Book Review: Identity and Violence: the Illusion of Destiny

The Sociological Review, 2014

Violence is a force for creating integrities as well as one that violates, pollutes and destroys already existing entities. In this paper I address the role of what Ariella Azoulay terms the 'political imagination' in constituting social aggregates committed to the defence of a community itself brought into being by the imagining of a force dedicated to its destruction. Such a group's perception of what Laclau and Mouffe call an 'antagonism' spurs it to mark out and defend its boundaries with violence-a violence often manifested aggressively (pre-emptively). Collective perceptions of an other's antagonism are often overdetermined, either by historical memory or political manipulation, and it is often the case that an enemy is sited and a programme of 'defensive' violence inaugurated without any 'real' justification. Here I demonstrate, using events drawn from the formation of the State of Israel and the collapse of what is now 'Former Yugoslavia', that it is in designating an other against which destructive violence must be mobilized that an entity realizes-through the negation of that it would negate-what it is it fights to defend.

Irena C. Veljanova

2024

"Notes on Amartya Sen’s interpretation of cultural identity". The text has been published in Progetto Montecristo – Editoriale Delfino, 2024. (Part 1, 17th October 2024; Part 2, 23th October 2024; Part 3, 5th November 2024) -. The printed text can be read at the following web addresses: https://progettomontecristo.editorialedelfino.it/notes-on-amartya-sens-interpretation-of-cultural-identity-part-1/?fbclid=IwY2xjawF-LO5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHcksJSIA5mmlR36zzHgGEDR7CF3t3zBmlVl7hcfm4DSXQKZN0fK_Z6Ck7A_aem_UUlZA9crjYqCO-rI22wBBA https://progettomontecristo.editorialedelfino.it/notes-on-amartya-sens-interpretation-of-cultural-identity-part-2/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGF_i1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHRV3C-JbUiuvxiKFWvr0HAjR1y4g5zQFFR4Y8eRS4UZ2W-3HF0ooC7WLcA_aem_BNrERzoP9mu6XDskwUz63A https://progettomontecristo.editorialedelfino.it/notes-on-amartya-sens-interpretation-of-cultural-identity-part-3/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGWrLFleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHbXCqP7QOzBkC1mXRe1du63cQqqI1C54Miq4yKUonC_S4Znq6ilgK-0z8w_aem_JBI6HiMQHbA6_Zci1IM0rw In our study, we analyse aspects of Sen’s criticism of specific interpretations of cultural identity. We shall see that, in Sen’s view, different interpretations of cultural identity can be given. The different ways in which the concept of cultural identity is interpreted correspond to different ways of living one’s culture; they are connected to different interpretations of religion and religious identity too. Throughout Sen’s inquiry, we shall find the following interpretations of cultural identity: - The first interpretation of cultural identity, which corresponds to Sen’s interpretation of cultural identity, considers cultural identities as the results of a plurality of components which constantly evolve (this might be defined as the flexible, dynamic, and inclusive view of identity). - The second interpretation considers identity as rigid, complete, isolated, and given once and for all (this could be defined as the rigid and static conception of identity). The second conception of identity corresponds to the aim of producing people and groups as isolated systems. Sen investigates the psychological mechanisms connected to the rigid interpretation of cultural identity. Individuals can be manipulated through the rigid interpretation of identity. Sen shows that the rigid interpretation of cultural identities can be used to marginalise all those who do not belong to those same cultural identities. This interpretation of the cultural identity aims to divide individuals, groups, peoples, and nations from each other. Cultural identities can be used to create a group which, as such, does not exist at all or is not so homogeneous and uniform as those who support this concept of identity aim to let appear. The group is created artificially by an artificial cultural identity. The rigid cultural identity of some groups means the exclusion of other groups. This kind of cultural identity serves to bring about enmity between individuals, groups, nations, countries, and communities: it is thought out to produce hostility from a group towards other groups. In Sen’s view, cultural identities always result from a plurality of cultural components. Cultural identities take elements from other cultural identities. Therefore, cultural identities are not isolated systems: they are the product of a historical development which involves the participation of different individuals, groups, and cultures. Moreover, cultural identities are not made once and for all: on the contrary, cultural identities are dynamic phenomena which continuously take in new elements. For our investigation, we shall refer to Amartya Sen’s study "Identity and Violence. The Illusion of Destiny".

Interchange: A Quarterly Journal of Education, 2010

This paper examines the media coverage of the murder of a young Muslim girl in Mississauga, Ontario in December 2007. We examine how that coverage moved from concerns for a terrible family event to the use of the language of Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations.” We explore the nature of this exaggeration that occurs in times of threat and the “hardening” and eventual clashing of identities that can follow. We interweave with these matters considerations of the pedagogical and familial consequences of such identity-exaggeration under threat

2009

Ethnographic studies of religion, stuck somewhere between ethnocentrism and literalism, especially in the case of Islam, have brought little distinctive anthropological analysis to bear successfully on the practical realities and political ideologies of religions. In addition, the popular assertion that certain ethnic groups that have had conflicts over centuries will continue to fight with one another is but an idea fuelled by numerous media reports and scholarly publications stressing the historical nature of conflict, much in the same way as the idea that Islam and modernity are somehow adversarial. Frustratingly, during times of uncertainty,

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies, 2021

This chapter explores the relationship between identity, in particular ethnic identity, and political violence. To what extent are war and violence the outcome of antagonistic identities? And once violence erupts, what impact does it have on how people identify themselves and others? There are two dominant approaches in the literature. The identity-based approach tends to regard conflict and violence as a consequence of pre-existing ethnic antagonism. Violence-based approaches, in contrast, have challenged this causality, stressing that ethnic antagonism is often the outcome of violence rather than its direct cause. The chapter argues that both are problematic in different ways: whereas identity-based theories do not take the generative power of violence seriously enough, violence-based theories run the risk of taking it too seriously and often do not pay significant attention to individual agency and people’s ability to resist violence. However, it is not only individual responses to violence that differ but attitudes towards violence can also change over time.

Altre Modernita Rivista Di Studi Letterari E Culturali, 2011

Sociology International Journal, 2018

This paper is aimed at depicting the interface between citizenship, violence and identity politics. Further, it also inquires conceiving collective violence as a social fact which means that it has to be analysed within the context of a specific action environment, i.e. a social milieu that consists of a series of possible actions emerging from a particular group way of life as well as the relational dynamics of these group-making social processes. In the light of this social resistance has often been analysed for its ability to mobilise collective action and to bring about structural changes to social order.1 However, the sociological significance of resistance should not be restricted to forms of resistance that are successful in terms of collective mobilisation and social change, because this approach tends to separate social order and power relations from the resistant practices that oppose them, obscuring the close con¬nection between the persistence of power relations and the openings for everyday resistant practices emerging directly from these relationships: 'The openings for resistance derive from the regular exercise of power',2 or, as Foucault notes, 'Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power'.3 In a similar vein, Goffman stresses the connection between power relations, its social organisation, and resistant practices he charac¬terises as secondary adjustments: From a sociological point of view, the initial question to be asked of a second¬ary adjustment is not what this practice brings to the practitioner but rather the character of the social relationship that its acquisition and maintenance require. That constitutes a structural as opposed to a consummatory or social psychological point of view.4 From this perspective, resistant practices are neither random nor idiosyncratic but an integral part of power relations. Hence, if we are to understand what motivates people to act violently on behalf of groups and how they come to identify with these groups to begin with, if we are to comprehend whether and how the violent acts of a given group of actors might emerge from the regular exercise of social power, we should pay particular attention to the sociocultural resources which generally mobilise actors to exercise physical violence. We should focus on the relational dimension or character of the cultural, cognitive and affective resources actors mobilise in order to sustain violent interaction and on the character of the social relationships that the acquisition, diffusion and practical use of these resources require. Furthermore, if we are to understand the relational character of these resources, we have to concede that as social subjects these actors are able to grasp the nature of their position in society, albeit in a partial and somewhat blurred way. Social facts do exist as a result of social relations; they emerge as an ensemble of possible actions within the context of social group life and not as products of individual minds or macro-cultural systems. However, they are char¬acterised by two modes of empirical existence that are mutually related:5 one has to be located in the mind-body complex of individuals (affects, emotions, or cognitions such as motifs) while the other has to be situated on a collective level (shared representations, social practices, forms of social control, etc.).

2018