ABSTRACT
Hence, whilst Jenkins in his recent book on the social construction of identity cautions against the very use of the term ‘cultural’ identity because of the multiplicity of contested meanings to which the word ‘culture’ is attached (Jenkins, 1996: 179), the term nevertheless can be said to have valency because it calls attention to the fact that collective cultural identities imply a much greater sense of meaning for the social actors involved than the traditional sociological concept of ‘role’ (Castells, 1997: 6-7). As stated by Inglis: ‘identity is constituted in terms of what is ultimately important to an individual. It situates a person in moral space’ (Inglis, 2001: 8). A common-sense starting point for getting to grips with identity is suggested by
Hall when he describes identification as ‘constructed on the back of a recognition of some common origin or shared characteristics with another person or group, or with an ideal, and with the natural closure of solidarity and allegiance established on this foundation’. Hall is quick, however, to point out and endorse the view that identity must not be reduced to some ‘essentialist’ and unchanging core but rather that it is always discursively formed and always in process (Hall, 1996: 2-3). This social construction of collective identities, which is always taking place in a context marked by power relationships, uses varied cultural building materials from history, geography, religion, sexuality and so forth (Castells, 1997: 7), not the least of which (and of particular concern to the planner) are the socio-spatial resources and potentialities considered later in this introduction. Identity is importantly ‘marked out by difference’ (Woodward, 1997: 9), implying the marking of symbolic boundaries and the generation of frontier effects. It requires what is left beyond the boundary, its ‘constitutive outside’ as Hall calls it (Hall, ibid. 3). Differences marking the boundaries of identity may be small or great. Sameness can indeed threaten our individual identity and cause us to hate. As Kohler puts it: ‘the more strongly we sense how like us the other person is, the more threatening it seems that he is close to us’ (Kohler, 2000: 24). Ignatieff in his study of ethnic hatred in the Balkans drew attention here to Freud’s notion of the ‘narcissism of minor differences’:
The common elements humans share seem less essential to their perceptions
of their own identities than the marginal ‘minor’ elements that divide them. What
Marx called ‘species being’ – our identity as members of the human race –
counts for relatively little (Ignatieff, 1999: 48).
