Admin: Created page with "'''''Original text: Eric Gordy, University College London, UK''''' The entries in this section all deal with informal practices of regulation that derive their authority from..."

2018-06-14T13:39:47Z

Created page with "'''''Original text: Eric Gordy, University College London, UK''''' The entries in this section all deal with informal practices of regulation that derive their authority from..."

New page

'''''Original text: Eric Gordy, University College London, UK'''''

The entries in this section all deal with informal practices of regulation that derive their
authority from the perception of shared membership in a group. The perception of shared
identity plays a highly visible role in most folk understandings of group, political and
institutional behaviour. It has also been prominent in social science from the first generation
of scholarship in the field, with Emile Durkheim<ref>Durkheim, E. 1912. The elementary forms of religious life. Glencoe: The Free Press</ref> theorising that religion, ritual and
law can be traced to the need of societies to ‘represent themselves to themselves’, and Max
Weber specifying the importance of ‘ethnic membership [which] does not constitute a group;
it only facilitates group membership of any kind, particularly in the political sphere’<ref>Weber, M. 1909. Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press, pg. 389</ref>.

The category of collective identity has been applied in various ways to the
understanding of social and political phenomena, most frequently ethnic solidarity and
nationalism. While a group of theorists does exist (e.g., Smith 1991<ref>Smith, A. 1991. National identity. Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press</ref>) that makes an effort to
trace collective identities to an ahistorical ‘time before time’ and argues for their underlying
reality in contrast to variable social forces, there is a greater consensus among researchers
that perceptions of shared culture, history, memory and identity can be traced to concrete
historical and social phenomena. The attribution of these phenomena varies: from the
coalescence of elites around a legitimating principle<ref>Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of
nationalism. London: Verso</ref><ref>Breuilly, J. 1993. Nationalism and the state. Chicago: University of Chicago Press</ref>, the
need of expanding markets and administrative structures to draw on a base of shared
knowledge and literacy<ref>Gellner, E. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press</ref>, legitimation of political projects<ref>Hobsbawm, E. 1990. Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press</ref><ref>Billig, M. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage</ref>, to rejection of rigid understandings of shared identity as a form of aggressive
propaganda<ref>Dimitrijevic, N. 2001. Slučaj Jugoslavije: Socijalizam, nacionalizam, posledice. Belgrade:
Samizdat B92</ref><ref>Lieven, A. 2004. America right or wrong: An anatomy of American nationalism. Oxford:
Oxford University Press</ref>. Regardless of the historicity or ahistoricity of
shared identities, their power in the reinforcement of boundaries and enforcement of rules is
readily apparent. The old dictum of W.I. Thomas<ref>Thomas, W. and D. 1928. The child in America: Behavior problems and programs. New
York: Knopf</ref> seems to apply: if people ‘define
situations as real, they are real in their consequences.’

Informal practices would appear to belong largely to the realm of what Durkheim<ref>Durkheim, E. 1895. The rules of sociological method. New York: Simon and Schuster</ref> identified as ‘social facts,’ which establish, routinise and reaffirm the importance and
meaning of group memberships and identities by means of the performance of rituals, in
particular rituals involving acts of mutual recognition or, conversely, exclusion or antipathy.
In most cases the content of the performance involves the group member confirming
membership in the group through an act of conformity, which simultaneously affirms the
primacy of the group as a repository of value and commonality. Among the benefits of a
performance that involves well recognised symbols is that an activity carrying low prestige
(such as crime) can be associated with institutions carrying much higher prestige (such as
religion or nationality).

The shared identities affirmed in this set of performances function, in the first
instance, as expressions of a relationship to the political and institutional environments that
provide the context for their performance: as sources for the organisation and expression of
political power, and sometimes as mechanisms enabling resistance to a hostile or competing
political power. Such informal practices have functioned as resources enabling the
maintenance of symbolic resistance, in particular under regimes which have been hostile to
religious<ref>Ash, T. 1990. The magic lantern: The revolution of ’89 witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest,
Berlin and Prague. New York: Random House</ref> or ethnic<ref>Simic, A. 1973. The peasant urbanites: A study of rural-urban migration in Serbia. New
York: Seminar Press</ref> expression. In some authoritarian contexts in
particular, certain informal arenas such as sport, especially football<ref>Brentin, D. 2016. ‘Ready for the homeland? Ritual, remembrance, and political extremism in
Croatian football,’ Nationalities Papers 44:1.</ref><ref>Mills, R. 2010. 'Velež Mostar football club and the demise of „brotherhood and unity“ in
Yugoslavia, 1922-2009,' Europe-Asia Studies 62:7</ref>, function as an auxiliary arena in which otherwise discouraged expressions of ethnic
solidarity are encouraged or tolerated, in the hope that they will remain confined to a
controlled sphere.

Informal social practices of mutual recognition of group membership may also
function as mechanisms allowing for the enforcement of social exclusion and discrimination.
The informal mechanisms engaged to maintain discrimination in housing, for example, may
range from subtle encouragement of cultural similarity and the channelling of announcement
of availability through heritage-based informal social institutions<ref>Gans, H. 1962. The urban villagers: Group and class in the life of Italian-Americans.
Glencoe: The Free Press</ref> on through the
establishment of clandestine parallel real-estate markets<ref>Rieder, J. 1985. Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against liberalism. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press</ref>. Similarly the
enforcement of social boundaries can function both through subtle recognition of
commonality in areas such as taste and aesthetic preference<ref>Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press</ref>, on through
aggressive discouragement of the presence of visible ethnic markers<ref>Wilson, W. 2012. The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press</ref>. A
developing body of social theory assesses the totality of these practices as contributing to the
development of a permanently excluded underclass<ref>Wacquant, L. 2008. Urban outcasts: A comparative sociology of advanced marginality. New
York: Polity Press</ref>.

Shared identity functions as a source of solidarity and resource of enforcement in
groups dedicated to illegal activity, encouraging the maintenance of different types of codes
of silence, helping to assure the acquiescence and sometimes the support of communities with
large populations of co-ethnics in the operation of illegal enterprises, and promoting loyalty
and obedience within groups<ref>Gambetta, D. 1993. The Sicilian mafia: The business of private protection. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press</ref><ref>Sanchez-Jankowski, M. 1991. Islands in the street: Gangs and American urban society.
Berkeley: University of California Press</ref>. The phenomenon
is well enough known that it is, for example, frequently rendered and performed as a
principal dramatic element in popular entertainment revolving around the theme of organised
crime, possibly most famously in the series of films dramatizing the professional and family
activity of an imaginary Sicilian-American crime syndicate, The Godfather. These types of
dramatic portrayals, while open to the criticism that they reinforce ethnic stereotypes, could
also be assessed as contributing to the useful mythology that activities such as organised
crime are in some way symbolically representative of an ethnic community, and consequently
on some level legitimised or protected by this association.

It is not necessarily the case that all perceptions of shared identity follow lines that are
expected or lead in the directions of conformity that are expected. It can particularly be the
case that when ethnic identity is strongly associated with an identifiable material interest,
entry into the identity group may become extraordinarily fluid. This has been documented
both in states undergoing changes in imperial or colonial control, where people may
recognise an advantage in entering or leaving an ethnic community<ref>Freyre, G. 1947. The masters and the slaves: A study in the development of Brazilian
civilization. New York: Putnam</ref><ref>Roudometof, V. 2001. Nationalism, globalization and orthodoxy: The social origins of ethnic
conflict in the Balkans. Greenwood: Greenwood Publishing Group</ref>, and in contemporary consumer societies, where people respond to
changing social conditions that make some memberships appear at times to be more
appealing<ref>Waters, M. 1990. Ethnic options: Choosing identities in America. Berkeley: University of
California Press</ref>. Well documented cases include the distribution of Chinese identity
in Jamaica<ref>Patterson, O. 1977. Ethnic chauvinism: The reactionary impulse. New York: Stein and Day</ref>, which over time loses any connection with family origins in
China and instead comes to represent access to informal business and financial resources.
With the recent rounds of accession of states in Europe to membership in the European Union
and changes in access to visa-free travel, it has been possible to witness the discovery or
rediscovery of ethnic roots allowing for the acquisition of convenient passports.

The examples listed in this volume tend to underline the mixed character of group
membership and group norms, operating on several levels. The encouragement of perceptions
of belonging, through practices and rituals related to their reinforcement, functions both as a
source of norms and, in some instances, as a source of power under conditions of social or
political subjection. At the same time, the same sets of practices can also function as means
of subordination of the individual to imposed identities, and flattening of the diverse social
landscape into a restricted number of categories.

==Notes==
<references />

Group identity and the ambivalence of norms - Revision history

Admin: Created page with "'''''Original text: Eric Gordy, University College London, UK''''' The entries in this section all deal with informal practices of regulation that derive their authority from..."