Strategies of Study: Approaching the Analysis of Identity
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Review Essays
Strategies of Study: Approaching the Analysis of Identity Neal Alan Carter Department of Political Science, Box N, St Bonaventure University, St Bonaventure, NY 14778, USA. E-mail: [email protected] Strategies of Remembrance: The Rhetorical Dimensions of National Identity Construction M. Lane Bruner University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, SC, 2002, 143pp. $29.95 Hardcover. Ethnic Conflict: Religion, Identity, and Politics S.A. Giannakos (ed.) Ohio University Press, Athens, OH. 2002, 253pp. $26.00 Softcover. Imagined Differences: Hatred and the Construction of Identity Schlee Gu¨nther (ed.) Palgrave, New York, NY, 2002, 280pp. $65.00 Hardcover.
International Politics (2004) 41, 430–439. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800061
Introduction Scholars in many different disciplines are attempting to come to grips with the slippery concept of identity. Most have come to agree that identities should be treated not as static objects, but rather as dynamic concepts and relationships. The three books reviewed here illustrate recent attempts to analyze not only identity per se but also the effects of identity on politics, social interaction, and emotions from a wide variety of academic disciplines, organizations, and geographical locations. The various approaches and applications facilitate an analysis; both of what is widely accepted as given and what is still either widely contested or context-specific. In Strategies of Remembrance, Bruner, a scholar of public communications, investigates the rhetorical strategies used by political elites in pre-unified West Germany, post-communist Russia, and mid-1990s Quebec. All three of these cases witnessed significant debate over identity and what political outcomes should result from different understandings of ‘who we are’. Contributors to Ethnic Conflict: Religion, Identity, and Politics include political scientists,
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historians, legal scholars, as well as authors working for international organizations. Although not all ten authors discuss religion, the book is united by the analysis of the interactions among identities, conflicts, and politics. The 12 contributors to Imagined Differences, mostly Europeans from anthropological or sociological background, take an approach based much more heavily on analyzing day-to-day life in areas of conflict. As a result, they include a much greater variety of subjects; the volume includes analyses of novels and plays, as well as reports of fieldwork conducted in conflict-ridden areas, and theoretical discussions of identity. The investigation of how identity is constructed and is linked to hatred and ‘othering’ unites the various chapters.
Instrumentalism and Constructivism The authors are united in the argument that identities are useful in politics and other realms of social control. Identities are useful both at the individual and at the social level for different reasons. Giannakos states that the ‘substance of any identity is based on the reality that individual security can only be at
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