21st Century Identity Dilemmas
by Taylor Luczak
Conflicted Identities in the 21st Century
Technology has changed the face of global politics. The diminishing value of political borders due to rapid globalization has allowed individuals and local communities to compete with states on the world stage. Owing to rapid technological changes, people in both the developed and developing world are no longer restricted by the strict boundaries of ethnic identities based their local or regional affiliation. Indeed, research in the modernist school (Deutsch 1966; Hobsbawm 1990) suggests that technological changes will compel the adoption of new identities and enable people to join the global market in the pursuit of personal economic growth.
That said, the modernist perspective is challenged by the emergent reality that groups within developing countries are increasingly concerned that their ethnic identity is threatened by the perception of corrupting outside influences. They struggle with a growing dilemma and are searching how to maintain their local identities while promoting themselves in the world marketplace.
To handle this identity crisis, politicians need to implement fiscal policies that encourage capitalism at the individual level in order to promote the growth of a middle class, the group most widely associated with political stability and democracy (Luebbert 1991, Moore 1966). Politicians do this by providing excluded ethnic groups with solutions previously only available to states. To use macroeconomics at an individual level, fiscal policies such as micro-loans and land grants would allow oppressed ethnicities to benefit in the global market and diminish the threat of global terrorism.
Technology plays a significant role in allowing ethnic extremists to attempt to gain the powers of state actors. Extremists wish to gain power by manifesting the mythology of particular ethnic identity repertoires to create an atmosphere of the “people” versus the state. This paper examines how such an atmosphere can be best combated by delegitimizing extremist manifestations through economic stimulus.
After first examining developing areas around the world, such as the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia and South America, this paper assesses how micro-fiscal policies can promote modernization while still allowing ethnicities to hold on to their identities. It then recognizes the role of technology in allowing people to maintain or create identities important to them while still participating in the world market.
The Identity Crisis is the Contemporary Muslim World
Countries in the Islamic world are facing the paradox of “how to achieve political success and economic and social progress comparable to that of the West without sacrificing their commitment to faith” (Spencer 2009). Ethnic extremists have rallied behind the notion of religious destiny within Islamic Fundamentalism to gain political power. Fundamentalists who wish to maintain ethnic identities and groups wishing to shift towards more liberal (and presumably globalized) social norms have conflicted since at least the Iranian revolution in the late 1970s. This conflict has manifested itself in an increasingly global discourse about the nature of Islam, the core tenets of democracy and political participation, and the extent to which extremist claims create a threat to human security.
Iran presents a particularly illustrative case as it has been facing the dilemma of striving for modernization while still holding onto fundamentalist views for several decades. Most recently, in the 2009 Iranian presidential election it appeared that candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who represented the more socially liberal Green Movement, had won the campaign. As word of Mousavi’s loss spread, however, speculation of voter fraud began to rise. What started as a peaceful movement quickly turned into violent protests. It was reported that re-elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinijad had 170 of Mousavi’s supporters were arrested shortly after the election results were announced (Post-Election Clampdown in Iran 2009). This major crisis between Iranian citizens and their government is due in part to the government’s reluctance to recognize a shift in the political desires of Iranian citizens. By most accounts, younger Iranians are skeptical of the government’s wish to prioritize a generally exclusivist national agenda at the expense of greater economic opportunities and global interaction with other societies. As a consequence, Iran faces a considerable legitimacy deficit.
Since the election, the Iranian government has responded to this loss of trust from its people by instituting censorship, restricting the press, persecuting opposition leaders, and implementing policies that subdue citizens into following a particular set of Islamic social codes (Post-Election Clampdown in Iran 2009; Spencer 2009) . While such policies may be pursued in the name of creating a broad Iranian identity, it paradoxically creates grievances among the very people the government wishes to unify.
Through technological advancements ethnic extremists, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, have been able to gain political and military power once only held by states. Coincidently, the tools that brought the modern ideologies the Taliban oppose are the same tools the Taliban use to combat the opposing identities. The tools that drive globalization (the internet, broadcast media, and more advanced transportation) have simultaneously threatened traditional ethnic identities while empowering individuals and small groups.
In correlation with technological advancements, the Taliban’s political power in Afghanistan was also largely associated with the Taliban’s ability to recruit Afghans under the banner of an especially controversial interpretation of the Koran and Islamic law. “Jihad…may be defined as the individual’s duty to carry out God’s will and encourage others to do so” (Spencer 2009) and is almost universally practiced in peaceful ways. By manipulating the teachings of jihad in Islam, and through the exploitation of the uncertainties created by Afghanistan’s largely absent state institutions, the Taliban have successfully mobilized otherwise disparate communities to fight in the name of their professed ethnic and religious identities.
African Ethnic Conflict
In many sub-Saharan African countries identity crises exist due to ethnic conflicts that are being fueled by state biases. In countries like Sudan, the People’s Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda, states are unable to handle ethnic tensions created by arbitrary borders established during colonial rule. State lines have forced ethnic groups to attempt to assimilate and live under policies that do not accommodate these plural societies. The result has been genocide, civil war, and state failure due to the inability of groups to find a common nationalist frame (Jackson and Rosberg 1982).
In Sudan, ethnic tensions have been a near-permanent feature since independence in 1956, pitting the largely Muslim north against a conglomeration of different Christian and animist communities in the south. Sudan is plagued with an extreme identity crisis as two heavily opposed identities are forced to live within the same borders, under a government that has traditionally been dominated by northern political elites. The continuing conflict in Sudan accounts for a death toll of over 1.5 million people (Peterson 2000). Sudan will be hindered in its attempt to modernize if the government cannot satisfy the plural society within its country and curb ethnic conflict.
Rwanda’s ethnic tensions were escalated to their peak when a population boom caused tensions over food, land, and wealth. Rwanda’s persistent problems with inter-ethnic conflict have only been made worse by rapid population growth that placed immense pressures on the scarce supply of land, food, and wealth. Opposing Hutus and Tutsis blamed one another for the country’s problems, each referring to ethnic myths that privileged their interests over those of the other community. The Rwandan government failed in its responsibility to provide security for the divided plural society. Instead, cabinet members like Jean Kambanda, the former Prime Minister, encouraged the Hutu dominated government to engage in genocide as a ‘solution’ to the state’s dilemma (Doyle 2004). Governments with plural societies, like Sudan’s, will be restricted in their attempts to modernize if the government is biased towards a single group. Historically, countries with plural societies but ethnically biased governments have faced identity crisis that resulted in conflict and often bloodshed.
Facing Modernization
Identity crises are occurring in developing countries throughout the globe as countries start to enter global markets and modernize. In India, rapid globalization has threatened ethnic identities and shifted religious beliefs. Meanwhile in Peru, the government had become threatened by the possible takeover by the terrorist group, The Shining Path.
India’s rapid modernization over the past few decades because of globalization and technological advancements has tested many of India’s traditional ethnic and religious identities. Historian William Dalrymple discusses how India’s modernization has threatened to “synthesize” many of the identities throughout the country. Due to a rising middle class, traditional identities, such as local Hindu practices, are being formatted into one-size-fits-all institutions to accommodate such a booming population.
Hinduism, Dalrymple explains, has been transformed from a religion that was formerly tailored from region to region, into a unified establishment that can satisfy the large growing middle class. Local customs people identify with are being lost to the effects of globalization and modernization.
Dalrymple describes the loss of local identity with the story of a Braham priest whose family has been creating idol gods and goddesses since the 13th Century. When the priest was younger his father had taught him to continue creating the idols in the same method as instructed in the Hindu religious texts, the Shilpa Shastras. The priest explains the fear he has of the effects of modernization,
“Who knows what will happen here after my generation has passed away? My son is saying that he wants to become a computer engineer in Bangalore, and that he will give up the family business, so breaking our lineage. He is obsessed with computers—always in front of the screen, always playing computer games. Certainly I will make sure that he acquires these skills of ours—and already he can make good wax models. But if he gets good grades, and has the opportunity to study computer engineering at college, it would be unfair for me to deny him the opportunity he wants. We are inheritors of an unbroken tradition, generation after generation, father to son, father to son, for over seven hundred years. But my son says, this is the age of computers. And as much as I would want it otherwise, I can hardly tell him this is the age of the bronze caster.”
The priest’s dilemma is complicated further by the fact that, while modernization threatens to end is family identity, it is also expanding his business. The priest sells idols all over the world and is doing so well his “workshop had a backlog of orders that would take at least a year to clear.” People in India and all over the world are questioning how much weight their identities should play in comparison to the opportunity to gain greater economic wealth.
In Hernando De Soto’s book The Other Path, De Soto explains how a Peruvian terrorist group, The Shining Path, had begun to take power throughout the country in the 1980’s. The dilemma resulted from a large flight of the population into urban cities throughout the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s. The Peruvian government was not responding to the shift in identity of the Peruvian people, who were becoming increasingly urban and more liberal. Policies that favored Peru’s traditionally small urban and large rural farming demography were becoming obsolete. As a result, citizens were unable to financially grow, and slowly fell into poverty in their new urban settings.
The Shining Path was an extreme leftist movement that used the impoverished to gain momentum. Soon The Shining Path had taken over the most of Peru’s industries, and had paid off or corrupted local authorities throughout the country. The Peruvian government was losing power quickly, and was neglecting to create policy to engage its people away from The Shining Path.
The Peruvian government recruited a think tank group, Instituto Libertad y Democracia (ILD), to confront The Shining Path through policy reform. The government and ILD started by implementing various governmental reforms to help Peruvians engage in self promoting economic practices, such as micro-loans, easier access to property ownership, and establishing business regulation to allow entrepreneurs from any socio-economic class to engage in business. Other policy reform such as eliminating bureaucratic nightmares that had been previously implemented encouraged common Peruvians to strive for better economic success. Citizens started trusting their government again because the government acknowledged its citizens’ desire for self-promotion within a capitalistic marketplace. The rising middle class and economic growth gained the Peruvian government favor and helped delegitimize the Shining Path. As the Shining Path lost support it resulted to using violence in an attempt to gain back legitimacy.
As time went on the Shining Path slowly lost more power and now only remains a non-influential political party. The ILD and Peruvian government continued to institute equal economic opportunities such as federal microeconomic infrastructures to aid economic and social growth. By doing so Peru is making a much more peaceful transition into a modern society under a more united identity, as The Shining Path dwindles away.
Entrepreneurial Spirit against Terrorism***
When the Peruvian government and ILD implemented policies to help stimulate economic growth and development for Peruvians they were able to awaken a human desire for self-promotion. This desire, or entrepreneurial spirit, is a need for self-promotion and better life through free economic production, sale, and trade. If political leaders can enable this entrepreneurial spirit within their citizens, it will allow for a rise in a middle class, greater economic growth, greater modernization, and further connections in the global market place.
In Peru, the government was able to establish political policies and reforms to unleash a Peruvian entrepreneurial spirit that gave way to economic growth. By doing so the government gained the trust of the Peruvian population and delegitimized The Shining Path. De Soto, in his explanation of these events, describes how specific reform relevant to a particular country’s disposition can achieve greater economic success. He also goes further to say if the government takes the initiative to implement such policies it will help root out extremists or terrorists within the country.
In Afghanistan, policies promoting economic development and opportunities could be beneficial in assimilating various tribal regions around the country. Through land grants, micro loans, and other various fiscal policies, the Afghan government would promote economic growth within each region. As regions grew in wealth, the entrepreneurial spirit would entice regions to trade among themselves. Bonds could be formed to create a more united Afghan identity. In doing so, the influence and role of groups like the Taliban could be diminished.
In Africa, economic stimulus could help curb ethnic tensions, as well. Rwanda, once dubbed the “Switzerland of Africa”, lost its reputation of a peaceful African country when famine and overpopulation lead to ethnic conflict (Peterson 200; also, see above). As quality of life diminished, ethnic groups started blaming one another until the tension exploded in bloodshed. If the Rwandan government had been able to format policy to create economic stimulus, rather than blame the minority Tutsi population, disaster could have been minimized, if not entirely avoided.
By establishing policies to create economic growth in developing countries, identity conflicts can be pacified. Recently Turkey has shown this as their pluralistic society proves that Islamic States can be active actors in the global market while still maintain relative domestic peace. By enlarging the middle class, a government allows for natural modernization and future economic growth. Economic growth creates relationships between groups that allows for greater assimilation. Assimilation is essential for developing countries with plural societies.
Entrepreneurial Spirit & Globalized Branding
Once a developing country has enabled its citizens to take a hold of their entrepreneurial spirit, a process of economic development and growth enables rapid modernization. The new middle class that would result could become consumers, thus fueling the markets within the country. As more and more people become consumers through the self-determination capitalism provides, companies are finding new ways to sell to these consumers. Companies are using the social technologies that are connecting the world, such as Facebook, Skype, and so forth, to find who their consumers are (De Waal Malefyt 2009). I n so doing, they create consumer ethnographies in which people in plural societies and across borders can identify. De Waal Malefyt goes on to explain how “reflexivity here holds that individuals are critical self-aware actors that continually revise and reconfigure their identity to keep up with vast choices and change among the shifting modalities of brands, media, and technology.” Shifting identities in plural societies and across borders creates sub-identities that people relate to in the globalized world, or more simply globalized branding.
Some scholars have theorized that such global connections will create cosmopolitism, or the notion of a global identity under the umbrella of urban globalized market. In this new global market, people identify themselves as global citizens without forgoing their national, state, or ethnic identity (Held 2004, Norris 2004). Globalized branding is different however, in that it is not an unified identity, but is instead a collection of subaltern identities. Globalized branding brings peoples from across the globe to each other through vast choices of diverse social, economic, and cultural identities.
Globalized branding has shown success through state and private propaganda in minimizing conflict in areas facing identity crisis. Assimilation projects, such as the “One Team, One South Africa” futbol propaganda, sponsored by the South African Government has attempted to find commonalities among the peoples to promote integration. Conflict is being diminished in South Africa through such state sponsored plural political commitments. Such programs show that identity can be dulled, intensified, or shifted within countries and across borders through mass media propaganda from both governments and private companies.
The internet and television have been the essential media and tools for this globalized branding phenomenon. It has allowed peoples to reach beyond their communities and branch to greater self-identified desires. No longer restrained by limited choices of hometown identities, individuals have a greater variety of whom they are and who they can be. In many societies across the globe, this is especially true among younger generations in the more modernized world. Social networks are becoming more significant in individuals’ lives. People living in plural societies start to step out of their traditional identities based on ethnic and religious beliefs to an array of any cultural desire.
Identity shifts due to modernization and global branding creates an identity paradox, however. The recurring dilemma of choosing between traditional ethnic roots or newer ties is causing difficulty amongst societies around the world. Iran and India, amongst others, face such a dilemma. It is an issue that is specific to each region and must be rectified by the individuals and not the government.
Globalized Branding & Technology Encourage Peace
Technological progress has allowed people to connect across the globe through media tools (e.g. the internet, televisions, radio, etc.) in way never seen before our time. “The linkage to global flows of information is a - perhaps, the, - central, distinguishing fact of our moment in history” (Ohmae 1995). This interaction exploded during the 1990’s dotcom boom and allowed individuals and private companies to transcend borders for economic gains. Globalization and modernization have caused the world to greatly flatten due to financial talks and relationships built in the pursuit of greater economic profits (Friedman 2008).
International sports have been able to utilize this natural tendency among peoples for decades through the Olympics, World Games, tennis, futbol, and more. People from all over the world can bond over the internet, in bars, and over business dinners about shared sports discussions. Such bonds help continue economic transactions and trading because they further social interactions across the globe. Continued transactions deepen the economic dependency between countries and global enterprises. Governments cannot politically afford to upset their citizens by jeopardizing relations with countries their citizens share ties with economically and socially. This is possible because today “markets…are the masters over the governments of states” (Strange 2004).
Once such economic and social bonds are created a unique corporate peace is created between peoples. Consider Thomas Friedman’s "Big Mac Theory." Friedman argues that two nations with a McDonalds have never gone to war with one another (Friedman 1996). Peace is transcended and continued through social and economic bonds between societies through globalization. This method of peace through global economic relationships is replacing old notions of peace through the threat of mutual destruction that dominated international relations from World War II until the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Peace is still being maintained through both balances, as younger generations without memories of intense inter-state security threats replace older generations that still hold on to the fears of the Cold War. A greater trust is developing between the upcoming generations of the global modernized world. This trust will only be enhanced by governments allowing citizens to take entrepreneurial strides towards economic progression.
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