ABSTRACT
Collectivity may not require consensus, but a degree of consistency is important in the human world. The symbolisation of communal identity generates an imagined similarity, which, as Anthony Cohen argues, permits difference and heterogeneity to prosper. But if diversity were all, human life would be complex and unpredictable to the point of being unimaginable. Because communal identity, for example, is a cognitive and emotional reality to individuals – and it, therefore, influences their behaviour – it is ‘socially real’ in W. I. Thomas’s sense. People may or may not think the same, but there must be some reciprocal and consistent similarity, even if not uniformity, in what co-members do. Identification is a practical matter – something that people do – and it involves similarity as well as difference.
