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Nationalism and Ethnic Politics

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The end of identity? The implications of postmodernity for political identification

David Michael Green a a 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 political

identification',Nationalism and Ethnic Politics,6:3,68 90

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13537110008428604 URL: 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 political identification? To address this question, I start by returning to first principles and theorize why people identify at all. I then highlight five important contemporary trends and their possible effects on identity, given this theory. I expect postmodern political identities to be more diffuse, diverse, instrumentally-determined, context-dependent, and less essentialized than those of modernity. I conclude that they may in fact be different enough from modern variants as to no longer warrant the appellation political identities.

The events of 1789 signal a watershed in human history for any number of reasons, but surely one of the most consequential of these is that the date marks the introduction to the world of its now universally preferred form of polity, the nation-state. Though states themselves, and the system in which they orbit, had solidified by at least 1648, and in one or two cases precocious manifestations of the nation-state had arguably already appeared, it took the French Revolution's reification of Enlightenment philosophy and the export of these ideas courtesy of the Grand Armee to fully popularize the form in the West. The idea of the nation-state, the political centerpiece of modernity, would then spread across the globe over the subsequent century and a half, eventually destroying even the European empires from which it sprang. But today, only two centuries after its advent, this form of polity shows increasing signs of exhaustion. As historical epochs go, modernity1 has been a short one, and all indications are that its defining aspects - industrialism, rationalism, mass culture - are under siege on multiple fronts; and similarly its chief political expression, the nationstate. The decline of the state has been much reported.2 But relatively little attention has been given to the other half of the classic nation-state formulation, nor to the relationship between these two components.
David Michael Green, Hofstra University Nationalism & Ethnic Politics, Vol.6, No.3, Autumn 2000, pp.68-90 PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

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Particularly given the symbiotic character of that relationship, the deterioration of one presumably has serious implications for the future of the other. Moreover, there are today other powerful agents of change which are also likely to alter the character of political identity in postmodern societies. It is the task of this study to consider the question collectively posed by these effects - namely, what are the implications of postmodernity3 for the form and character of political identity?4 To address this question, I shall follow a two-pronged strategy which draws from both theoretical and empirical sources. The contribution of the former requires us to step back to first principles and ask the simple but profoundly important question: Why do people identify? Simultaneously, I attempt to assemble an inventory of empirical observations which bear on the core question of identity's future shape. It is hoped that this strategy will yield an edifice capable of lifting us just high enough to steal a peek over the horizon, for a glimpse of identity in a postmodern world. And clearly this is the moment to look. We live in what is arguably the most exciting period 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 sort which historically has usually come about through the dislocation of a major war. Nation and state, as we have known them, are interrogated 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 societies possessing little political identity at all, at least in terms which would fit with contemporary usage. Certainly the highly constrained sphere of travel typical for most individuals or the lack of communication with distant lands lend themselves to such an end.9 Lacking extensive contact with 'others', the abstract apprehension of one's own identity as something separate and unique is made more difficult. Additionally, pre-modern societies commonly lack a highly-developed, penetrative state to serve as a focal point for extra-local identification. In short, before modernity changed the very scale of human interaction and organization, there was little of the physical, cognitive and emotional infrastructure necessary to permit the fruition of mass identities. This no doubt accounts for the fact that nationalism is a phenomenon of modernity,10 and that there is no analogous political 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 in character, as compared to those of modernity. Indeed, the fundamental and hegemonic 'identity' in such cultures is undoubtedly religious, though as such, it probably bears little relationship to the contemporary meaning of identity (and certainly to political identity). In such cultures, religion provides the cosmology which structures the whole of people's lives. It offers answers to the deepest questions of existence and morality, and probably even structures the questions asked as well. Above all, it provides meaning and emotional security. Modernity rudely interrupted this ancient cultural form. Ironically, it was probably 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 a spiritually improved institution, the inadvertent consequence of his movement was instead to split the Church and, more subtly and more importantly, to generally temporalize and desacralize the role of religion in Western society. If we construe the central intellectual premise of modernity to be the scientific method writ large - that is, the concept that the world is knowable through a combination of agnosticism (not necessarily religious) combined with imagination, empiricism and rigorous contestation and evaluation, as opposed to determined by scripture and current doctrine then surely Luther opened the door, however unintentionally, by fracturing the Church's ontological hegemony. Through this door would later walk Copernicus, Newton and generations of their acolytes, the wars of religion, their termination around the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, and other developments ultimately culminating in the Enlightenment's bold statement that from this point forward humans would rule themselves, thank you very much. The three centuries from Luther's act of impudence to the founding of the American and French republics (which emphatically divorced religion from governance) mark a fundamental watershed - this is the birth of the modern. The wave of change which followed succeeded in disturbing and distressing premodernity's foundational tenets on every front: industrialism intruded on agriculture, urban living replaced rural, wide communication patterns superseded local insularity, nuclear families supplanted extended variants, states replaced feudal networks, and - crucially - politics succeeded liturgy as the recognized source of societal rules. All of these moves, but particularly the latter, were emblematic of a transformation in consciousness which swung people's essential self-image from that of passive victims to architects of their own destiny. It is a shift, that is, from a culture of paternalism to one of entrepreneurialism (where both terms are used 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 advent of powerful and exclusionary political identities, but it also did something else: it provided the necessary emotional condition for such identities by thrusting people into a new ontological state wherein the old questions remained, but their answers did not. The sum of these changes was sufficient to give rise to a new 'religion' of some sort which could fill the abyss of meaning and security that had opened in the hearts and minds of early modern men and women." It need not have taken the specific form of nationalism, nor even necessarily have been secular in character. But in fact it was both, and the new secular religion of nationalism was born, quickly establishing 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 dawn of the age of nationalism but the dusk of religious modes of thought. The century of the Enlightenment, of rationalist secularism, brought with it its own modern darkness. With the ebbing of religious belief, 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 community more necessary. What then was required was a secular transformation of fatality into continuity, contingency into meaning. As we shall see, few things were (are) better suited to this end than the idea of a nation.13 Thus we see that nationalism is a product of modernity - a manifestation of the 'quest for shelter from the chill winds of ontological insecurity'14 which is driven by the disorienting forces of industrialization, urbanization, statebuilding, and sundry but profound changes to most aspects of Western culture.15 But in this sense, it is perhaps more accurate to say that 'identity' itself - not only nationalism - is a product of modernity, since that which it replaced was less an identity, as we now conceive of these, than a universal ontology, penetrative well beyond consciousness for those who lived it. On this account, then, the answer to the question 'Why do people identify?' is that identification fills for them a profound psychological need. The whole complex of modernity (less identity) argued that the old cosmology was exhausted and irrelevant. Writing of the French experience, for example, Eugen Weber notes that 'Coherent religious theories of life that had been accepted by most educated members of the community [and even more so by non-educated members, who were slower to make the transition] became survivals superstitions - no longer compatible with the scientific principles of the time'. But these changes were destructive of the old superstitions without providing a replacement for the 'things people badly

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need: explanations, a sense of control, reassurance, a framework for individual and social activities'.16 The result of these developments was to effectively cast people into a purgatory which combined the new rationalism with no alternative source of meaning and security. Thus the role for identity. The New Fatigue Now it is the nation's turn. Having filled the breach created by modernity's wave of change, it now stands squarely in the bull's eye of the new wave of postmodernity 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 traditional cultures. It is to the cataloguing and assessment of these forces and their respective effects that we now turn. To begin with, as noted in the introduction to this essay, there is the question of the state. Plenty of states have been sacked down through history, but today we witness the sacking of the form itself. And, since states pretty 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 assume that the assault on the state has implications for the nation. As such, and because there remain among scholars some dissenters on the question, it is worth detailing here the forces now undermining the capacity of states. In fact, there are many - by my count, fifteen distinct effects - which may be usefully divided into three categories referring, respectively, to structural, political and normative factors. Structural factors have been among the most prominent impacting the state, and of these globalization is surely the most noted. Moreover, globalization itself attacks on many fronts. For example - to pick just three of the most consequential of these - the forces of commerce, capital mobility, and cultural homogenization produce the respective effects of diminishing national control over imports (and hence over culture), over the location of industry, and over national claims to cultural distinctiveness. Whether by forcing states into the role of supplicants at the mercy of mobile capital, or by engendering the often absurd attempts at erecting cultural Maginot Lines, globalization clearly has states on the run. Meanwhile the proliferation of international organizations in contemporary times, and the growing scope of their functional capacity define a second major structural threat to states. Nowhere is this more true than in Europe, where the European Union has assumed increasingly broad chunks of its member states' competency portfolios, a trend which is likely to accelerate significantly in the wake of spillover from monetary union. Other

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international organizations are weaker, but many - among them numerous NGOs - are nevertheless significant and growing in impact; the World Trade Organization may be especially likely to become a supranational player of substance. A third structural factor arises from within, rather than above. Even the most venerable and seemingly well-established of nation-states have not been spared the torments of regional autonomy and secession movements. From Canada to Britain to Russia, China and Indonesia, states have shown themselves to be anything but internally monolithic. One response to regionalism has been devolution (though such reforms have also been employed in the absence of threats from regional movements), which itself constitutes a fourth and widespread means by which state power has been diminished. On a fifth front, state capacity has been drained not only upward and downward, but also toward the private sector, as increasingly wide swathes of once-core state services have been privatized. The sixth and final structural effect on the welfare of states has been dictated by facts on the ground. The past decade has witnessed the disintegration of the Soviet, Yugoslav, Czechoslovakian and Ethiopian states. This process is unlikely to be complete even in these locations, let alone in Canada, Indonesia, or perhaps China. However, interpreting the effect of such developments on the state as a form of polity is a bit tricky, for on the one hand, secession movements may be seen as living proof that the idea of the nation-state has lost little of its allure, since these movements invariably seek statehood of their own. But a more nuanced interpretation reminds us that territorial integrity is at the core of what it means to be a state, and therefore what may be good news for Slovenia, Slovakia or Eritrea is nevertheless bad news for the state as an idea. This is a lesson seemingly lost on Parti Quebecois, for example, who would wrest Quebec away from Canada while simultaneously resisting the rights of Native Americans there to exit an independent Quebec. In any case, it must be recognized that secession is at best a double-edged sword with respect to the health of the state, and more likely an overall threat. Turning to the political factors confronting the state, five are of particular prominence. There is, in the first instance, 'the end of history', or the lack of any fervent international ideological divide, the likes of which have in the past redounded quite favorably to the strength of states. Instead, and secondly, most polities now worship - whether willingly or forcibly, traditionally or via a 'third way' - at the neoliberal altar of the market, the state's chief rival for influence in shaping culture. And, of course, neoliberalism's assault weakens the welfare state, one of the modern state's two core functions, which in turn 'inevitably undermines the universalistic core 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 third political affront to the state, perhaps best labelled as a Thatcherist anti-statist ideology,19 which tends to view all things public (the military excepted) as evil, and which seriously threatens the state's capacity to mobilize a disaffected body politic. Lastly, there are two other contemporary publicopinion vectors which have not been kind to the state. The first of these is a post-Vietnam/post-Watergate/post-1968 general cynicism about politics and politicians which was considerably less prevalent only thirty or forty years ago. Today there is a far greater presumption of distrust, and this clearly limits the freedom of states to act in certain domains. Finally, there would seem to be a general public alienation from most of what transpires in the political sphere, which is certainly related to some of the preceding factors, and yet constitutes an independent, fifth factor of its own. In certain respects, this decoupling of public from polity allows governments increased latitude in behavior and decision-making. But it is also indicative of a growing irrelevance of government in people's lives, a condition which cannot bode well for the welfare of states. We come, finally, to four normative changes which further diminish the power and autonomy of states. At the international level, to begin with, there is growing recognition of certain norms which impinge on the ability of states to act completely autonomously, or at least to do so without suffering condemnation and, with increasing frequency, more tangible consequences. Indeed, some of these norms - for example, the evolving human rights regime - explicitly contravene ideas of absolute state sovereignty, the claim for which rings in the contemporary ear with an increasingly anachronistic timbre. Secondly, the practice of war - that other traditional core function of states - no longer possesses the carte blanche legitimacy it once did. This seems especially true in Europe, where the experience of war is particularly recent and grim, but it may be fair to say generally that people are more sober about the consequences of war than they were in, say, 1914, and that the autonomy of states to act in this domain has thus been reduced. Similarly, there has also been a delegitimization of the more rabid forms of nationalism, intolerance, and notions of superiority (there are, of course, major exceptions to this pattern) - sentiments which in the past have given states licence to act with relative impunity. And finally, there exists today a normative prohibition - or, if this is too strong a word, an inclination in that direction against the forms of internal coercion which states regularly employed in the past, frequently in the very service of their own development. It is difficult to imagine, for example, Tiananmen Square provoking the same level of international disgust not so many years ago that it did recently. Indeed, in this respect, a comparison of international reaction to the same country's far more ghastly Cultural Revolution may be instructive.

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In sum, recent years have not been kind to the nation-state as a form of polity, though it still retains supremacy in factual and probably ideal terms as well. Nevertheless, the diminishment of the state is real, and these effects should be assumed to have serious implications for the way in which people identify, since states often provide the foci for national identities, and have also traditionally worked hard at insuring the maintenance of national identities (though Zygmunt Bauman, for one, argues that they have now simply withdrawn from attempting to satisfy their publics, seemingly hoping the latter's disaffection will somehow pass them by20). Absent the same degree of focus and nation-building capacity formerly provided by states, national identities should be expected to suffer. In any case, if we seek to plot the future trajectory of political identity by means of inventorying the present, the assault on the state is only one of several trends we must highlight. Another of these is the degree to which formerly homogeneous societies are now struggling with the implications of pluralization. One estimate is that over 200 million people are living in countries other than the one in which they were born,21 whether because of war, political oppression, economic opportunity, or other reasons. This development presents different challenges of different magnitude to each society in which it appears. For all, however, the phenomenon forces a reconsideration of the nation-state itself - rarely true to form in application anyhow - as an ideal type. As Appadurai notes of the United States, 'the formula of hyphenation (as in Italian-Americans, Asian-Americans, and African-Americans) is reaching the point of saturation, and the right-hand side 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 monolithic nation, further distancing that ideal from practice. Moreover, the exposure which pluralization provides to alternative cultures, though not always conflict-free, is part of a third general trend of interest, that of rising levels of cosmopolitanism. The globe is surely shrinking, and the horizon of people's sense of community is surely expanding, not least because of the astonishing effect of electronic media. But levels of travel, study and work abroad have also risen higher by an order of magnitude compared to past practice, with attitudes following close behind.23 Nowhere is this process more evident than in Western Europe (to no small degree because the Common Market and EU-sponsored educational exchange programs like Erasmus and Socrates have been constructed in part for this very purpose), where the attitudes across just three generations mark out these changes. It would not be uncommon to find in Europe, that is, a member of the World War II generation who still loathed and distrusted nationals from former enemy states, but whose children instead viewed those countries as economic partners and perhaps

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holiday destinations, and whose grandchildren have traveled, studied, lived and worked in those same countries. The effect of such exposure on individuals' psycho-spatial sense of community should not be underestimated. As Habermas avers, mass communication and mass tourism exert their influence less dramatically, almost beneath the surface. Both work to change a group morality tailored to what is nearby. They accustom our eyes to the heterogeneity of forms of life and to the reality of the differentials between living conditions here and elsewhere.24 The dramatic rise over the last century in the general standard of living provides a fourth current of which we must take notice. Notwithstanding either the fact that the full blessings of this development are limited to industrialized countries, or that even many of the people within such countries are partially excluded from such benefits, the effect is still remarkable. Today, vast numbers of people live substantially longer, healthier and more prosperous lives then they would have had they been born only a hundred years earlier, let alone at any other point during the several million years humans have walked the earth. There are several repercussions to this development which are significant with respect to the question of identity. First, evolving beyond a short lifespan which is necessarily devoted primarily to survival provides people with the time, latitude and disposition to ponder extra-material questions, such as the nature of identity. Klapp notes that 'perhaps it is only as material problems are solved that we get time to sit around and ask questions about ourselves'.25 Moreover, second, prosperity may well steer individuals toward thinking about identity differently when they do think about it. As Habermas argues, the development of the welfare state, and the expansion and reform of educational, criminal justice and social institutions improved people's standard of living dramatically in the space of a single generation, and thus reoriented the content of national identities toward notions of citizenship rights, and away from ethnic definitions.26 Both these effects of prosperity upon the character of identity are subtle yet significant, but these qualities are even more true of a third effect. However ignorant of history many people are today, most are nevertheless at least vaguely aware of the uniqueness of our time. Many alive today have even experienced this transition over the course of their own lifetimes.27 And if asked, few, I think, would ascribe these massive changes to some sort of divine blessing miraculously bestowed on the last three generations of humans, but withheld from the entirety of our ancestry. In short, whatever people may do or say on Sunday, and however much they may idealize the simpler 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 their own destiny, and that the fruits of past achievements - world wars, nuclear terror and environmental depredations notwithstanding - have dramatically improved living conditions, while doubling or even tripling the years available to enjoy such conditions. This recognition, however subconsciously held, has important implications for the future of political identity. Finally, there is a fifth development which I argue has especially profound though subtle ramifications for political identification. It is entailed by the dramatic increases in scientific knowledge, engineering capability, and general technological development which have been sustained in recent decades, and which not only continue to grow, but do so at a geometrically accelerating pace. One need only consider the fact that harnessing the atom and space travel are both now technological old news to get a sense of this development's magnitude. Perhaps most relevant to the argument advanced in this study is the extension of human capabilities in the areas of biotechnology, chemical engineering and medicine, domains once strictly the preserve of the gods. I will argue that such astonishing achievements as cloning, genetic engineering, synthetic drug manufacture, and the use of artificial and transplanted organs - not to mention those sure to follow - should be expected to have indirect but profound effects on political identity. Whither Identity? The foregoing discussions have sought to describe political identity, past and present. Armed with this knowledge and a sufficiently reckless disregard for the perils of prognostication, I now wish to offer some ruminations on the future of this phenomenon. Having theorized why people identify, that is, and having itemized those contemporary factors likely to shape identity in the future, I seek below to trace a plausible trajectory for its subsequent development. There are, of course, many possibilities - literally an infinite number of permutations - and the problem is further complicated by the question of temporal scale. Certain possibilities rise and fall in plausibility depending on how far into the future one attempts to peer. But, hazards duly noted, I will in this section briefly review a handful of reasonably plausible forecasts for the future character of political identity. Though I wholly or partially reject each of these in favor of another discussed in the final section of this essay, their consideration here facilitates an intellectual exercise useful for stimulating the sort of imagination necessary for a task of this kind, and for sharpening the analysis leading to the proffered forecast.

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One should always consider an extension of the status quo as a likely outcome when predicting future scenarios. In this case, however, doing so is somewhat complicated by confusion with respect to characterizing the status quo. Clearly, people already possess multiple and simultaneous geographical/political identities, as is demonstrated by both survey data and anecdotal evidence. 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 not choose country.28 But, as Anthony Smith has noted, identity is a phenomenon particularly unsuited to elucidation by means of closed-ended survey questions alone.29 In this case what is sorely missing from such data sets 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 they would for France? My guess is not, and I would argue that for most people in most places (again, at least in the developed world) the nation-state remains the locus of their deepest affect. Might these identities remain unchanged into the future? This seems unlikely given the contemporary developments sketched above, chief among which are the many factors undermining the capacity of the state. These cannot but also affect the welfare of its Siamese twin, the nation, especially to the extent that identities are instrumentally determined and the state is increasingly unable to deliver various desiderata to the nation. Moreover, as the scale of commerce and culture continues to widen, states may come more and more to resemble the no longer appropriate provincial-scale polities they themselves once replaced. Perhaps, then, if globalization is indeed a globalizing force, a truly international identity is in our future. Here, the question of temporal scale is particularly relevant, for while this alternative seems most improbable in the near-term, such pessimism properly decreases in inverse proportion to the time span considered.30 A visit by hostile extraterrestrials (particularly one which was successfully repelled) would surely help to forge a common international identity, but short of that it would probably have to be done the old-fashioned way. Borrowing from the experience of states, that is, one might expect to see centralizing elites build powerful institutional structures .at the international level, only to have them subsequently hijacked by mass publics for their own purposes, at which point or thereafter identification becomes probable. Farfetched as this scenario may appear on a global scale, it is arguably transpiring at this very moment in Western Europe, where supranational institutions are most developed. Recent dramatic steps by the European Parliament to exert itself and thereby address Europe's democratic deficit are reminiscent of bloodier battles for parliamentary supremacy 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 even less clear, though they would likely be distant in time, in any case. Again, instrumentalism is probably key to the process, and the day that supranational institutions supplant states in the provision of security, justice, and social welfare services would be the day to begin expecting the arrival of a global identity. What of regional identities, then - are these more plausible in the foreseeable future? Does Huntington's vision of a clash of civilizations,31 to choose but one regionalist scenario, ring true (the identity aspect, that is, with or without the clash)? Perhaps, again especially in Europe, where institutional integration is obviously well ahead of any other region on the planet. But globalization does not appear to respect the boundaries of regions any more than it does those of states. So, for example, there is no such thing as a European culture which is exclusive to Europe's borders, but there surely is a Western/American culture which now transcends virtually every border. What is more, what integration Europe has so far realized is probably due to a set of unique circumstances that are either not transportable elsewhere or, as in the case of the repeated hosting of world wars, would hardly be worth the trade to speed regional integration. It is conceivable that regional-level integration outside Europe could be accelerated in reaction to the enhanced powers of a European economic giant.32 But, while regional identities may indeed grow, especially where institutions and service-provision have developed, it seems doubtful that such diffuse and minimal polities will inspire levels of emotional content approaching those produced by nationalism in the last two centuries. As Anthony 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 rooted in some form of cultural-territorial space. A more radical departure from this construction would entail the abandonment of this profoundly modern linkage, leaving a deterritorialized basis for identity in its wake. The annihilation of space rapidly being achieved by ceaseless technological innovation makes such a scenario increasingly plausible. If Deutsch was correct about the role of cultural uniformities and intercourse in the defining of communities,34 for instance, technology simply broadens the scope of their potential development by eliminating the constraints formerly imposed by distance.35 Since interests (referring here to both senses of the word: those things which excite people, and those which aggrandize them) are arguably better constituent elements around which to create identities than is the randomness of geographical proximity, we might expect identity structures to be built on that which people maintain in common. Already there 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 interests whose founder notes that 'a writer in Poland has more in common with a writer in Chile than with his actual neighbor'.36 Such identities might well be just as solid and passionate as modern political identities, but they would almost certainly differ from the latter by virtue of their smaller scale, their multiplicity of kind, and the competition they would face from territorial and other forms of identity. A fifth formula for the structuring of political identities, also deterritorialized, posits a universe which is still populated by mass associations. In this case, however, such associations would be built around some attribute held in common by their members other than ethnicity, proximity, or shared governance. Exactly what might constitute the basis of such new associations is up for grabs, but perhaps the most likely unit would be the corporation. Post-war Japan (at least prior to the economic trauma of the 1990s) with its lifetime employment guarantees, paternalistic workplace relationships, and company songs akin to national anthems or school Alma Maters, suggests a nascent example of widespread and deeplyheld loyalty structures built around alternative forms of association, in this case the corporation. Religion provides a second likely source for the fabric from which such identity associations could be stitched, and the historic influence of the Vatican in the domestic politics of various countries - to pick but one example - demonstrates again that nations have no necessary monopoly on mass loyalties and affinities. Whether these alternatives have the capacity to seriously challenge existing forms of political identity in the future is more difficult to say. Traditional religions would appear long spent as content for highly charged political identities (again, in the developed world), but new forms could certainly arise. Corporations may be a different matter, though this scenario would clearly require time to develop. Nevertheless, current trends including the aforementioned decline of states, recent merger-mania,37 and the new global ideological hegemony of the market over government combined with the instrumental facilities at the disposal of corporate employers suggests at least the possibility of such shifts in the structure of political identities. If nothing else, states in the not too distant future may find themselves caught between the downsizing demands of corporate interests on the one hand, and publics seeking to defend the scope and depth of the welfare state on the other. The results of such a conflict would be expected to have serious implications for the character of political identities. This latter scenario suggests a sixth model for the structure of postmodern political identification. The second half of the twentieth century witnessed 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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hundred years. But one senses today the possible unraveling of this bargain, particularly because of the strains globalization has placed on the developed world, and hence the growing internationalization of class conflict. In 1914, leaders of the Second International expected workers on either side of state borders to reject the 'bourgeois' call of international war; instead, national identity completely swamped class identity, and French and German workers put down their tools in order to pick up rifles and annihilate each other by the millions. Conceivably, however, the future may show the dreams of socialist theorists to have been more precocious than erroneous. In the past, both class conflicts and their resolution were contained within respective state boundaries because such boundaries accurately described the limits of economic ecosystems. As globalization diminishes the relevance of state frontiers, the scenario of class conflict may re-emerge at the newly relevant international level. Especially with competing national identities then less salient for a variety of reasons, the possibility of mobilized ideological- or class-based identities might become very real. The six models described above obviously do not begin to exhaust the infinite range of possible identity futures, nor do they even include the scenario I consider most likely (discussed below). Rather, they are meant chiefly as an intellectual exercise which seeks to describe both the scope of plausible possibilities and a handful of prominent scenarios. I turn now to what I foresee as a more probable structure for identities in the world of postmodernity, and then to the implications of such a structure for the general phenomenon of political identification. Wither Identity Like the nation, modernity's classic statement of identity, its postmodern cousin may one day be said to have begun life in Paris. The same city which gave to history the French Revolution in 1789 also gave us the Treaty of Paris in 1951.38 Both are significant for their tangible and symbolic effects alike. Symbolically, the French Revolution introduced modern Europe to the 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 more tangible terms. The material effects of the Treaty of Paris, which marked the birth of what is now the European Union, are just as clear.39 Symbolically, the moment may come to represent the apogee of the monolithic nationstate, 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 world which I estimate collectively constitute the most likely description of its nature. Understanding these, however, requires that we first complete the

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construction, begun earlier, of a theoretical chassis upon which such an identity transition would travel. Recall the argument made above that understanding why people identify requires apprehending the depth of the psychological stakes in play. As William Bloom notes, drawing from Jiirgen Habermas, People require a cognitively accessible interpretation of cosmic and social reality, so that they know how to relate themselves to this environment - thus they have to identify. If, then, the dynamic mechanism of identification is not suitably gratified, the result is anxiety and breakdown, both individual and social.40 In traditional societies, this interpretation - this 'shelter from ontological insecurity' - was provided by mysticism, clothed in the legitimating garb of integral theology. Modernity blew this construction apart, however, leaving hapless moderns with Bloom's individual and social anxiety and breakdown. Into the breach stepped political identity, chiefly manifested as nationalism, to provide security and meaning to people for whom the old questions remained, but the old answers did not. Nationalism gave people reason to believe that they were more than biological parts of some sprawling industrial machine (or 'human resources', in the awful parlance of the contemporary workplace), their lives no more purposeful and less free - 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 whose destiny would be redeemed at the end of its eschatological journey. Today we find ourselves at what appears to be another macrohistorical/sociological juncture, and once again the existing structures and verities are under assault. Above, I discussed five forces currently at play which I believe have deep implications for the nature of political identity in the transition from modernity to postmodernity. These are: the diminution of the state, the rise of cultural pluralism within states, increased cosmopolitanism, dramatic improvements in people's standard of living, and the explosion of scientific knowledge and technological capability. All five of these should be seen as simultaneously destructive of the old order (but particularly the first three) and constructive of the new (particularly the latter two). Collectively, they point toward a different, postmodern approach to identity, substituting new answers to the grand ontological questions which have previously been satisfied by religion and nationalism. What are these new answers? What will political identity look like in the world of postmodernity? I believe that as science, technology, social and political innovation, learning, and (arguably) collective maturation render humanity increasingly able to explain its condition and master its fate,

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individuals may find less reason to look toward artefactual notions of shared (and exclusionary) collective destiny for emotional succour, much as many have already rejected dogmatic mysticism for the same reason. I argue, in short, that humans themselves have taken the place once occupied by gods and nations as providers of meaning and security in their own lives. To be sure, these are subtly held beliefs, and they mix uncomfortably -just as one should expect in a period of major transition - with still-powerful emotions toward religion and country. Nor is science now able to answer some of the deepest and most unsettling questions of life, such as what happens to us when we die. Yet today we can explain and often master an ever-widening portion of our individual and collective fates, and the immediate future portends far greater developments of astonishing power. Moreover, this is particularly true in biology, the domain most central to the sort of questions which have in the past given rise to religious and nationalist answers. When we ourselves can deliver the harvest, predict and control the weather, double and triple our lifespans, clone animals from cells, explore the universe and trace its development back to the first nanoseconds of the Big Bang - when, in short, humans can do these things for themselves, the resulting decline in the relative instrumental appeal of artefactual and infinitely less reliable interventions will likely spell their effective demise as potent sociological forces.41 Having thus described the process expected to yield a new form of political identity in the world of postmodernity, we can now be more specific about the nature of such an identity. The subsequent paragraphs detail five characteristics which I believe may define these attitudes. Following their discussion, I conclude this essay with a consideration of whether - 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 the first of these defining characteristics, and as by far the most advanced manifestation of supranational integration, I use it below to illustrate several of my arguments. Here it represents the creation of a new polity of genuine import, possessing clear substantive responsibilities. To the extent identities are instrumentally driven, as I believe them often to be, such new polities should become the foci of new political identities (on the other, subnational, side of the state, the new Scottish Parliament provides another example). As the European Union does more, and does more successfully - if this in fact transpires - a European identity already possessed by some may become more widespread, and likely deeper as well. The monetary union project, with its massive potential for further integrative spillover, seems especially likely to provide a fillip in this direction. The general point, however, is that

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identities will more than ever be multiple and diverse, perhaps taking the form 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 communication networks will insert individuals into an increasing number of group memberships, forcing them to juggle multiple identities. Context shifts may be contingent on either geographical location or events on the ground. A German informant interviewed for a study on European identity described how he felt German when in London, European when in the United States, and Western when visiting Latin America, while a second informant inverted the effect, saying 'At home [in Ireland], I feel proud to be European, while away from home, I feel proud to be Irish'. And, illustrating the 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 the French were agitating for the presidency of the European Central Bank. We should, in short, expect multiple and shifting identities to replace the more monolithic identities of modernity. Third, postmodern political identities will increasingly have to be built and maintained upon a set of normative civic values, rather than essentializing characteristics or contradistinctions against an 'Other' of some sort. This change will be forced by the growing pluralization of domestic societies, the normative discrediting of ethnic nationalism, and the sheer difficulty in a shrinking world of disaggregating 'others' from the ingroup. This new limitation may seem to put bigger and newer associations such as Europe at a competitive disadvantage relative to the proven emotional appeal of ethnos-based national or regional identities, yet such a formulation has in fact worked rather successfully in the United States,43 albeit under less daunting circumstances than those which conditions in Europe now present, with the continent's long-established nation-states and linguistic diversity. In any case, even existing polities will be forced to change their appeal to better fit shifts in popular normative values. Fourth, prominent among these civic values - which may include commitments to democracy, liberty, tolerance, and to economic solidarity is found perhaps the most ironic element upon which any common identity might be built: the respect for, and even celebration of, diversity. Bloomfield renders mellifluously the new embrace of cultural pluralism as a desirable quality, describing it as a cross-fertilizing polyphony, 'the kind of cultural convergence embodied in jazz'.44 Again, this change will be the product of the shifts in the conditions facing communities discussed above, but also may be seen as part of a wider change of values in developed countries. Fifth and finally, identities are increasingly likely to be the product of

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instrumental quid pro quo relationships, as opposed to socialized emotional responses to specific tribes and tropes. Hence, they will take on more of an intellectualized and abstract quality than have previously ascendant political identities such as nationalism. Said one informant of the European project, for example, 'Europe is something that rings a bell in your mind, but not in your heart; it doesn't have a spirit'. This is a quality which arguably is already diluting national identities, and may increasingly apply to all but the most local of affective ties. To recap, I have argued in the preceding paragraphs that postmodern political identities will be characterized by five specific attributes: multiplicity of foci, contextuality of application, de-essentialization of content, celebration of diversity, and instrumentality of basis. These characteristics collectively represent one model - 1 argue the more probable of the lot - of the shape of identity in the postmodern epoch. Looked at as presented above, the model appears as an outgrowth of modernity, an extension of the familiar features of contemporary political identity, and an object clearly recognizable through the lens of modern sensibilities. But if we take several steps back from this image, we may wish to consider whether such a view is accurate, whether the same set of conditions can yield a more fruitfully construed whole if viewed from a longer perspective, whether, in short, the sum of these simultaneous transformations along multiple dimensions is ultimately better understood as a change in kind rather than a change of degree. That is, do identities which have been balkanized, intellectualized, 'civicized', internally-pluralized, contextualized, instrumentalized, rendered contingent, and generally enervated continue to resemble those sentiments which under conditions of modernity we have labelled 'political identity' enough to retain that appellation, or are we witnessing the advent of something qualitatively different? In short, does postmodernity signal more than just the transformation of nationalism, but rather the end of identity? Looked at from the longer theoretical perspective articulated in this essay, the answer to this question is that it does indeed and, as such, the five characteristics of postmodern identity described above become instead symptoms of deeper change. Thus the reason we witness the phenomenon of political-identity stretching (and hence diluting), deflating emotionally and becoming increasingly instrumentally contingent is because, like religion before it,46 it is now more a matter of preference than of psychological necessity. If the deeper questions of meaning and security can be answered elsewhere, as I have suggested above, not just nationalism but all of political identification may become superfluous or (in many places already) even discredited, just as divine answers to the same questions were undermined by the advent of modernity.47 Therefore, the previously

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described forces and trends of postmodernity, particularly the enhanced capabilities of humans to control their own destiny, should indeed be predicted to spell the end of identity as the powerful political force we have known for two centuries. This model of the genealogy and trajectory of identity is congruent with now out-of-fashion (especially among postmodernists) notions of progress in the story of human development.48 Normatively, there is much to commend the posited new regime of (non-) political identification. This progressive step would entail both an emancipation from the artifice of nationalism and the crimes committed in its name, as well as new levels of agency for human beings and maturity for their cultures. If modernity interrogated the received wisdom by which states (and churches) had previously treated individuals as subjects, postmodernity interrogates the right of states to treat citizens at all. The social contract, once a heuristic representation of what was in any case a decidedly one-sided 'negotiation', is being reified into something approaching a real contract, in which participation is voluntary on both sides, and contingent upon the continued satisfaction of each. If this is indeed the case, it may fairly be said that the political 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.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author is indebted to Mark Pollack, Aili Tripp, Edward Warzala, Graham Wilson, Crawford Young, and an anonymous Nationalism & Ethnic Politics reviewer for the generosity of their assistance and the thoughtfulness of their comments in reviewing this article.

NOTES 1. Modernity and postmodernity are at once temporal and geographical phenomena. Though they 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 new millennium, there exist simultaneously on the planet nascent postmodern cultures, modern cultures, traditional or pre-modern cultures, and even a few pre-traditional cultures (small bands of hunters and gatherers). Unless otherwise specified, the observations and hypotheses of 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 Jan W. Van Deth and Elinor Scarbrough (eds.), The Impact of Values (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp.304, 309; Mathew Horsman and Andrew Marshall, After the Nation-State: Citizens, Tribalism and the New World Disorder (London: HarperCollins, 1994); Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p.56; Jrgen Habermas, '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, Nations
and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). For a contrary view, see Michael Mann, 'Nation-States in Europe and Other Continents: Diversifying, Developing, Not Dying', Daedalus, Vol.122, No.3 (1993), pp. 115-40. Postmodernity must be clearly distinguished from postmodernism 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 postmodernist lights, as is the term postmodernity itself, given that even the act of periodization is suspect. For subscribers, postmodernism is best considered as a mood or state of mind.) Thus, this study seeks to be empirical rather than ironical, constructive rather than deconstructive, and positivistic rather than contingent. In any case, as Ruggie notes, it is quite possible to discuss postmodernity 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 a distinction between two types of societies, two constellations of deeply imbricated cultural attributes, which can be roughly labelled 'modern' and 'postmodern'. Industrialism seems to me the key and often defining aspect of the first, to the extent that its core tenets of resource exploitation, mass production and machines comprised of component parts not only directly influence the character of much of the remainder of the culture, but also do so indirectly by serving as a grand metaphor informing the modern Weltanschauung. Likewise, postmodernism should probably be seen to have information- or knowledge-based industry at its core, and we may infer that this mode of production will have the same shaping capacity 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, the Internet, 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. What replaces the nation in postmodern society is the subject of this inquiry. In this study I employ both the general term 'identity' and the more specific 'political identity' to refer to the latter concept. Unless otherwise specified, I do not necessarily intend my arguments 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. Horsman and Marshall, p.267. The authors credit George Robertson with first use of the term. Ruggie, p.139. 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. In posing this question, I wish to bracket other related questions, such as why one identity is chosen over others, what determines the scope of the identity-group, what is the effect of material macro-sociological and historical processes such as industrialism on engendering group development, what role is played by cultural entrepreneurs in the development of political 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) and simply ask what functional need of individuals is served by the act of identifying at all. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso Editions/NLB, 1983), p.6. See, for example, Jrgen Habermas, '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. Almost every scholar of nationalism agrees on this dating of its appearance, regardless of their varying explanations of the phenomenon's development. Ibid. p.5. Anthony H. Birch, Nationalism and National Integration (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), p.3. Anderson, p.11.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

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14. Philip Schlesinger, 'Europeanness: A New Cultural Battlefield?', in John Hutchinson and Anthony 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, States of Disarray: The Social Effects of Globalization (Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for 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 Nationalism: Further Reflections', Daedalus, Vol.122, No.3 (1993), p.218. Raison d'etat, one might say, has been the raison d'etre of nations. 18. Jurgen Habermas, 'The European Nation-State: On the Past and Future of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Reprinted from The Inclusion of the Other, 1998)', Public Culture, Vol.10, No.2 (1998), p.413. 19. Young, p.17. 20. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), p.279. 21. Provided to Young, p. 16, by Kumar Rupesinghe of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway. 22. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 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 was: 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 VALVES SURVEY, 1981-1984 AND 1990-1993 [Computer File]. ICPSR Version (Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research [producer], Inter-university Consortium for Political 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 are recommended to Eugen Weber's splendid description of successful French nation-building during the period 1870-1914. Habermas, moreover, argues that a world public sphere populated by world citizens is already beginning to show itself. Habermas, 'Citizenship and National Identity: Some Reflections On the Future of Europe', pp.342-3. And Bauman claims 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 Lash and Roland Robertson (eds.), Global Modernities (London: Sage, 1995), p.148. 31. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: 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 of Nationalism (Cambridge: The Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 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 that the size of the MNCs relative to states is growing: in 1980 there were 39 on the top hundred list; by 1990 it was up to 47. Horsman and Marshall, p.201. 38. And, it should be added, further contributed the counter-cultural movement of 1968. While much of this assault on the fixtures of modernity (particularly the latter's use of the industrial motif in the structuring of all things) posited solutions which also partook of modern themes, some significant aspects of the movement anticipated postmodern ideas. Moreover, the wholesale rejection of society's received wisdom and of existing political authority structures prepared the way for the postmodern corrosion of modernity's social and ontological verities. I thank an anonymous reviewer for Nationalism & Ethnic Politics for this point. 39. And, in the eyes of nationalist Euro-skeptics, not unrelated to Napoleon'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 Communication and the Evolution of 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 to human welfare, not amenable to solution by more technology, at which moment a serious resurgence of religious or essentializing beliefs might be expected. Second, such a return to traditional 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 this essay can also alienate and atomize individuals, and thus spark the desire to invent or reinvent communities to cope with feelings of isolation. Whether their empowering or isolating effects prevail (with, respectively, the outcomes suggested by this essay, or a return to traditional identity forms) depends in part on the degree to which religion and nationalism are solutions which speak to the crisis of caprice, or to the crisis of solitariness, either (or both) of which might drive the needs for psychological security discussed in this essay. In short, the growth in the capacity of humans to master their environment and destiny speaks to the first crisis, but not to the second. Finally, I am also aware, as skeptics of the theory articulated within are sure to note, that religious belief seems to be growing worldwide at the present, 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 not yet 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 to modernity. In any case, third, even in the developed world the theorized effects should be expected to take time, to overlap with previous cosmologies, and even to stimulate traditionalist reaction among the disaffected. Finally, there are two noteworthy characteristics 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 religious and national identification have been most dramatically felt. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, Modernity, Pluralism and the Crisis of Meaning: The Orientation of Modern Man (Gutersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers, 1995), p.36. And, lastly, the character of the new spirituality is arguably quite different from older, more dogmatic, less tolerant, and less syncretic manifestations. Agnes Heller and Ferenc Feher, The Postmodern Political Condition (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 different mix of purpose than it has historically, with greater emphasis now placed on its benign social capacities, for instance. 42. Francis A. Beer, 'The Structure of World Consciousness', in Louis Rene Beres and Harry R. Targ (eds.), Planning Alternative World Futures: Values, Methods, and Models (New York: Praeger, 1975), pp.276-91. See also Appadurai, p.176; John R. Gibbins, 'Contemporary

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NATIONALISM & ETHNIC POLITICS Political Culture: An Introduction', in John R. Gibbins (ed.), Contemporary Political Culture: Politics in a Postmodern Age (London: Sage, 1989), p.23; and Horsman and Marshall, 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 is not 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, he sees a structure of multiple identities (the 'multiple-self') as only one of two possible postmodern solutions. The other - his apparent preference - he describes as the 'no-self, or the state of liberation, both spiritual and temporal, from identity categories altogether. Walter Truett Anderson, The Future of the Self: Inventing the Postmodern Person (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1997). Howe mentions both the US and Canada as examples of a successful non-ethnos based model, though the latter case arguably provides more evidence against the model's viability than for it. Paul Howe, 'A Community of Europeans', Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol.33, No. 1 (1995), p.32. Jude Bloomfield, 'The New Europe: A New Agenda for Research?', in Mary Fulbrook (ed.), National Histories and European History (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993), pp.266-7. Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p.249. Berger and Luckmann, pp.46-9. Hobsbawm argues that nationalism is today already a spent force, 'no longer a major vector of historical development'. Eric Hobsbawm, 'Nationalism in the Late Twentieth Century', in Omar Dahbour and Micheline R. Ishay (eds.), The Nationalism Reader (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995), p.362. Subscribers to a postmodern 'mood' (one hesitates, by postmodernists' own dictates, to use the term analysis) would find in these ideas a classic exemplar of grand narrative which is totalizing, 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.

43.

44. 45. 46. 47.

48.