In person icon Between the Universal and the Particular: the Ambiguity of National Identities in Europe and Beyond

Abstract

Identity is one of the jewels in the crown of ‘contested concepts’ in the social and political sciences. In the democratic context, national or European ‘identity’ is theoretically supposed to enable individuals and political communities to share common values and good practices, while recognizing their diversity. Differences of ethnicity, religion, language, gender and kinship are even at the heart of democracy’s ongoing effort to institutionally guarantee the universal equality of individual rights and freedoms, without falling into the particularist traps that tend to divide society along the ‘us-them’ dichotomies promoted by national-populist positions and channeled by political agents who feed on anti-establishment sentiment and democratic discontent. That said, whereas the very idea of identity is conceived and politically used to provide a certain unity and recognition, ‘identity politics’ often contribute quite to the opposite, namely via separation, differentiation and antagonism within society. Given that few notions have been used as much as ‘identity’ for contradictory purposes by political agents, the panel seeks to operationalize ‘identity’ critically, and aims to question the use of ‘identification’, which seems less reifying and more processual. By hypothesis, we might then think that ‘identification’ in democratic contexts should make it possible to combine the universalism of democratic principles, practices and norms, related to both individual and collective rights and institutions, with the characteristics and dispositions that depend on the socio-cultural appropriations of these norms and practices by the different groups that compose the society. In order to investigate this issue, the panel wishes to address political and interrelated questions such as the following: • How does reference to ‘identity’ influence the politics of exclusion\inclusion within national/European/international specific policies? • How do identity related concepts such as ‘race’, ‘religion’, ‘gender’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘class’ get politicized in different European contexts and at different levels (national/transnational/ supranational)? • How do references to ‘identities’ shape alliances or conflicts between political entities in the European Union and beyond? • What are the methodological tools that must be developed to better introduce the concepts of identity and identification to political research? The panel is aimed at researchers developing, empirically-based, theoretical or methodological reflections in the field of the study of identities and identification processes in the European Union and beyond. It is open to all disciplinary sensibilities that find interest in political and historical sociology, political science and political theory, and welcomes papers using quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods. Both case studies, comparative empirical research and cross-disciplinary analyses are welcome.

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