
are moderately to substantially genetically inherited (Bouchard and McGue 2003),
it follows that the national character must be also largely genetically decermined.
On the other hand, in sociology, anthropology and the humanities, there is a
general consensus that collective identities, such as nations, are socially constructed,
and thus if we talk of national character it is something that is socially constructed,
'W'hen psychologists
i.e. involving leamed traits not inherited traits. started to study
national character, they had a completely different concept in nrind. Instead of
studying leamed behavioral or attitudinal differences berween cultures, they scudied
rhe distribution of personality rraits among different populations. Instead of the
forest as an ecosystem, they studied the trees.
I do not underestimate the role of psychology in the study of identity - the
properties of trees are important in order to understand che character of the forest.
It is rather that this truth is sometimes forgotten in the macro-level studies of
identity Some macro-level identiry studies are so firmly based on the assumption
of social constrlrctivism that they tend to ignore inherited factors altogether.
Accually, there are even those who wam psychologists against grounding identity
categories in empirical realiry, because scholars who perpetuate the understanding
of "ethnicity as 'natural' r-un fhe danger of both reproducing and gathering
ammunition for racist ideologists" (Zagefka 2009, p. 237). Here, clearly, the desire
for social justice has done injustice to the truth - to be a social constructionist to
the extent of denying any impact that our biological and hereditary properties may
have on how collective identities are constructed is like denying any relationships
between trees and the forest.
These quite profound difrerences between the basic assumptions in micro- and
macro-level identity research form the main reason for there being a need for a
trans-disciplinary approach to identiry. Linguistics is a science that can serve as an
example of how an integrated multimethod research of a major social phenomenon
- lntroduction 7

might look - it is both disciplinary when looking at different aspects of language,

but trans-disciplinary because of a large set of shared basics about the phenomenon,
accepted in its sub-disciplines. This example is the more relevant, because identities
function in society in many ways similarly to language.

Languoge as o model

The approach advocated here not only claims that identities exist as signs, it also
claims that identity operates in society similarly to the way language does. First,
identities exist on the macro level as socially shared mental representations (or
collective representations, to use a term familiar from Durkheim's work). To
expand the analogy with language further, ali signs of identity, together wirh a set
of mles that regulate the relationships between them, form the "gramrnar of identity,"
t'hich is a blueprint of the social space of a pafticular sociefy. It defines the moral
wofth and power relationships between diflerent identities based on the main value
\vstem (the core values) of that society.
Individuals are socialized from bi.rth to match some of the signs of identities.
They socialize themselves further to claim some identities that they see as desirable,
or are denied some identities if they fail to perfom these identities with authenticity.
In this sense, perforning an identity is like speaking a language . If one peforrns an
identity authentically, he is like a native speaker; if not quite authentically, he is like a
speaker of a foreign language . And this parallel with language can be extended further.
Speaking is the temporal use of human language as a system. Similarly, as the
stream of speech that speakers perfonrr in a language is fed back to them and can
cause the language to change, everyday identity performances by the members of a
sociery are fed back to them, and may lead to a change in identity grammar. Of
cour:se, as human language can also be shaped by conscious language planning,
identity language can also be shaped by identity politics, to an extent. This
understanding of the interdependence of agency and structure is in many respects
akin to the structuration theory advanced by Giddens (1984).
In principle every sign of a rype of symbol, whether a word or a sign of identity,
is based on what Searle (20i0) calls the status function Status functions are in the
fonrr of X counts as Y in context C. For example, the sound sequence cdt counts as "a
small pet reiated to tigers" in the English language, Donald Trump counts as the
president in the context of the United States in 20L7, and one IJS dollar counts as
0.024685 grams of gold on February 3,201.5 at 77:16 NY Time. As phenomena
established by assigning status functions can be combined, very complex social
institutions can be created, such as universities, banks or states. For example, a state
as an institution is often created by a single act of assigning a status function to a
certain territory and its population: a declaration of independence. For it to come
into existence, nothing more is needed than a general recognition that the assignment
ofthis status function is acceptable.
According to Searle (2tt06. p. 18), "status functions are the vehicles of power in
sociery. The remarkable thing is this: we accept the status functions and in so
8 Introduction

accepting, we accept a series of obligations, rights, responsibilities, duties, entidements,

authorizations, perrnissions, requirements and so on." This is very much true for all
identities: by having an identity we are bound to the norms of this identity con-
ceming behavior, and we are judged by orhers based on the identities that we
proJ ect.

Essentiolism and structuralism

Conceptualizing identities as signs has direct implications for the debate on essenri-
alism and structuralism. Essentialism and stmcturalism are commonJy seen as two
sides of the
same coin, buc there is no inherent reason rvhy one presupposes the
other. While the approach advocated in this book is definitely a stmcturalist one, ir is
stl-ictly non-essentialist. The essentialist and constmctivist distincrion can be explained
by the difference between the index rype of and symbol rype of sign.
sigr.r
Several scholars have expressed che idea that identities are signs either explicitly
(foseph 2004), or describe the nature of identiry in ways that are highly compatible
with the undentanding of identity as sign (see Barth 1969, Bourdieu 1984).
However, most scholars have previously seen identities as an index type of signs, i e.
as empirical traits that index the members of a paricular social group. Such an
understanding is essentia-list in nature, presr-rpposing that groups exist as social entities
in realiry, and these entities are indexed by some distinctive traits.
Just like everything else in the world, humans have a very large number of
empirically detectable properties, but these features do not cerLj any meamng or
value in themselves. They are merely empirically perceivable properties, unless
some of these properties are used by a sociery to assign a scatus function. At this
point, these features become signals of identity signs. The importance of signaling
collecrive identity was first explicitly menrioned by Fredrik Barth (1969). He
claimed that ethnic categories are kept distinct from each other by overt signals of
identity, such as language and dr-ess. Barrh's argumenr that groups are distinguished
on the basis of just a har-rdful of traits raises a very irnportanr quesrion: do people
belong to difFerent social caregor-ies because they are essentially difFerent from
people in other categories, or because people purposefully divide the social space
into categories by selecting some empir-ically detectable characterisrics that serye as
the signal side of a collective idenrity?
This question is a part of an age-old philosophical debate over the existence of
natural kinds. In philosophy, a natural kind is considered to be a category corre-
sponding "to a grouping that reflects the structut-e of the natural rvorld rather than
the interests and actions of human beings" (Bird and Tobin 2016). For example ,
gold is a natlrral kind, as ics propeties cannot be chang;ed by social conventions. As
many social categories are based on conventions, they are not natural kinds. For
example, the category slaue is based on social convention. There are no intrinsic
ProPerties that all slaves share which rnake them different from all other people. If a
slave rvere taken out of his social context and brought to a different sociery in
which slavery did not exist, he rvould cease to be a slave. Therefore, the category
 lntroduction 9

of slave is a social kin.l' " .,fco^nr ."'h^"" nlgllbership is based on social

conventl0n.
Betn'een pure natural kinds, such as gold, and pure social kinds, such as slaves,
there are a number of categories that have a ceftain degree of naturalness, i.e. chey
are not entirely deterrnined by their intrinsic propefties, but they are not entirely
lounded on social convention either. Categories based on biological properties,
such as species, gender and race, are good examples. These categories are formed
using inherited features as the signal To the extent that there are behavioral or
psvchological diflerences caused by biological lnakeup, the corresponding signs of
identities nlay come to reflect these, coo. Thus the assignment of the status function
bef,rreen the sisnal and meaning is not entirely conventional.
Horvever, biologically caused behavioral or psychological differences between
individuals are rather subtle, so that social forces and the impact of envtronment
can have as strong or even stronger impacts (Miller and Halpern 2013). While the
strong impacr thac nurture can have over nature leaves the possibility open
ro deliberately construct signs of identities so as to reduce the impact of biological
dillerences, it also indicates the strength of cultural factors in creating strong and
persistent differences. The ethnic habitus of a group nray be so strongly entrenched
rhat each successive generation prsses its properties on to its oflspring as if they
rvere truly hereditary. For example, inner-city subcultures persisting despite policies
of allirrnative action and educational initiatives, shorv how difficult it is to change
even those traits that are socially constructed.
Fufihermore. people as social engineers may be unhappy with the inherent
blurriness of boundaries between the signs of idendry. There is a well-knor,vn wish
and tendency to see social categories as natural kinds, and for this reason to estab-
lish criteria that make them cognicively more like natural kinds (Diaz-Leon 2015).
To use an analogy of language again, people tend to tidy up social grammar in a
rvay similar to how they have distilled a standard language out of a variery of
dialects by establishing correct ways of speaking and writing.
The perils connected with this tendency have long motivated social scientists to
look for ways to reduce the impact: rhe arguments ag.rinst essentialism and
structuralism are at the core. For example, Brubaker and Cooper (2000, p. 6) claim
that it is problematic to take the categories of practice such as race or nation as given,
because this "implies or asserts that 'nations', 'races', and 'identities' 'exist' and
thrr people 'have' a 'nrtionaliry', a 'r'ace, an 'idenrity'." and rhis would further
reinforce and crystallize these reifications. Brubaker and Cooper (2000) are, of
course, not the only ones.
The paradox in this statement is that there is no way humans can make sense of
the r'r'orld or even have the slightest chance of sur-vival without the use of cate-
gories. So categories are indispensable. Why are social scientists so eager to prove
them i1lusory? Ian Hacking (1,999, p.6) has provided a sharp analysis of this logic:
as categories are not determined b.v nature, they need not exist, or at least could
exist in different forms. Since many categories ar:e quite bad as they are, humankind
rvould be much better off if these rvere erased. or at least radicallv modified.
 !

10 Introduction

Therefore, some social activists are convinced that if we could do away with social
categories and structures we could create a more equal and happier world.
Unlike them, I do not beiieve it is possible to bring peace and justice to the
world by erasing social categories or denying that social structures exist Further-
more, I do not think that such an erasure is even desirable. Belonging is more than
a menace: it plays an important role in creating a sustainable and harmomous
socieqr. It is like a kitchen knife: a useful tool that can be used as a lethal weapon.
It would be silly to throw it away just from a fear that something bad can be done
with it.

Values ond ethnocentrism

There is no neutral cultural space Members of each culture see the world through
the values and stances embodied in the meaning side of the idenrity sign: the core
values. This notion was introduced by Jerzy J. Smolicz (1980), who argued that
each ethnic group has a set ofcore values that are absolutely central to the group's
self-definition and therefore also to its existence. In some disciplines, parcicuiarly in
conflict studies, the term sacred ualues is used instead of core ualues Sacred values are
usually defined as values that for moral reasons cannot be traded for material goods:
even a slight hint at this would trigger moral outrage (see Tetlock 2003). The
conibining of several core values into one coherent value system in the meaning
side of the identity sign provides whar Bar-Tai (2000) calls the ethos of a society.
Some core values are con'.'on for iarge cultural areas, so that the over-whelnring
majority of ethnic, national and subcultural identities within each area share a
certain set of specific values (Huntington 1996).
On the other hand, core values are closely connected to ethnocentrism.
According to the classic definition by Sumner (1906, p. 13): "ethnocentrism is the
technical name for this view of things in which one's own group is the center of
everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it." Terrified by
the horrors of Wor1d War II, many postwar social theorists started to search for
ways to reduce the level of ethnocentrism, which was seen as the core ingredient
in aggressive nationalism. This fear at least patly motivated the emergence of
postmodernism, which, according to Lyorard (1981), is susceptible to all master nar-
ratives that establish a hegemonic framework of truth, repiacing it r,vith "language
games," a constantly fluctuating dialogue in social networks. 'While postnodernism
ellectively became the dominant spirit of the time, Lyotard's hope of reaching an
epoch without a master narrative was, of course, left unfulfilled; postmodernism, as
with any ideology, has its master narrarive and its own hegemonic truth. This
narative tells that truth is relative.
Flowever, the widely popular avenion to ethnocentrism overlooks the fact that it is
not only unavoidable, but in reasonable quantiries it is a healthy aspect ofevery fonn
of belonging. It is like salt, which in small amounts is tasry and a necessary ingre-
dient to sustain life, but turns repulsive and even toxic in excessive quantities. In
fact, every collective identity presupposes some degree of ethnocentrism because of
 Introduction 11

its core values. Sharing core values makes people with the same identity trust each
other. So sharing core values at the level of sociery is the glue that makes social
capital posible
While empirical studies have shown thar social capital is higher in individualist
societies (A1lik and Realo 20011), it is erroneous to conclude chat this is because of a
lack of core values and ethnocentrism. Individualist societies have traditionally had
strong national identities. These national identities made the populations homogenous
and established a hegemonic set of core values. Sharing the core values is what
suppofts emergence of social capital, supported by individualism as a belief that
subgroup allegiances in the society are less important than being individual members
of society. Therefore, high social capital is characteristic of homogenous societies
rhat have little subgroup differentiation. For example, social capital in the state of
Utah. which is a collectivistic communiry consisting oIabout 620u Momons. is
one of the highest in the lJnited States. On the other hand, in communities where
recently developed multicultural diversity is higher, particularly in big metropolises,
the level of social capital is lower. In our post-tr-uth era, I tend to believe that social
theorizing should more closely scrutinize the postmodemist belief that eroding the
hegemony of truth can bring social harmony.

lnterpellotion
There is a common belief that one's identity is an essential and inalienable part of
the person's autonomous self, so that we have identities in a way similar to how we
have bodies. This is a rather essentialist undentanding Instead, identities are signs
that have the meaning side and the signal side. and rhese identiry signs exisr as
-When
shared mental representations. an individual has internalized the core values,
r.e. the meaning side, and is able to manifest the signal side in the identity perfor-
mance, he or she is recognized by others to have this identity authentically. In
some sense, the authenticiry relationship is close to the ownership relationship: it is
societal recognition that you are the rightful owner of this particular identity.
The understanding that identiry is not what we are but what we have is actually not
new. Althusser (2006) has argued that the identiry of a person is not what the self
develops as he or she grows up, but something that h given to the person by society.
He calls this phenomenon interpellation. In its traditional meaning, interpellation is
the process of interrupting by talking, or hailing somebody in order to correct or
attract attention. For Althusser, interpellation is an impersonal hailing to individuals
by an abstract authority to get them to behave in a way that society expects them
to behave.
Much of the postrnoderrfst spirit has been directed toward discouraging any forrn
of interpellation to reduce the impact it could have on the development of the self
According to Giddens (1991), in the late modem age, the project of making the
self is an egocentric endeavor which establishes the personal goals of self-hood as
the ultimate justification for one's actions. All of this is aimed at achievino the trre
12 Introduction

sense of the self lJltimately, the person's utrnost responsibility and loyalty is directed
toward him/herself.
'Westeln
Since Giddens' book came ou!, these cendencies in societies have
become engrained even more. It is somewhat paradoxical and ironic that in an age
when there is a strong consensus that collective identities are socially constructed,
the notion of che self has been anchored to a sir-rillarly strong essentialist under-
standing: that there are inner qualicies of the self that must be car-ved out, th.rt there
is a true essence of self that is not socially constructed or socia\ caused, and that
the individual has the ultimate authority over his/her definition, as if the self were
a truly natural kind not a social kind.
One of the goals of this book is to remind thac there is no self without socialization,
and socialization means becoming authentic in terms of extemal social verification,
as a result of inter?ellation, if you wi1l. Only when a person has been socialized to a
sign of identity can he become self-reflective and start to rebel against the sign of
identity that the society attributes to him. Only then can he start his identity pro-
ject as a quest both for his inner nature and for higher goals, as envisioned by
Taylor (f 989). However, to insist chat the development of the self can be a uuly
autonomous quest is a self-deception that does not come without a cost.
Throughout hiscory, there have been two concradictory aims in the growth of
the personality: to beconie a unique individual and at the same time a responsive
member of a community. At present, the first aim is given preference over the other
to the extent thar it has started to adversely affect the social relations in sociery,
which are based on the process of mutua-l recognition. Humans as social animals
crave social recognition. According to Taylor (1992, p. 25), "due recognition is not
just a courtesy but a vital human need"; denying recognition "poses the risk of an
injury that can cause the identiry of che entire person to collapse" (Honneth 1992,
p. 189). While there is no doubt that we all need recognition and feel bad if we are
nor recognized, it is a fundamental political question as to what extent recognition
should be prescribed to everybody free of charge, as a substitute for Xanax.
Let us take a simple example. A universiry degree is a fonn of symbolic recognition,
it enhances a person's social stacus and self-esteem, and it is recognition of a person's
achievement. If everybody has the dght to be recognized, one would not need to
scudy, but could sue a universiry for denying recognition despite one's clearly
expressed wish to receive this recognition Such a concept of recognition would make
the value of recognition meaningless: if everybody is obliged to give everybody che
recognition chey want, its value will suffer inflation the way currency would if it
were distributed on the basis of wants, not as an exchange of value.
This example shows the dual nature of recognition: in one sense. it provides
status, symbolic power and high self-esteen. On the other hand, it is based on the
standards in relation to which it is given. Therefore, recognition is an exchange of
'W'hile
values: a reward for achievement. this exchange nature is very explicit in the
universiry degr:ee case, it is more obscure in the case of the recognition of cultural
groups. Fundamentally, all cultural recognition involves a similar exchange of values:
based on the moral scales related to core values, there is, in essence, a recognition of
 lntroduction 13

ment. Collsequently, the denial of recognition is based on the belief that typical
nlemben of a particular group do not measure up to the moral standards based on
the core values of the set of people who deny the recognition.
This means that recognition is a scrrce resource, like many other commodities, and
individuals rvith different identities conpete for this resource . Therefore, demanding
unconditional recognition for all identities is quite like demanding the distribution
of rvealth to everybody equally. For example, imagine if Facebook, the largest
stock market for trading recognition, rvould announce that from now on, it will
drstribute some of your likes on your behalf to those (even outside of your networ-k
of friends) rvho have received too few likes - for the sake of social justice. How
many would wholeheartedly welcome this initiative?

Emotionol attochment
Hor,vever strong the celebration of the selfish self in'Western sociery, it is hardly a
universal trend in the world. The West makes up about 15% of the world's
population, and the vast majorify of people still operate by the age-old r-ules of
belonging: through old-fashioned identity negotiation that searches for the optinrunl
between societal needs and individual desires.
Identity negotiation has tr'vo broad aims: to carve out viable collective
identities that are distinct from other ide ntities of the same level, and to develop
emotional attachment in people who have these identities. In general, emotional
attachment to a collective identity is what makes members loyal to a group
(E11emers, Kortekaas and Ouwerkerk 1999). They feel a moral duty to contribute to
group actions and to support fellow members, even if this does not bring immediate
economic or symbolic gains, and may, in many cases, involve considerable penonal
nsks.
Outlining the impoftance of collective emotions to belonging is the third goal of
thrs book. In contemporary social sciences, the emotional side of belonging and
lnter-group relations is often neglected. Partly these miscalculations are caused by
'Westem
Western ethnocentrism: most social scientists live in r,velfare societies.
Compared to the rest of the world, these societies are characterized by high group
security, high levels of individualism, and low levels of emotional attachment to
collective identities. Furtherrnore, the main thrust of social theorizing in the West
has been directed at decreasing such emotional attachment even fglfuc" t^ t]'.
extent of the eventual deconstr-uction of national identities.
In collectivist cultures or in those where individualism is not as promrnentJ
group afliliations are firmer and people often have strong emotional attachments to
their ethnic, national or other collective identities. In these cultures, inter-group
relations are very often connected with group status and honor, rather than with
pure rationally motivated competition over scarce resources. \Vhen people from
individualist and collectivist cultures come into contact, their views on human
'W'esterners tend to frame the encounter as
interaction differ: r,vhile between
rationally calculating individuals with a lot of space for bargaining, chose from a
14 Introduction

collectivist culture see the encounter much more through the prism of their group
membenhip and the core values of this identiry.
Underestimation of the role of collective emotions has been the main reason for
many misjudgments: it's why liberal democracies have not become efFective in
Arabic states where the West has helped to destroy dictatorships, why certain
'Western welfare
minoricies have failed to integrate into societies, why ISIS con-
tinues to have an appeal to young people dissatisfied with modem societies, why
interrrational economic sanctions have not had significant effects on aggressive
states, and so on. As Haler.y, Bomstein and Sagiv (2008, pp. 405-406) have noted,
"Throughout hunran history, groups with more effective means of instilling self-
sacrifice in cheir members have prevailed over groups with less effective solidarity
mechanisms, thereby propagating their altruistic (i.e., ethnocentric) nonns and
institutions." I do not want to leave an impression thac collective emotions are not
'Western
studied in social sciences, they are, and the topic is gaining prominence
(Scheve and Salmela 2014, Wetherell 2015). Rather, the concept of "hot" and
"cold" identities advocated in this book aligns with the same "tum to affect."
The selection of the core issues in this book was not accidental - most of them
are connected with some of the deeply engrained assumpcions in social sciences,
and/or widely held belieft that gratify our ntoral worth or sense of liberry. During
the lasc few decades, these beliefi have strengthened to the extent that at some
recent conferences I have had a sense of d6j) vu of being back in the USSR, where
ideology was propagated in univenities as the study of scientific communism.
Maybe I am too pessimistic. But the dissonance between these assumptions and the
ways identities operate in sociery has grown too large to ignore. If this book helps
to open up discussion, it will have accomplished its mission.

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1
THE CONCEPTIONS OF COLLECTIVE
IDENTITY

The foundations of identity research

Even though the topic of this book is collective identiry, some understanding of
what identiry is in general, and what other identities there are besides collective
identities, is unavoidable.
The systematic study of identitybegan in the middle of the 20'h centurywith the
seminal work of Erik H. Erikson. Bom in 1.902 in Gemany as an extramarital child
of aJewish mother from Denmark, finding his true self might have been difiicult for
Erikson. F{e was not very successful at school and did not go to universiry, but
traveled around the country with his friend as a wandering artist. At the age of
25 he got a position as an art teacher at a school associated with the Vienna
Psychoanalytic Institute. 'While there, Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna encouraged
him to study psychoanalysis. His training at this institute r,vas the only academic
education he ever obtained. When the Nazis came to power, and attacks on Jews
and scholars of psychoanalysis increased, Erikson emigrated ro the United States. He
established a child psychoana\sis practice in Boston and soon gained recognition.
During his long and fr-uitful academic career, he held positions at Flarvard Medical
School and Yale, and was a professor at several other universities.
The focus of Erikson's work r,vas personal identiry and its developmental stages, but
he also analyzed social identity and theorized on how difrerent layers ofidentify are
related to society (see Erikson 1966, 1994). Broadly speaking, Erikson developed a
comprehensive theory of identiry, which due to its high level of generalization
remained tairly non-elaborated in several sub-domains. Despite this, or maybe because
ofthis, his r,vritings inspired extensive research, resulting in a farnily of identity theories
(see Schrvartz 2001). Due to the all-encompassing nature of his approach, it is still a
very good starting point for a general introduction to identity-related issues.
In Erikson's theory, identity is connected to one's sense of self, called the ego.
The ego, in psychoanalysis, is the conscious part of one's personality - horv one
 The conceptions of collective identity 17

urrderstands oneself The main focus of Erjkson's r,vork is ego identity, which he
defined as an accumtrlated confidence that "one's ability to r-naintain inner sameness
a:rd continuiry (one's ego in the psychological sense) is matched bv the sanreness and
continuity of one's meaning for others" (Erikson 1994, p, 94). Ego identity, in
other words, is a feeling that I am r,vhat I think I am, and chat other people seem to
xgee on rvhat I am, and that this general consensus regarding lvhat I am is relatively
stable over time.
Thrs does not mean that identity was static and unchangeable for Er-ikson. He
argued (Erikson 1960) rhat ego identity was in a continuous process of development
throughout one's life, fi-om childhood to adulthood to old age. Identiry development
goes through eight deveiopmental stages, at each stage involving novenlent fronl
identity confusion to identity synthesis. Identity confusion is the state of the self
rvheLe individr"rals are unsure about rvho they are, what they r,vant and rvhat their
pr-rr?ose in the rvorld is. Identity synthesis is a state rvhere a person has developed
ln integLated understanding of hin.r/herself that includes beliefs, preferences, tastes
and career choices, which all fit hamroniously together, providing a general sense
of rleaning in one's life, and a sense of rvhere one is going in the future. When a
voung penon natures, ego identity moves from confusion tor.vard synthesis, and
this is believed to be the most intense period of searching for identity synthesis.
When a pe$on goes through an iderrrin crisis later in life. ego idenriry nroves
temporarilv {i-om synthesis to confusion again.
Erikson (1950) distinguished three layers of identity. Ego identity is at the deepest
and nrost iutimate layer. Ego identiry is quite private and not often revealed; sone
of it, such as ternper:anrent, is even largely unconscious. The second layer is per-
sonal identiry. Personal identity is rvhat one sho'"vs to sociery. It includes career
preferences, tastes and hobbies, and everything that can be labeled as personal
stvle Personal identity is that r,vhich other people know one by. The third level of
:r person's identitv is social identity, which consists of the preferences that come
irom solidariq, rvith the groups to rvhich one belongs. Ic also includes char:acteriscics
that have been obtained through one's imrlersion in rhe social context one operates
in: native language, professional and social subcultures, etc.
These thlee layers of identity show diflerent levels of immersion of the self in
the social context. Ego idencity is the most intimate and rhe least influenced by
contextual factors: it includes the most basic and hard-to-control properties of
the self. Personal identity is consciously shaped for others, and also shaped by
others. Its nrain goal in society is to identify the personunique individual.
as a
Social identity is the most contextuallv influenced and its main function is to
express belongingness to groups and sameness rvith other individuals who also
belong to these groups.
Sheldon Stryker (2008) refined Erikson's tripar:tite classificarion of identities by
postulating a fourth identiry cype: role identiry. Role identity is broader and more
contextually shaped than personal identity, being in this respect close to social
identity. Even though the same role is taker.r by many people, the individr-rals who
plav the role do not necessarilv look for belongrng among a set of people rvho shar-e
18 The conceptions of collective identity

this role. This is how role identity is different from social identity. Furthemrore,
role identicy is always characterized by a specific function that the role fulfills
in sociery, but not all social groups and categories have distinctive roles in society.
In rhis sense, role identity is closer to personal identity: it characterizes a person in
respect to what he or she does in society. Role identities differ frorn personai
identities since each personal identity is unique: there cannot, in principle, be tr,vo
Iiving hurran beings who have the same personal identity.
To make the distinction between role identiry and social identiry ciearer, man,r'
culTent scholars prefer to use the tetm collectiue iclentity instead of social identity (see
Ashmore, Deaux and Mclaughlin-Volpe 2004). This is justified, because penonal
identities and role identities are also largely sociai in nature. Therefore, in this
book, I rvi1l mainly use collectiue iderttitlt when referring to identities characteristic of
groups and categories.
In this book, a broad distinction between ego identity, personal identity, role
identity and collective identity occu$ throughout. There are, of course, other
types of identities, such as gender identity, ethnic identity and virtual identity,
but these are subtypes of one of the four broad categories. Therefore, the four
basic types are useful as a mental map of r'vhat is in principle possible in the
domain of identities.
Since Erikson's ego identity approach stems from psychoanalysis, it naturally
emphasizes the psychological nature of identity. Thus, for Erikson and many the-
orists influenced by him, even collective identity is a psychological phenomenon,
characteizrng a person's subjective identification with a group. These theoretical
approaches that study the individual as a carrier of collective identity may be called
micro-level approaches.
Micro-level approaches are distinguished from nracro-level approaches, which
see collective identity as a shared collective construct, not a person's identification
with a group or even a sum of individual identities. In macro-level approaches,
collective identiry "is the image that the community has of itself as a historical
and legitimate group" (Landry, Allard and Deveau 2010, p. 32), and it maniGsts itself
in the public discourse: in history textbooks, political speeches, media, fiction,
poetry, etc.
There are also accounts that incorporare both the micro and macro levels in col-
lective identiq', and explain how they interact. These theories are particular\ useful
in explaining how social structures scafrold and constrain individual identities, and
how individual identities influence social interaction which in turn shapes social
structures. The two-level theories help also to understand the dynamic processes of
group formation and mobilization.
Next, I will give an outline of some prominent theories in each of these three
approaches as a panoramic vier,v of the state of the art of identity research. This
over-view does not aim to be exhaustive, but to provide a general understanding of
the possibilities of how identities can be understood. Hor,vever, several of the many
theories that are not covered here are outlined in subseouent chaoters rvhen
discussing diflerent facets of identity.