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The end of identity? The implications of postmodernity for political identificationDavid Michael Green aa Hofstra University,

Online Publication Date: 01 September 2000

To cite this Article Green, David Michael(2000)'The end of identity? The implications of postmodernity for politicalidentification',Nationalism and Ethnic Politics,6:3,68 90To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13537110008428604URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13537110008428604

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The End of Identity?The Implications of Postmodernity for

Political Identification

DAVID MICHAEL GREEN

Nationalism, it is widely agreed, is a phenomenon of modernity. What, then, are the

implications of a shift toward postmodern culture for patterns of politicalidentification? To address this question, I start by returning to first principles andtheorize why people identify at all. I then highlight five important contemporary trendsand their possible effects on identity, given this theory. I expect postmodern politicalidentities to be more diffuse, diverse, instrumentally-determined, context-dependent,and less essentialized than those of modernity. I conclude that they may in fact bedifferent enough from modern variants as to no longer warrant the appellation politicalidentities.

The events of 1789 signal a watershed in human history for any number ofreasons, but surely one of the most consequential of these is that the datemarks the introduction to the world of its now universally preferred form ofpolity, the nation-state. Though states themselves, and the system in whichthey orbit, had solidified by at least 1648, and in one or two casesprecocious manifestations of the nation-state had arguably alreadyappeared, it took the French Revolution's reification of Enlightenment

philosophy and the export of these ideas courtesy of theGrand Armee tofully popularize the form in the West. The idea of the nation-state, thepolitical centerpiece of modernity, would then spread across the globe overthe subsequent century and ahalf, eventually destroying even the Europeanemp ires from which it sprang. But today, only two cen turies after its advent,this form of polity shows increasing signs of exhaustion. As historicalepochs go, modernity1 has been a short one, and all indications are that itsdefining aspects - industrialism, rationalism, m ass culture - are under siege

on multiple fronts; and similarly its chief political expression, the nation-state.

The decline of the state has been much reported.2 But relatively littleattention has been given to the other half of the classic nation-stateformulation, nor to the relationship between these two components.

David Michael Green, Hofstra University

Nationalism & E thnic Politics, Vol.6, No .3, Autumn 2000, p p.68-9 0PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON


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POSTM ODERN ITY AND POLITICAL INDENTIFICATION 69

Particularly given the symbiotic character of that relationship, thedeterioration of one presumably has serious implications for the future ofthe other. Moreover, there are today other powerful agents of change whichare also likely to alter the character of political identity in postmodernsocieties. It is the task of this study to consider the question collectivelyposed by these effects - namely, what are the imp lications of postm odernity3

for the form and character of political identity?4

To address this question, I shall follow a two-pronged strategy whichdraws from both theoretical and empirical sources. The contribution of theformer requires us to step back to first principles and ask the simple butprofoundly important question: Why do people identify? Simultaneously, Iattempt to assemble an inventory of empirical observations which bear onthe core question of iden tity's future shape. It is hoped that this strategy w illyield an edifice capable of lifting us just high enough to steal a peek overthe horizon, for a glimpse of identity in a postmodern world. And clearlythis is the moment to look. We live in what is arguably the most excitingperiod since the birth of modernity, where 'a bonfire of the certainties'5

generates a world 'about to be remade',6 where,

in sum, the world enters a period of exceptional fluidity - of the sortwhich historically has usually come about through the dislocation ofa major war. Nation and state, as we have known them, areinterrogated by history and alternative visions of the future.7

This essay seeks to propound one such vision.

Why Do People Identify? 8

It is easy to imagine people (particularly non-elites) in traditional societiespossessing little political identity at all, at least in terms which would fitwith contemporary usage. Certainly the highly constrained sphere of traveltypical for most individuals or the lack of communication with distant landslend themselves to such an end.9 Lacking extensive contact with 'others',the abstract apprehension of one's own identity as something separate andunique is made more difficult. Additionally, pre-modern societiescommonly lack a highly-developed, penetrative state to serve as a focalpoint for extra-local identification. In short, before modernity changed thevery scale of human interaction and organization, there was little of thephysical, cognitive and emotional infrastructure necessary to permit thefruition of mass identities. This no doubt accounts for the fact thatnationalism is a phenomenon of modernity,10 and that there is no analogouspolitical identity which precedes nationalism and which the latter replaced.Instead, 'mass' identities under pre-modern conditions are probably best


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construed as diffuse, weak, local, and cultural rather than political incharacter, as compared to those of modernity. Indeed, the fundamental andhegemonic 'identity' in such cultures is undoubtedly religious, though assuch, it probably bears little relationship to the contemporary meaning ofidentity (and certainly topolitical identity). In such cultures, religionprovides the cosmology which structures the whole of people's lives. Itoffers answers to the deepest questions of existence and morality, andprobably even structures the questions asked as well. Above all, it providesmeaning and emotional security.

M odernity rude ly interrupted this ancient cultural form. Ironically, it wasprobably Martin Luther who fired the opening salvo of modernity's war on

the old ways. Though he sought only to reform the Catholic church into aspiritually improved institution, the inadvertent consequence of hismovement was instead to split the Church and, more subtly and moreimportantly, to generally temporalize and desacralize the role of religion inW estern society. If we construe the central intellectual prem ise of modern ityto be the scientific method writ large - that is, the concept that the world isknowable through a combination of agnosticism (not necessarily religious)combined with imagination, empiricism and rigorous contestation and

evaluation, as opposed to determ ined by scripture and current doctrine -then surely Luther opened the door, however unintentionally, by fracturingthe Church's ontological hegemony. Through this door would later walkCopernicus, Newton and generations of their acolytes, the wars of religion,their termination around the principle ofcuius regio, eius religio, and otherdevelopments ultimately culminating in the Enlightenm ent's bold statemen tthat from this point forward humans would rule themselves, thank you verymuch. The three centuries from Luther's act of impudence to the founding

of the American and French republics (which emphatically divorcedreligion from governance) mark a fundamental watershed - this is the birthof the modern.

The wave of change which followed succeeded in disturbing anddistressing premodernity's foundational tenets on every front: industrialismintruded on agriculture, urban living replaced rural, wide communicationpatterns superseded local insularity, nuclear families supplanted extendedvariants, states replaced feudal networks, and - crucially - politicssucceeded liturgy as the recognized source of societal rules. All of thesemoves, but particularly the latter, were emblematic of a transformation inconsciousness which swung people's essential self-image from that ofpassive victims to architects of their own destiny. It is a shift, that is, froma culture of paternalism to one of entrepreneurialism (where both terms areused in their broadest sense).

The combination of these changes associated with modernity thus


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provided the physical and cognitive infrastructure necessary for the adventof powerful and exclusionary political identities, but it also did somethingelse: it provided the necessary emotional condition for such identities bythrusting people into a new ontological state wherein the old questionsremained, but their answers did not. The sum of these changes wassufficient to give rise to a new 'religion' of some sort which could fill theabyss of meaning and security that had opened in the hearts and minds ofearly modern men and women." It need not have taken the specific form ofnationalism, nor even necessarily have been secular in character. But in factit was both, and the new secular religion of nationalism was born, quicklyestablishing itself as the most powerful political force of our time.12

Benedict Anderson describes this transition eloquently:

...in Western Europe the eighteenth century marks not only the dawnof the age of nationalism but the dusk of religious modes of thought.The century of the Enlightenment, of rationalist secularism, broughtwith it its own modern darkness. With the ebbing of religiousbelief,the suffering which belief in part composed did not disappear.Disintegration of paradise: nothing makes fatality more arbitrary.Absurdity of salvation: nothing makes another style of communitymore necessary. What then was required was a secular transformationof fatality into continuity, contingency into meaning. As we shall see,few things were (are) better suited to this end than the idea of anation.13

Thus we see that nationalism is a product of modernity - a manifestation ofthe 'quest for shelter from the chill winds of ontological insecurity'14 whichis driven by the disorienting forces of industrialization, urbanization, state-

building, and sundry but profound changes to most aspects of Westernculture.15 But in this sense, it is perhaps more accurate to say that 'identity'itself - not only nationalism - is a produc t of modernity, since that which itreplaced was less an identity, as we now conceive of these, than a universalontology, penetrative well beyond consciousness for those who lived it. Onthis account, then, the answer to the question 'Why do people identify?' isthat identification fills for them a profound psychological need. The wholecomplex of modernity (less identity) argued that the old cosmology wasexhausted and irrelevant. Writing of the French experience, for example,Eugen Weber notes that 'Coherent religious theories of life that had beenaccepted by most educated members of the community [and even more soby non-educated m em bers, who were slower to make the transition] becam esurvivals superstitions - no longer com patible with the scientificprinciples of the time'. But these changes were destructive of the oldsuperstitions without providing a replacement for the 'things people badly


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7 2 NATIONALISM & ETHNIC POLITICS

need: explanations, a sense of control, reassurance, a framework forindividual and social activities'.16 The result of these developments was toeffectively cast people into a purgatory which combined the newrationalism with no alternative source of meaning and security. Thus therole for identity.

The New Fatigue

Now it is the nation's turn. Having filled the breach created by m odernity'swave of change, it now stands squarely in the bull's eye of the new wave ofpostmodernity assaulting cultural shores everywhere. And there are good

reasons to believe the effects produced by these changes may be profound,perhaps as profound as were those which modernity brought to traditionalcultures. It is to the cataloguing and assessment of these forces and theirrespective effects that we now turn.

To begin with, as noted in the introduction to this essay, there is thequestion of the state. Plenty of states have been sacked down throughhistory, but today we w itness the sacking of the formitself. And, since statespretty clearly created nations in most instances,17 and it is states which in

any case often provide a crucial focal point for mass affect, we may assum ethat the assault on the state has implications for the nation. As such, andbecause there remain among scholars some dissenters on the question, it isworth detailing here the forces now undermining the capacity of states. Infact, there are many - by my count, fifteen distinct effects - which may beusefully divided into three categories referring, respectively, to structural,political and normative factors.

Structural factors have been among the most prominent impacting thestate, and of these globalization is surely the most noted. Moreover,globalization itself attacks on many fronts. For example - to pick just threeof the most consequential of these - the forces of commerce, capitalmobility, and cultural homogenization produce the respective effects ofdiminishing national control over imports (and hence over culture), over thelocation of industry, and over national claims to cultural distinctiveness.W hether by forcing states into the role of supplicants at the mercy of m obilecapital, or by engendering the often absurd attempts at erecting culturalMaginot Lines, globalization clearly has states on the run. Meanwhile theproliferation of international organizations in contemporary times, and thegrowing scope of their functional capacity define a second major structuralthreat to states. Nowhere is this more true than in Europe, where theEuropean Union has assumed increasingly broad chunks of its memberstates' competency portfolios, a trend which is likely to acceleratesignificantly in the wake of spillover from monetary union. Other


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international organizations are weaker, but many - among them numerousNGOs - are nevertheless significant and growing in impact; the WorldTrade Organization may be especially likely to become a supranationalplayer of substance.

A third structural factor arises from within, rather than above. Even themost venerable and seemingly well-established of nation-states have notbeen spared the torments of regional autonomy and secession movements.From Canada to Britain to Russia, China and Indonesia, states have shownthemselves to be anything but internally monolithic. One response toregionalism has been devolution (though such reforms have also beenemployed in the absence of threats from regional movements), which itselfconstitutes a fourth and widespread means by which state power has beendiminished. On a fifth front, state capacity has been drained not onlyupward and downward, but also toward the private sector, as increasinglywide swathes of once-core state services have been privatized.

The sixth and final structural effect on the welfare of states has beendictated by facts on the ground. The past decade has witnessed thedisintegration of the Soviet, Yugoslav, Czechoslovakian and Ethiopianstates. This process is unlikely to be complete even in these locations, let

alone in Canada, Indonesia, or perhaps China. However, interpreting theeffect of such developments on the stateas a form of polity is a bit tricky,for on the one hand, secession movements may be seen as living proof thatthe idea of the nation-state h as lost little of its allure, since these movem entsinvariably seek statehood of their own. But a more nuanced interpretationreminds us that territorial integrity is at the core of what it means to be astate, and therefore what may be good news for Slovenia, Slovakia orEritrea is nevertheless bad news for the state as an idea. This is a lesson

seemingly lost on Parti Quebecois, for example, who would wrest Quebecaway from Canada while simultaneously resisting the rights of NativeAmericans there to exit an independent Quebec. In any case, it must berecogn ized that secession is at best a doub le-edged sword with respect to thehealth of the state, and more likely an overall threat.

Turning to the political factors confronting the state, five are of particularprom inence. There is, in the first instance, 'the end of his tory ', or the lack ofany fervent international ideological divide, the likes of which have in thepast redounded quite favorably to the strength of states. Instead, andsecondly, most polities now worship - whether willingly or forcibly,traditionally or via a 'third w ay ' - at the neoliberal altar of the market, thestate's chief rival for influence in shaping culture. And, of course,neoliberalism's assault weakens the welfare state, one of the modern state'stwo core functions, which in turn 'inevitably undermines the universalisticcore of any republican polity'.18 But these predatory politics are even broader


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than neoliberalism in their attack on the state. One may thus identify a thirdpolitical affront to the state, perh aps bes t labelled as a Thatcherist anti-statistideology,19 which tends to view all things public (the military excepted) asevil, and which seriously threatens the state's capacity to mobilize adisaffected body politic. Lastly, there are two other contemporary public-opinion vectors which have not been kind to the state. The first of these is apost-Vietnam/post-Watergate/post-1968 general cynicism about politics andpoliticians which was considerably less prevalent only thirty or forty yearsago. Today there is a far greater presumption of distrust, and this clearlylimits the freedom of states to act in certain domains. Finally, there wouldseem to be a general public alienation from most of what transpires in thepolitical sphere, which is certainly related to some of the preceding factors,and yet constitutes an independent, fifth factor of its ow n. In certain respec ts,this decoupling of public from polity allows governments increased latitudein behavior and decision-making. But it is also indicative of a growingirrelevance of government in people's lives, a condition which cannot bodewell for the welfare of states.

We come, finally, to four normative changes which further diminish thepow er and autonom y of states. At the international level, to begin w ith, there

is growing recognition of certain norms which impinge on the ability ofstates to act completely autonom ously, or at least to do so w ithout sufferingcondemnation and, with increasing frequency, more tangible consequences.Indeed, some of these norms - for example, the evolving human rightsregim e - explicitly contravene ideas of absolute state sovereignty, the claimfor which rings in the contemporary ear with an increasingly anachronistictimbre. Secondly, the practice of war - that other traditional core function ofstates - no longer possesses the carte blanche legitimacy it once did. Thisseems especially true in Europe, where the experience of war is particularlyrecent and grim , but it may b e fair to say generally that peop le are more soberabout the consequences of war than they were in, say, 1914, and that theautonomy of states to act in this domain has thus been reduced. Similarly,there has also been a delegitimization of the m ore rabid forms of nationalism,intolerance, and notions of superiority (there are, of course, major exceptionsto this pattern) - sentiments which in the past have given states licence to actwith relative impunity. And finally, there exists today a normativeprohib ition - or, if this is too strong a word, an inclination in that direction -against the forms of internal coercion which states regularly em ployed in thepast, frequently in the very service of their own development. It is difficultto imagine, for example, Tiananmen Square provoking the same level ofinternational disgust not so m any years ago that it did recently. Indeed, in thisrespect, a com parison of international reaction to the same coun try's far m oreghastly Cultural Revolution may be instructive.


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POSTMOD ERNITY AND POLITICAL INDENTIFICATION 75

In sum, recent years have not been kind to the nation-state as a form ofpolity, though it still retains supremacy in factual and probably ideal termsas well. Neverthe less, the dim inishm ent of the state is real, and these effectsshould be assumed to have serious implications for the way in which peopleidentify, since states often provide the foci for national identities, and havealso traditionally worked hard at insuring the maintenance of nationalidentities (though Zygmunt Bauman, for one, argues that they have nowsimply withdrawn from attempting to satisfy their publics, seeminglyhoping the latter's disaffection will somehow pass them by20). Absent thesame degree of focus and nation-building capacity formerly provided bystates, national identities should be expected to suffer.

In any case, if we seek to plot the future trajectory of political identityby means of inventorying the present, the assault on the state is only one ofseveral trends we must highlight. Another of these is the degree to whichformerly homogeneous societies are now struggling with the implications ofpluralization. One estimate is that over 200 million people are living incountries other than the one in which they were born,21 whether because ofwar, political oppression, economic opportunity, or other reasons. Thisdevelopment presents different challenges of different magnitude to each

society in which it appears. For all, however, the phenomenon forces areconsideration of the nation-state itself - rarely true to form in applicationanyhow - as an ideal type. As Appadurai notes of the United States, 'theformula of hyphenation (as in Italian-Americans, Asian-Americans, andAfrican-Americans) is reaching the point of saturation, and the right-handside of the hyphen can barely contain the unruliness of the left-hand side'.22

This development is bound to put pressure on the idea of the monolithicnation, further distancing that ideal from practice.

Moreover, the exposure which pluralization provides to alternativecultures, though not always conflict-free, is part of a third general trend ofinterest, that of rising levels of cosmopolitanism. The globe is surelyshrinking, and the horizon of people's sense of community is surelyexpanding, not least because of the astonishing effect of electronic media.But levels of travel, study and work abroad have also risen higher by anorder of magnitude com pared to past practice, with attitudes following closebehind.23 Nowhere is this process more evident than in Western Europe (tono small degree because the Common Market and EU-sponsorededucational exchange programs like Erasmus and Socrates have beenconstructed in part for this very purpose), where the attitudes across justthree generations mark out these changes. It would not be uncommon tofind in Europe, that is, a member of the World War II generation who stillloathed and distrusted nationals from former enemy states, but whosechildren instead viewed those countries as economic partners and perhaps


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holiday destinations, and whose grandchildren have traveled, studied, livedand worked in those same countries. The effect of such exposure onindividuals ' psycho-spatial sense of community should not beunderestimated. As Habermas avers,

mass communication and mass tourism exert their influence lessdramatically, almost beneath the surface. Both work to change a groupmorality tailored to what is nearby. They accustom our eyes to theheterogeneity of forms of life and to the reality of the differentialsbetween living conditions here and elsewhere.24

The dramatic rise over the last century in the general standard of livingprovides a fourth current of which we must take notice. Notwithstandingeither the fact that the full blessings of this development are limited toindustrialized countries, or that even many of the people within suchcountries are partially excluded from such benefits, the effect is stillremarkable. Today, vast numbers of people live substantially longer,healthier and more prosperous lives then they would have had they beenborn only a hundred years earlier, let alone at any other point during theseveral million years humans have walked the earth. There are several

repercussions to this development which are significant with respect to thequestion of identity. First, evolving beyond a short lifespan which isnecessarily devoted primarily to survival provides people with the time,latitude and disposition to ponder extra-material questions, such as thenature of identity. Klapp notes that 'perhaps it is only as material problemsare solved that we get time to sit around and ask questions aboutourselves'.25 Moreover, second, prosperity may well steer individualstoward thinking about identity differently when they do think about it. As

Habermas argues, the development of the welfare state, and the expansionand reform of educational, criminal justice and social institutions improvedpeople's standard of living dramatically in the space of a single generation,and thus reoriented the content of national identities toward notions ofcitizenship rights, and away from ethnic definitions.26

Both these effects of prosperity upon the character of identity are subtleyet significant, but these qualities are even more true of a third effect.However ignorant of history many people are today, most are neverthelessat least vaguely aware of the uniqueness of our time. Many alive today haveeven experienced this transition over the course of their own lifetimes.27

And if asked, few, I think, would ascribe these massive changes to some sortof divine blessing miraculously bestowed on the last three generations ofhumans, but withheld from the entirety of our ancestry. In short, whateverpeople may do or say on Sunday, and however much they may idealize thesimpler life of this or that historical period, modernity's core message has


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triumphed. People recognize that humans control growing portions of theirown destiny, and that the fruits of past achievements - world wars, nuclearterror and environmental depredations notwithstanding - have dramaticallyimproved living conditions, while doubling or even tripling the years

available to enjoy such conditions. This recognition, howeversubconsciously held, has important implications for the future of politicalidentity.

Finally, there is a fifth development which I argue has especiallyprofound though subtle ramifications for political identification. It isentailed by the dramatic increases in scientific knowledge, engineeringcapability, and general technological development which have beensustained in recent decades, and which not only continue to grow, but do soat a geometrically accelerating pace. One need only consider the fact thatharnessing the atom and space travel are both now technological old newsto get a sense of this deve lopm ent's m agnitude. Perhaps most relevant to theargument advanced in this study is the extension of human capabilities inthe areas of biotechnology, chemical engineering and medicine, domainsonce strictly the preserve of the gods. I will argue that such astonishingachievements as cloning, genetic engineering, synthetic drug manufacture,and the use of artificial and transplanted organs - not to mention those sureto follow - should be expected to have indirect but profound effects onpolitical identity.

Whither Identity?

The foregoing discussions have sought to describe political identity, pastand present. Armed with this knowledge and a sufficiently reckless

disregard for the perils of prognostication, I now wish to offer someruminations on the future of this phenomenon. Having theorized whypeople identify, that is, and having itemized those contemporary factorslikely to shape identity in the future, I seek below to trace a plausibletrajectory for its subsequent development. There are, of course, manypossibilities - literally an infinite num ber of perm utations - and the problemis further complicated by the question of temporal scale. Certainpossibilities rise and fall in plausibility depending on how far into the futureone attempts to peer. But, hazards duly noted, I will in this section brieflyreview a handful of reasonably plausible forecasts for the future characterof political identity. Though I wholly or partiallyreject each of these infavor of another discussed in the final section of this essay, theirconsideration here facilitates an intellectual exercise useful for stimulatingthe sort of imagination necessary for a task of this kind, and for sharpeningthe analysis leading to the proffered forecast.


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One should always consider an extension of the status quo as a likelyoutcome when predicting future scenarios. In this case, however, doing sois somewhat complicated by confusion with respect to characterizing thestatus quo. Clearly, people already possess multiple and simultaneous

geographical/political identities, as is demonstrated by both survey data andanecdotal evidenc e. Indeed, if you ask them which territory/polity they feel'closest' or 'most attached to' - say between locality, province, country,continent, or the world - the largest percentage of them will very often notchoose country.28 But, as Anthony Smith has noted, identity is aphenomenon particularly unsuited to elucidation by means of closed-endedsurvey questions alone.29 In this case what is sorely missing from such datasets is a measure of salience. Would people be as willing to fight and die -to use a crude but evocative indicator - for Europe or for Paris as theywould for France? My guess is not, and I would argue that for most peoplein most places (again, at least in the developed world) the nation-stateremains the locus of their deepest affect. Might these identities remainunchanged into the future? This seems unlikely given the contemporarydevelopments sketched above, chief among which are the many factorsundermining the capacity of the state. These cannot but also affect thewelfare of its Siamese twin, the nation, especially to the extent thatidentities are instrumentally determined and the state is increasingly unableto deliver various desiderata to the nation. Moreover, as the scale ofcommerce and culture continues to widen, states may come more and moreto resemble the no longer appropriate provincial-scale polities theythemselves once replaced.

Perhaps, then, if globalization is indeed a globalizing force, a trulyinternational identity is in our future. H ere, the question of tempo ral scale isparticularly relevant, for while this alternative seems most improbable in thenear-term, such pessimism properly decreases in inverse proportion to thetime span considered.30 A visit by hostile extraterrestrials (particularly onewhich was successfully repelled) would surely help to forge a commoninternational identity, but short of that it would prob ably have to be done theold-fashioned way. Borrowing from the experience of states, that is, onemight expect to see centralizing elites build powerful institutional structures

.at the international level, only to have them subsequently hijacked by masspub lics for their own purpo ses, at which point or thereafter identificationbecom es prob able. Farfetched as this scenario may appear on a global scale,it is arguably transpiring at this very moment in Western Europe, wheresupranational institutions are most developed. Recent dramatic steps by theEuropean Parliament to exert itself and thereby address Europe'sdemocratic deficit are reminiscent of bloodier battles for parliamentarysuprem acy fought at the state level. Whether identity will follow, is not now


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clear. And whether such developments could occur on a global scale is evenless clear, though they would likely be distant in time, in any case. Again,instrumentalism is probably key to the process, and the day thatsupranational institutions supplant states in the provision of security, jus tice ,

and social welfare services would be the day to begin expecting the arrivalof a global identity.

What of regional identities, then - are these more plausible in theforeseeable future? Does Huntington's vision of a clash of civilizations,31 tochoose but one regionalist scenario, ring true (the identity aspect, that is,with or without the clash)? Perhaps, again especially in Europe, whereinstitutional integration is obviously well ahead of any other region on theplanet. But globalization does not appear to respect the boundaries ofregions any more than it does those of states. So, for example, there is nosuch thing as a Europ ean culture which is exclusive to Eu rop e's bord ers, butthere surely is a Western/American culture which now transcends virtuallyevery border. What is more, what integration Europe has so far realized isprobably due to a set of unique circumstances that are either nottransportable elsewhere or, as in the case of the repeated hosting of worldwars, would hardly be worth the trade to speed regional integration. It isconceivable that regional-level integration outside Europe could beaccelerated in reaction to the enhanced powers of a European economicgiant.32 But, while regional identities may indeed grow, especially whereinstitutions and service-provision have developed, it seems doubtful thatsuch diffuse and minimal polities will inspire levels of emotional contentapproaching those produced by nationalism in the last two centuries. AsAnthony Smith appropriately asks, 'who will die for Europe?'.33

The three scenarios discussed so far vary in several respects, but have in

common the traditional manner in which they conceive of identity as rootedin some form of cultural-territorial space. A more radical departure fromthis construction would entail the abandonment of this profoundly modernlinkage, leaving a deterritorialized basis for identity in its wake. Theannihilation of space rapidly being achieved by ceaseless technologicalinnovation makes such a scenario increasingly plausible. If Deutsch wascorrect about the role of cultural uniformities and intercourse in the definingof communities,34 for instance, technology simply broadens the scope oftheir potential development by eliminating the constraints formerly imposedby distance.35 Since interests (referring here to both senses of the word:those things which excite people, and those which aggrandize them) arearguably better constituent elements around which to create identities thanis the randomness of geographical proximity, we might expect identitystructures to be built on that which people maintain in common. Alreadythere is evidence of this sort of thing happening. The Societe Imaginaire is


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an international collection of artists and intellectuals with common interestswhose founder notes that 'a writer in Poland has more in common with awriter in Chile than with his actual neighbor'.36 Such identities might wellbe just as solid and passionate as modern political identities, but they wouldalmost certainly differ from the latter by virtue of their smaller scale, theirmultiplicity of kind, and the competition they would face from territorialand other forms of identity.

A fifth formula for the structuring of political identities, alsodeterritorialized, posits a universe which is still populated by massassociations. In this case, however, such associations would be built aroundsome attribute held in common by their members other than ethnicity,proximity, or shared g overnan ce. Exactly w hat m ight constitute the basis ofsuch new associations is up for grabs, but perhaps the most likely unitwould be the corporation. Post-war Japan (at least prior to the economictrauma of the 1990s) with its lifetime employment guarantees, paternalisticworkplace relationships, and company songs akin to national anthems orschool Alma M aters, suggests a nascent exam ple of widespread and deeply-held loyalty structures built around alternative forms of association, in thiscase the corporation. Religion provides a second likely source for the fabric

from which such identity associations could be stitched, and the historicinfluence of the Vatican in the domestic politics of various countries - topick but one example - demonstrates again that nations have no necessarymonopoly on mass loyalties and affinities.

Whether these alternatives have the capacity to seriously challengeexisting forms of political identity in the future is more difficult to say.Traditional religions would appear long spent as content for highly chargedpolitical identities (again, in the developed world), but new forms couldcertainly arise. Corporations may be a different matter, thoug h this scen ariowould clearly require time to develop . Nev ertheless, current trends -including the aforementioned decline of states, recent merger-mania,37 andthe new global ideological hegem ony of the market over governm ent -combined with the instrumental facilities at the disposal of corporateemployers suggests at least the possibility of such shifts in the structure ofpolitical identities. If nothing else, states in the not too distant future mayfind themselves caught between the downsizing demands of corporateinterests on the one hand, and publics seeking to defend the scope and depthof the welfare state on the other. The results of such a conflict would beexpected to have serious implications for the character of political identities.

This latter scenario suggests a sixth model for the structure ofpostmodern political identification. The second half of the twentieth centurywitnessed the consolidation of a grand bargain between labour and capital,ending or at least substantially diluting the class antagonisms of the prior


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POSTMODERNITY AND POLITICAL IDENT IFICA TIO N 81

hundred years. But one senses today the possible unraveling of this bargain,particularly because of the strains globalization has placed on the developedworld, and hence the grow ing internationalization of class conflict. In 1914,leaders of the Second International expected workers on either side of stateborders to reject the 'bourgeois' call of international war; instead, nationalidentity completely swamped class identity, and French and Germanworkers put down their tools in order to pick up rifles and annihilate eachother by the millions. Conceivably, however, the future may show thedreams of socialist theorists to have been more precocious than erroneous.In the past, both class conflicts and their resolution were contained withinrespective state boundaries because such boundaries accurately describedthe limits of economic ecosystems. As globalization diminishes therelevance of state frontiers, the scenario of class conflict may re-emerge atthe newly relevant international level. Especially with competing nationalidentities then less salient for a variety of reasons, the possibility ofmobilized ideological- or class-based identities might become very real.

The six models described above obviously do not begin to exhaust theinfinite range of possible identity futures, nor do they even include thescenario I consider most likely (discussed below). Rather, they are meant

chiefly as an intellectual exercise w hich seeks to describe both the scope ofplausible possibilities and a handful of prominent scenarios. I turn now towhat I foresee as a more probable structure for identities in the world ofpostmodernity, and then to the implications of such a structure for thegeneral phenomenon of political identification.

Wither Identity

Like the nation, modernity's classic statement of identity, its postmoderncousin m ay one day be said to have begun life in Paris. Th e sam e city wh ichgave to history the French Revolution in 1789 also gave us the Treaty ofParis in 1951.38 Both are significant for their tangible and symbolic effectsalike. Symbolically, the French Revolution introduced modern Europe tothe idea of republicanism and to the nation-state as the model form of polity;later, the French would carry the model to the rest of Europe in far moretangible term s. The material effects of the Treaty of Pa ris, wh ich m arked thebirth of what is now the European Union, are just as clear.39 Symbolically,the moment may come to represent the apogee of the monolithic nation-state, and the first serious incursion on its hegemony as a form of polity.Enter the politics of postmodernity.

Below I detail five characteristics of identity in a postmodern worldwhich I estimate collectively constitute the most likely description of itsnature. Understanding these, however, requires that we first complete the


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construction, begun earlier, of a theoretical chassis upon which such anidentity transition would travel. Recall the argument made above thatunderstanding why people identify requires apprehending the depth of thepsychological stakes in play. As William Bloom notes, drawing from JiirgenHabermas,

People require a cognitively accessible interpretation of cosmic andsocial reality, so that they know how to relate themselves to thisenvironment - thus they have to identify. If, then, the dynamicmechanism of identification is not suitably gratified, the result isanxiety and breakdown, both individual and social.40

In traditional societies, this interpretation - this 'shelter from ontologicalinsecurity' - was provided by mysticism, clothed in the legitimating garb ofintegral theology. Modernity blew this construction apart, however, leavinghapless moderns with Bloom's individual and social anxiety andbreakdown. Into the breach stepped political identity, chiefly manifested asnationalism, to provide security and meaning to people for whom the oldquestions remained, but the old answers did not. Nationalism gave peoplereason to believe that they were more than biological parts of some

sprawling industrial machine (or 'human resources', in the awful parlanceof the contemporary workplace), their lives no more purposeful and lessfree - than those of horses or cattle. Instead, they belonged to a great(always - by definition) nation, whose past could be traced into the mists(and myths) of history, and w hose destiny wo uld be redeemed at the end ofits eschatological journey.

Today we find ourselves at what appears to be another macro-historical/sociological juncture, and once again the existing structures andverities are under assault. Above, I discussed five forces currently at playwhich I believe have deep implications for the nature of political identity inthe transition from modernity to postmodernity. These are: the diminutionof the state, the rise of cultural pluralism within states, increasedcosmopolitanism, dramatic improvements in people's standard of living,and the explosion of scientific knowledge and technological capability. Allfive of these should be seen as simultaneously destructive of the old order(but particularly the first three) and constructive of the new (particularly thelatter two ). Collectively, they point toward a different, postm odern approachto identity, substituting new answers to the grand ontological questionswhich have previously been satisfied by religion and nationalism.

What are these new answers? What will political identity look like in theworld of postmodernity? I believe that as science, technology, social andpolitical innovation, learning, and (arguably) collective maturation renderhumanity increasingly able to explain its condition and master its fate,


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POSTMOD ERNITY AND POLITICAL INDENTIFICATION 83

individuals m ay find less reason to look toward artefactual notions of shared(and exclusionary) collective destiny for emotional succour, much as manyhave already rejected dogmatic mysticism for the same reason. I argue, inshort, that humans themselves have taken the place once occupied by gods

and nations as providers of meaning and security in their own lives. To besure, these are subtly held beliefs, and they mix uncomfortably -just as oneshould expect in a period of major transition - with still-powerful em otionstoward religion and country. Nor is science now able to answer some of thedeepest and most unsettling questions of life, such as what happens to uswhen we die. Yet today we can explain and often master an ever-wideningportion of our individual and collective fates, and the immediate futureportends far greater developments of astonishing power. Moreover, this isparticularly true in biology, the domain most central to the sort of questionswhich have in the past given rise to religious and nationalist answers. Whenwe ourselves can de liver the harvest, predict and control the weather, doub leand triple our lifespans, clone animals from cells, explore the universe andtrace its development back to the first nanosecon ds of the Big Bang - wh en,in short, humans can do these things for themselves, the resulting decline inthe relative instrumental appeal of artefactual and infinitely less reliableinterventions will likely spell their effective demise as potent sociologicalforces.41

Having thus described the process expected to yield a new form ofpolitical identity in the world of postmodernity, we can now be morespecific about the nature of such an identity. The subsequent paragraphsdetail five characteristics which I believe may define these attitudes.Following their discussion, I conclude this essay with a consideration ofwhether - especially in light of the foregoing comments on the tectonic

shifts underlying these changes - political identity as so described remains,in fact, political identity.

Europe's creation, beginning with the Treaty of Paris, symbolizes thefirst of these defining characteristics, and as by far the most advancedmanifestation of supranational integ ration, I use it below to illustrate severalof my arguments. Here it represents the creation of a new polity of genuineimport, possessing clear substantive responsibilities. To the extent iden titiesare instrumentally driven, as I believe them often to be, such new politiesshould becom e the foci of new po litical identities (on the other, subnational,side of the state, the new Scottish Parliament provides another ex am ple). Asthe European Union does more, and does more successfully - if this in facttranspires - a European identity already possessed by some may becomemore widespread, and likely deeper as well. The monetary union project,with its massive potential for further integrative spillover, seems especiallylikely to prov ide a fillip in this direction. The general po int, however, is that


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84 NATIONALISM & ETHNIC POL ITICS

identities will more than ever be multiple and diverse, perhaps taking theform of the concentric-circles pattern some scholars have suggested.42

Such identities are, second, also more likely to be contextually driven,as they often already are. Widening cosmopolitanism and communicationnetworks will insert individuals into an increasing number of groupm em berships, forcing them to jug gle m ultiple identities. Context shifts maybe contingent on either geographical location or events on the ground. AGerman informant interviewed for a study on European identity describedhow he felt German when in London, European when in the United States,and Western when visiting Latin America, while a second informantinverted the effect, saying 'At home [in Ireland], I feel proud to beEuropean, while away from hom e, I feel proud to be Iris h'. A nd, illustratingthe contingent effect events (as opposed to location) may have on identities,a third said that he felt his German identity rise to the surface when theFrench w ere agitating for the presidency of the European Central Bank. Weshould, in short, expect multiple and shifting identities to replace the moremonolithic identities of modernity.

Third, postmodern political identities will increasingly have to be builtand maintained upon a set of normative civic values, rather than

essentializing characteristics or contradistinctions against an 'Other' ofsome sort. This change will be forced by the growing pluralization ofdomestic societies, the normative discrediting of ethnic nationalism, and thesheer difficulty in a shrinking world of disaggregating 'others' from the in-group. This new limitation may seem to put bigger and newer associationssuch as Europe at a competitive disadvantage relative to the provenemotional appeal of ethnos-based national or regional identities, yet such aformulation has in fact worked rather successfully in the United States,43

albeit under less daunting circumstances than those which conditions inEurope now present, with the continent's long-established nation-states andlinguistic diversity. In any case, even existing polities will be forced tochange their appeal to better fit shifts in popular normative values.

Fourth, prominent among these civic values - which may includecom m itments to democracy, liberty, tolerance, and to econom ic solidarity -is found perhaps the most ironic element upon which any common identitymight be built: the respect for, and even celebration of, diversity.Bloomfield renders mellifluously the new embrace of cultural pluralism asa desirable quality, describing it as a cross-fertilizing polyphony, 'the kindof cultural convergence emb odied in jazz '.44 Again, this change will be theproduct of the shifts in the conditions facing communities discussed above,but also may be seen as part of a wider change of values in developedcountries.

Fifth and finally, identities are increasingly likely to be the product of


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POSTMODERNITY AND POLITICAL ID EN TIF ICA TIO N 85

instrumental quid pro quo relationships,45 as opposed to socializedemotional responses to specific tribes and tropes. Hence, they will take onmore of an intellectualized and abstract quality than have previouslyascendan t political identities such as nationalism. Said one informant of the

European project, for example, 'Europe is something that rings a bell inyour mind, but not in your heart; it doesn't have a spirit'. This is a qualitywhich arguably is already diluting national identities, and may increasinglyapply to all but the most local of affective ties.

To recap, I have argued in the preceding paragraphs that postmodernpolitical identities will be characterized by five specific attributes:multiplicity of foci, contextuality of application, de-essentialization ofcontent, celebration of diversity, and instrumentality of basis. Thesecharacteristics collectively represent one mo del - 1 argue the more probableof the lot - of the shape of identity in the postmodern epoch. Looked at aspresented above, the model appears as an outgrowth of modernity, anextension of the familiar features of contemporary political identity, and anobject clearly recognizable through the lens of modern sensibilities. But ifwe take several steps back from this image, we may wish to considerwhether such a view is accurate, whether the same set of conditions canyield a more fruitfully construed whole if view ed from a longer perspective ,whether, in short, the sum of these simultaneous transformations alongmultiple dimensions is ultimately better understood as a change in kindrather than a change of degree. That is, do identities which have beenbalkanized, intellectualized, 'civicized', internally-pluralized,contextualized, instrumentalized, rendered contingent, and generallyenervated continue to resemble those sentiments which under conditions ofmodernity we have labelled 'political identity' enough to retain thatappellation, or are we witnessing the advent of something qualitativelydifferent? In short, does postmodernity signal more than just thetransformation of nationalism, but rather the end of identity?

Looked at from the longer theoretical perspective articulated in thisessay, the answer to this question is that it does indeed and, as such, the fivecharacteristics of postmodern identity described above become insteadsymptoms of deeper change. Thus the reason we witness the phenomenonof political-identity stretching (and hence diluting), deflating emotionally

and becoming increasingly instrumentally contingent is because, likereligion before it,46 it is now more a matter of preference than ofpsycho logical necessity. If the deeper questions of mean ing and security canbe answered elsewhere, as I have suggested above, not just nationalism butall of political identification may become superfluous or (in many placesalready) even discredited, just as divine answers to the same questions wereundermined by the advent of modernity.47 Therefore, the previously


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described forces and trends of postmodernity, particularly the enhancedcapabilities of humans to control their own destiny, should indeed bepredicted to spell the end of identity as the powerful political force w e haveknown for two centuries.

This model of the genealogy and trajectory of identity is congruent withnow out-of-fashion (especially among postmodernists) notions of progressin the story of human development.48 Normatively, there is much tocommend the posited new regime of (non-) political identification. Thisprogressive step would entail both an emancipation from the artifice ofnationalism and the crimes committed in its name, as well as new levels ofagency for human beings and maturity for their cultures. If modernityinterrogated the received wisdom by which states (and churches) hadpreviously treated individuals assubjects, postmodernity interrogates theright of states to treat citizensat all. The social contract, once a heuristicrepresentation of what was in any case a decidedly one-sided 'nego tiation',is being reified into something approaching a real contract, in whichparticipation is voluntary on both sides, and contingent upon the continuedsatisfaction of each. If this is indeed the case, it may fairly be said that thepolitical adolescence of our species is over. Now we enter adulthood,

endowed with the freedom to decide, absent from our collective childhood,and the maturity to decide well, missing from our youth.

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

The author is indebted to Mark P ollack, Aili Tripp, Edward W arzala, Graham Wilson, CrawfordYoung, and an anonymous Nationalism & Ethnic Politics reviewer for the generosity of theirassistance and the thoughtfulness of their comments in reviewing this article.

N O T E S

1. Modernity and postmodernity are at once temporal and geographical phenomena. Thoughthey generally represent temporally-ordered stages in the development of human culture,clearly neither covers all parts of the globe at once. Indeed, as we cross into the newmillennium, there exist simultaneously on the planet nascent postmodern cultures, moderncultures, traditional or pre-modern cultures, and even a few pre-traditional cultures (smallbands of hunters and gatherers). Unless otherwise specified,the observations and hypothesesof this essay pertain only to the first group,wherever and whenever postmodern culture

appears.2. I discuss this at some length below. For further elaboration see, for example, Susan Strange,

The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy(New York:Cambridge University Press, 1996); John Gibbins and Bo Reimer, 'Postmodernism', in JanW. Van Deth and Elinor Scarbrough (eds.),The Impact ofValues (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1995), pp.304, 309; Mathew Horsman and Andrew Marshall,After the Nation-State:Citizens, Tribalism and the New World Disorder(London: HarperCollins, 1994); ZygmuntBauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences(New York: Columbia University Press,1998), p.56; Jrgen Haberm as, 'Citizenship and National Identity: Some Reflections On the


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Future of Europe',Praxis International, Vol.12, No.l (1992); and E. J. Hobsbawm,Nationsand Nationalism Since 1780: Program me, Myth, Reality(Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1992). For a contrary view, see Michael Mann, 'Nation-States in Europe and OtherContinents: Diversifying, Developing, Not Dying',Daedalus, Vol.122, No.3 (1993),pp.115-40.

3. Postmodernity must be clearly distinguished frompostmodernism for purposes of this essay.I do not employ, and remain suspicious of the utility of, a 'postmodernist' epistemology,agenda, or style of analysis. (The latter would in any case be an oxymoron by postmodernistlights, as is the term postmodernityitself, given that even the act of periodization is suspect.For subscribers, postmodernism is best considered as a mood or state of mind.) Thus, thisstudy seeks to be empirical rather than ironical, constructive rather than deconstructive, andpositivistic rather than contingent. In any case, as Ruggie notes, it is quite possible to discusspostmodernity without resort to postmodernist epistemology. John Gerard Ruggie,'Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations',International Organization, Vol.47 (1993), p.170. I mean by postmodernity to suggest adistinction between two types of societies, two constellations of deeply imbricated culturalattributes, which can be roughly labelled 'modern' and 'postmodern'. Industrialism seems tome the key and often defining aspect of the first, to the extent that its core tenets of resourceexploitation, m ass production and machines comprised of component parts not only directlyinfluence the character of much of the rem ainder of the culture, but also do so indirectly byserving as a grand metaphor informing the modern Weltanschauung. Likewise,postmodernism should probably be seen to have information- or knowledge-based industryat its core, and we may infer that this mode of production will have the same shapingcapacity upon the whole of postmodern society as industrialism does for modernity. Thus,modernity gives us factories, washing machines, the nuclear family, states and nations.While, in their place, we should expect from postmodernity information-industry, theInternet, varied and complex family relationship models, and a similarly varied, complex,and multi-leveled set of structures replacing the state as the hegemonic form of polity. Whatreplaces the nation in postmodern society is the subject of this inquiry.

4. In this study I employ both the general term 'identity ' and the more specific 'politicalidentity' to refer to the latter concept. Unless otherwise specified, I do not necessarily intendmy argum ents to apply to other forms of identity - familial, religious, occupational, racial,etc. - though in fact they may have implications for these other identity types as well.

5. Horsm an and Marshall, p.267. The authors credit George Robertson with first use of theterm.

6. Ruggie, p.139.7. Crawford Young, 'The Dialectics of Cultural Pluralism: Concept and Reality', in Crawford

Young (ed.), The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism: The Nation-State At Bay?(Madison:University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), pp.29-30.

8. In posing this question, I wish to bracket other related questions, such as why one identity ischosen over others, what determines the scope of the identity-group, what is the effect ofmaterial macro-sociological and historical processes such as industrialism on engenderinggroup development, what role is played by cultural entrepreneurs in the development ofpolitical identity, etc. In short, here I exclude almost everything external to the identifier(except the general shape of the culture, which is implicated in answering the question) andsimply ask what functional need of individuals is served by the act of identifying at all.

9. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread ofNationalism (London: Verso Editions/NLB, 1983), p.6.

10. See, for exam ple, Jrgen Haberm as, 'Historical Consciousness and Post-Traditional Identity:Remarks On the Federal Republic's Orientation to the West',Acta Sociologica, Vol.31, No.l(1988), p.5 . Alm ost every scholar of nationalism agrees on this dating of its appearance,regardless of their varying explanations of the phenomenon's development.

11. Ibid. p.5 .12. Anthony H. Birch, Nationalism and National Integration (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989),

p.3.13. Anderson, p.11 .


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8 8 N A T I O N A L I S M & E T H N I C P O L I T I C S

14. Philip Schlesinger, 'Europeanness: A New Cultural Battlefield?', in John Hutchinson andAnthony D. Smith (eds.),Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p.317.

15. And, of course, these effects are created anew in places now modernizing. UNRISD,Statesof Disarray: The Social Effects of Globalization(Geneva: United Nations Research Institutefor Social Development, 1995), p.98.

16. Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976), p.495.17. See, for example, Habermas 'Historical Consciousness and Post-Traditional Identity:

Remarks On the Federal Republic's Orientation to the West', p.6; or Benjamin I. Schwartz,'Culture , Modernity, and Na tionalism: Further Reflections',Daedalus, Vol.122, No .3 (1993),p.218. Raison d'etat, one might say, has been theraison d'etre of nations.

18. Jurgen Habermas, 'The European Nation-State: On the Past and Future of Sovereignty andCitizenship (Reprinted fromThe Inclusion of the O ther,1998)', Public Culture, Vol.10, No.2(1998), p.413.

19. Young, p.1 7.

20. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,1991), p.279 .21. Provided to Y oung, p. 16, by Kum ar Rupesinghe of the International Peace Research

Institute, Oslo, Norway.22. Arjun Appadurai,Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization(Minneapolis:

University of M innesota P ress, 1996), p. 172.23. Habermas, 'Historical Consciousness and Post-Traditional Identity: Remarks On the Federal

Republic's Orientation to the West', p.8.24. Ibid. p.8.25. Orrin E. Klapp, Collective Search for Identity (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston,

1969), p.4.26. Habermas, 'The European Nation-State: On the Past and Future of Sovereignty and

Citizenship, p.409.27. 'And the old remembered', writes Eugen Weber of French peasants, for whom

modernization erased prior deprivations; p.492.28. The overall (44 country) response distribution to this question in the 1990 World Values

Survey wa s: 40.1 per cent selecting town as their first choice, 19.6 per cent region/province,28.9 country, 3.5 per cent continent, and 7.8 per cent world. World Values Study Group,WORLD VALVESSURVEY, 1981-1984 AND 1990-1993 [Computer File]. ICPSR Version(Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research [producer], Inter-university Consortium forPolitical and Social Research [distributor], 1994).

29. Anthony D. Smith, 'National Identity and the Idea of European Unity',International Affairs,Vol.68 (1992), p.57.

30. Those skeptical of the capacity to build political identities within a short space of time arerecommended to Eugen Weber's splendid description of successful French nation-buildingduring the period 1870-1914. Habermas, moreover, argues that a world public spherepopulated by w orld citizens is already beginning to showitself. Habermas, 'Citizenship andNational Identity: Some Reflections On the Future of Europe', pp.342-3. And Baumanclaims that modern culture cannot help but undermine all identities other than the universal.Zygmunt Bauman, 'Searching for a Centre That Holds', in Mike Featherstone, Scott Lashand Roland Robertson (eds.),Global Modernities (London: Sage, 1995), p.148.

31. Samuel P. Huntington, The C lash of Civilizations and the Remaking of W orld Order(NewYork: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

32. If integrating the United States and Mexico, or China and Japan, seems a ridiculous stretch,it should not be forgotten how the same prospects for France and Germany looked in 1945.

33. Anthony D. Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press,1995), p . 139.

34. Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations ofNationalism (Cambridge: The Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, 1953).

35. Additionally, to the extent technological media foster or require standardization, they may


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also be inadvertent agents of integration, regardless of the content they carry.36 . Ferdinand Protzman, 'Intellectual Oz Embracing an Ideal Grounded in Reality',New York

Times (1994), p.12. See also George Bugliarello, 'Telecommunities: The Next Civilization',The Futurist, Vol.31 (1997), pp .23 -26 ; and Appadurai, p . 195.

37 . Horsman and Marshall present data showing that there are almost as many multinational

corporations on the list of the top one hundred world economies as there are states, and thatthe size of the MNCs relative to states is growing: in 1980 there were 39 on the top hundredlist; by 1990 it was up to 47. Horsman and M arshall,p.201.

38 . And, it should be added, further contributed the counter-cultural movement of 1968. Whilemuch of this assault on the fixtures of modernity (particularly the latter 's use of the industrialmotif in the structuring of all things) posited solutions which also partook of modern themes,some significant aspects of the movement anticipated postmodern ideas. Moreover, thewholesale rejection of society's received wisdom and of existing political authority structuresprepared the way for the postmodern corrosion of modernity's social and ontological verities.I thank an anonymous reviewer forNationalism & Ethnic Politicsfor this point.

39. And, in the eyes of nationalist Eu ro-skeptics, not unrelated to N apoleon's project.40. From William Bloom, Personal Identity, National Identity, and International Relations

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.50. Bloom draws on Jiirgen Habermas:'On Social Identity',Telos,Vol.19 (1974); Legitimation Crisis(Boston: Beacon Press, 1975);and Comm unication and the Evolution o f Society(Boston: Beacon Press, 1979).

41. Some caveats are in order here. First, this formulation presumes - which I do not necessarily- that this same technological capacity does not at some point produce a terrible threat tohuman welfare, not amenable to solution by more technology, at which moment a seriousresurgence of religious or essentializing beliefs might be expected. Second, such a return totraditional structures of belief and community may not even require a disaster as its impetus.Along with their capacity to empower people, the forces and developments detailed in thisessay can also alienate and atomize individuals, and thus spark the desire to invent or re-invent communities to cope with feelings of isolation. Whether their empowering or isolatingeffects prevail (with, respectively, the outcomes suggested by this essay, or a return totraditional identity forms) depends in part on the degree to which religion and nationalismare solutions which speak to the crisis of caprice, or to the crisis of solitariness, either (orboth) of which might drive the needs for psychological security discussed in this essay. Inshort, the growth in the capacity of humans to master their environment and destiny speaksto the first crisis, but not to the second. Finally, I am also aware, as skeptics of the theoryarticulated within are sure to note, that religious belief seems to be growing worldwide at thepresent, not diminishing. There are several explanations for this which can be reconciled

with my theory. First, much of this religious ferment is taking place in parts of the world notyet making a transition to postmodernity or, second, where the effects of postmodernity (i.e.,globalization) produce acute crises in cultures which never made the previous transition tomodernity. In any case, third, even in the developed world the theorized effects should beexpected to take time, to overlap with previous cosmologies, and even to stimulatetraditionalist reaction among the disaffected. Finally, there are two noteworthycharacteristics of the current religious revival which have implications for my argument.First, it is not occurring in Europe, the very place where the repercussions of intense religiousand national identification have been most dramatically felt. Peter L. Berger and ThomasLuckmann, Modernity, Pluralism and the Crisis of Meaning: The Orientation of ModernMan (Gutersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers, 1995), p.36. And, lastly, the characterof the new spirituality is arguably quite different from older, more dogmatic, less tolerant,and less syncretic manifestations. Agnes Heller and Ferenc Feher,The Postmodern PoliticalCondition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p.6; and Berger and Luckmann,p.47. Religion may be a growth industry in some places, but it may also be serving a differentmix of purpose than it has historically, with greater emphasis now placed on its benign socialcapacities, for instance.

42. Francis A. Beer, 'The Structure of World Consciou sness', in Louis Rene B eres and Harry R .Targ (eds.), Planning Alternative World Futures: Va lues, Methods, and Models(New York:Praeger, 1975), pp.276-91. See also Appadurai, p.176; John R. Gibbins, 'Contemporary


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9 0 N AT I O N A L I S M & E T H N I C P O L I T I C S

Political Culture: An Introduction', in John R. Gibbins (ed.),Contemporary PoliticalCulture: Politics in a Postmodern Age (London: Sage, 1989), p.23; and Horsman andMarshall, p.264, 266. Cerutti describes a new, 'modular' identity structure. Furio Cerutti,'Can There Be A Supranational Identity?',Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol.18, No.2(1992), p.157 . Walter Truett Anderson also notes the current existence and future probability

of multiple simultaneous identities. Unlike the present essay, however, Anderson's work isnot limited to political identities, and he observes in late modernity a 'global identity crisis'on numerous fronts, beyond (but including) the one confronting nationalism. Moreover, hesees a structure of multiple identities (the 'multiple-self') as only one of two possiblepostmodern solutions. The other - his apparent preference - he describes as the'no-self, orthe state of liberation, both spiritual and temporal, from identity categories altogether. WalterTruett Anderson, The Future of the Self: Inventing the Postmodern Person (New York:Tarcher/Putnam, 1997).

43. Howe mentions both the US and Canada as examples of a successful non-ethnos basedmodel, though the latter case arguably provides more evidence against the model's viabilitythan for it. Paul Howe, 'A Community of Europeans',Journal of Common Market Studies,Vol.33, No. 1 (1995), p.32.

44. Jude Bloomfield, 'The New Europe: A New A genda for R esearch ?', in Mary Fulbrook (ed.),National Histories and European History (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993),pp.266-7.

45. Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence,p.249.46. Berger and Luckmann, pp.46-9.47. Hobsbawm argues that nationalism is today already a spent force, 'no longer a major vector

of historical develop ment'. Eric Hobsbawm , 'Nationalism in the Late Twentieth Cen tury', inOmar Dahbour and Micheline R. Ishay (eds.),The Nationalism Reader (Atlantic Highlands,N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995), p.362.

48. Subscribers to a postmodern 'mood' (one hesitates, by postmodernists' own dictates, to usethe term analysis) would find in these ideas a classic exemplar of grand narrative which istotalizing, positivistic, and hopelessly, well... modern. Such accusations are, 'ironically',welcome, as I have indeed set out in this essay to paint a picture using broad historical-,sociological-, even anthropological-scale strokes.

end of identity

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