ABSTRACT
Recent years have witnessed the growth, in societies on all continents, of political movements seeking to strengthen the collective sense of uniqueness, often targeting globalization processes, which are seen as a threat to local distinctiveness and self-determination. Many writers see identity politics in general as an antimodern counter-reaction to the individualism and freedom enhanced by globalization, while others see it as the defense of the weak against foreign dominance, or even as a strategy of modernization using the language of tradition to garner popular support. For a variety of reasons, globalization creates the conditions for localization, various attempts at creating bounded entities-countries (nationalism or separatism), faith systems (religious revitalization), cultures (linguistic or cultural movements), or interest groups (ethnicity). In a certain sense, ethnicity can be described as the process of making cultural differences comparable, and to that extent, it is a modern phenomenon boosted by the intensified contact entailed by globalization.
