What is Identity and How Does It Affect Countries’ Sovereignty?
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What is the meaning of the word “identity” in the context of politics and how does it affect states’ sovereignty? Russian Academy of Sciences’ corresponding member Irina Semenenko, doctor of political science, answers these questions in an interview with the Scientific Russia magazine.The concept of identity came to political science from psychology in the 20th Century, around the time when the term “identity crisis” was coined by Erik Erikson, Semenenko explains.In political sciences, this concept gained prominence when researchers working on analyzing political processes strove to explain why certain processes occur the way they do and what shapes them.According to her, the concept of identity is interesting not only because of its “analytic potential” but also because of the fact that it is a rare instance of a concept migrating from political science to public affairs.Due to people being “social creatures,” their personal beliefs and values are shaped in communication, including political communication, with other people, Semenenko notes.“Identity in Latin means both ‘I am like the others’ and ‘I am not like some of the others’,” she says. “Thus, identity is a meaning that allows people to self-position themselves, to draw a boundary between them and those they associate themselves with, and those they do not agree with. A person thus positions him- or herself in a system of values and social-political coordinates.”Personal identity aside, Semenenko continues, there are also group and collective identities as people usually belong to a community. There is national identity (i.e. what nation a person belongs to); civic identity, a complex concept not limited to just being a citizen of some country and which may or may not involve civic activism.© Photo : Scientific RussiaIrina Semenenko
Irina SemenenkoThere is also a political identity, “situated on a boundary between state or national-state and civic identities”; a generational identity, which becomes especially important to people when they enter the adolescent period; and a professional identity, as people identify themselves with a certain professional group or corporation.“All these identities are formed, they do not spring up by themselves out of nowhere – they form in social interactions. And certain political powers may influence these social interactions. Political science, among other things, studies mechanisms of identity politics,” Semenenko says.She also points out that identity forms the basis of country’s “social-cultural sovereignty.”If people link their future, the future of their family and their children, with the development of the country they live in or want to live in, it becomes a basis for sovereignty, Semenenko elaborates, because “sovereignty is based on the idea of development.”
