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30ON THE ISSUE OF NATIONAL IDENTITY’S PERSPECTIVE
Gevorg Hakhverdyan'
One of the most significant issues in the globalization context that draws the attention of the scholarly community is the perspective of the national identity* 1. As U. Beck contends, “experiential space of the individual no longer coincides with national space.” [1, с. 24-53, 38] Many works have been devoted to the perspective of the national identity, but none of them appears to follow a more or less dominating direction, which can be explained by a number of reasons. First, it is difficult indeed to make forecasts about the perspective of the national identity in the overall uncertainty of the nation-state’s destiny. Second, many scholars are quite skeptical about the revolutionary nature of globalization and believe that the loss of national identity is just one of the so-called globalization mythology postulates that have become stereotypes engrained in collective consciousness. Third, the forecasts differ even among those who have no doubts that national identity undergoes transformation.
According to J.Habermas, “The nation-state owes its historical success to the fact that it substituted relations of solidarity between the citizens for the disintegrating corporative ties of early modern European society.” [2, с. 211] One may now state that the mentioned “relations of solidarity”, which at the time served a basis for shaping the national identity, currently weaken under the impact of the global society’s transnational ties. It has to be noted, that the notion of “identity” is quite a capacious one in philosophy and psychology, and there are many interesting works written on the subject. However, the framework of our subject matter does not necessitate referring to the abstract notions of sameness and selfconcept. Let us just mention that P.Ricoeur distinguishes two sides or components
* Post-Graduate at the Chair of World Politics, St, Petersburg State University, Russia.
1 The identity based on ethnic unity rather than common citizenship is meant here.
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of identity: identity as sameness (Latin: idem) and identity as selfhood (Latin: ipse) [3, с. 145] .
At least three disciplines focus their attention on the problem of identity in the light of globalization: sociology, culturology, and political science. As far as the perspective of national identity is concerned, we would picture the outlines of the likely future in the following four scenarios:
1. Citizenship based self-identification. This scenario seems feasible given the scale of the modern democratization processes. J. Habermas notes that, “For a long time, “Staatsburgerschaft”, “citoyenete” or “citizenship” all only meant, in the language of law, political membership. It is only recently that the concept has been expanded to cover the status of citizens defined in terms of civil rights.” [4, с. 217] Currently this notion signifies not only membership in a state, but also a certain legal status and judicial content. In our days citizenship is, above all, a legal concept defined as a steady legal bond between a person and the state. It would be safe to say that it has completely lost the original ethnic component.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1966 legalized everyone’s right at the international level to freely leave any country, including his own (Article 12) [5, с. 27-43]. The exponential growth of communication technologies truly increased not only the extent of practicability for this right, but also the very demand for exercising it. There are no grounds to predict an abandonment of the global democratization course (with an exception of few countries) and reversal of the integration processes. Conversely, there are valid reasons to presume that the demographic conditions in the overwhelming majority of countries tend to change rapidly, and this trend is going to accelerate. In such circumstances a less rigid structure of identity might develop based on the institute of citizenship, which could successfully replace the national identity
2. Activation of the national identity. Sustainable development under globalization is often portrayed as a nearly unattainable goal. The contrastingly uneven distribution of economic wealth is becoming a characteristic attribute not only in comparing regions and states, but also in exploring the internal situation of the societies. The deepening of environmental and demographic problems is perceived as an outcome of the exuberant globalization pace. Finally, the processes occurring in the cultural domain and the emotionally tragic perception of losing the national identity complete the circle of preconditions that can trigger national selfconsciousness. In this regard, E. Todd has made an interesting observation using the
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example of the Muslim countries. He concluded that transformation from ubiquitous illiteracy to higher general literacy rates, as a rule, is ensued by a surge of nationalism [6]. With intensification of globalization processes one may clearly observe a growth of nationalistic sentiments. This reaction upon relentless modern trends occurs in full harmony with the paradigm of anti-globalism. However, in all fairness it has to be noted that the ethno-nationally motivated participation in anti-globalist discourse as an embodiment of the anti-globalization movement constitutes a very small fraction. The international environmental NGOs are a lot more active in this direction. And generally, the anti-globalization movement as a whole seems to be an articulated opposition to the forthcoming transformations, rather than an efficient preventive mechanism capable of precluding their occurrence. As far as the antiglobalist discourse is concerned, unlike the paradigm of neo-liberalism, it represents a conglomerate of vague, incoherent and unstructured ideas.
This on no account means that the probability for emergence of nationalistic aspirations is minimal. The whole experience of humankind comes to prove that regress is as inherent (if not more inherent) to the course of the time as progress. All forecasts, even the most authoritative ones, by and large are just hypotheses rather projections of the future. In these circumstances, it would be imprudent to disregard in advance the probability for amplification of the national and ethnic factor.
3. Growth of the civilization factor. In the backdrop of the active integration processes and arising global economy, the civilization factor draws much interest. The question whether to what extent the relations between civilizations would determine the shape of the future world order, appears quite topical. In this regard, a number of issues arise, without resolving which it is impossible to ascertain effectively the role of civilizations in the emerging world order. First of all it is necessary to figure out what is the basis for defining modern civilizations; secondly, to attempt compiling the list of existing civilization, and lastly, to assess the real capabilities for each of them to act as a new geopolitical player.
We should not go too deep into the etymology of the term “civilization”, since it would have been necessary to quote at least several dozens of authors in order to present comprehensive information on its genesis and expound the existing definitions, which might turn into a diverting abstraction from the subject matter of this analysis.
The notion of “civilization” had been developing over the 350 years since it appeared, adding up more and more meanings. A. Toynbee, whose contribution in
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the study of civilizations cannot be underestimated, offers the following components of civilization identity: religion, history, language, traditions and culture [7]. On the other hand, S. Huntington limits the definition of civilizations to the single tenet of religion. He believes that the great divisions among humankind will be cultural, and the dominating sources of conflict will be at the fault lines between civilizations [8, с. 754]. M.Khatami responded to that in 1998 by putting forward an alternative world outlook, where he replaced “clash of civilizations” by “dialogue among civilizations” calling for a multi-polar and multicultural world. This spurred extensive discussions around the world. Nonetheless, this paradigm too does not eliminate the significance of civilization identity. Referring to the demographic situation in most of the countries, I. Vasilenko contends that “today, many countries are simultaneously within a single civilization and themselves consist of a multitude of civilizations.” [9, с. 74]
Despite intensification of the integration processes within realms of certain civilizations, the cultural factor as a source of self-identification still exposes weak effects. However, with the present realities, there are enough reasons to assume that the “us-them” conflict might elevate to the civilization level.
4. Triumph of cosmopolitanism. In the scientific literature this scenario is, perhaps, the most widespread prognosis on forthcoming transformations. The roots of cosmopolitanism extend from the ancient Greek philosophy at the times of Antisthe-nes and Diogenes, and its essence is contained in its etymology (Greek cosmopolites - citizen of world). The idea of “human race unity” lies in the foundation of many religions. However, this universalistic and extremely utopian line of values has served some sort of a goal to be aspired in the course of the humankind development. Conversely, today cosmopolitanism is often referred to as a possible (unplanned) consequence of contemporary processes. Thus far, the Kantian idea of the world government seems unrealistic, too.
The advocates of this scenario judge from the actual circumstances and trends of modern times. In their opinion, the accelerating integration processes and general democratization, the scale of transnationalization and formation of global economy, technological development and emergence of informational dimension, all lead to the decline of national and civilizational self-consciousness. U. Beck envisions a peculiar model of the future global society. For the author, “cosmopolitanization” implies “globalization from within” that transforms the “nation-state’s inner quality of the social and political itself.” [1, с. 24-53, 38] He
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does not predict elimination of the national identity, but reckons that akin to post-Westphalia period developments, when church and state were separated, the cos-mopolitanization will separate nation and state.
One may unequivocally agree with P. Berger that “isolation from the global culture necessarily requires isolation from the global economy.” [10, с. 17] The era of globalization has brought a new incarnation to the old idea of cosmopolitanism, which gained a particular topicality. This scenario, though maintaining a certain degree of utopianism, in our opinion is not less realistic that the previous three scenarios.
In conclusion, the following inference is to be made, which in our view is a crucial finding on the presented topic. Under the influence of technical and technological progress, emergence of the global informational society and demographic processes, the national identity enters the arena of competition with various types of other identities. At the same time, we believe that it is pertinent to talk about longterm process of national identity’s decline, whereas in the short-term perspective outbreaks of nationalism might well accompany it.
May, 2010
Reference Sources and Literature
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