European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

184 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETY—To detect epistemological obstacles: culture diversity anddisciplinary approaches.To define a more “sociologist” conception of European IdentityBeing an active participant today entails the capacity to build“myself” and “himself” allowing us to recognise ourselves not as anatomised component of social systems but as a link between them,enabling us to establish a theory about who we are (“Europeans”).In view of the construction of European identity, several issuescould be raised: how European identity is subject to recognition; howcollective identity is defined and built; why can we say there is a sharedcollective identity and in what sense could we talk about it; how couldwe demand the acknowledgement of the existence of numerouscollective identities whilst being in the heart of a “supra-identity” asthe European identity; how should the recognition of European identity(which must be compatible with equal rights) be made. The temptationto hide behind abstract universalism is high, and when it comes to therecognition of differences and its acknowledgement this approach willalways be Pandora´s box.Speaking of Latin American identity, Tornos (1996) 16 remarks that itis necessary to analyse issues such as the possible incompatibilitybetween the recognition of the great diversity and pluralism that existamong the nations and peoples of Latin America and the very idea ofthere being a common cultural Latin American identity. It is alsoessential to clarify and make explicit the amount of diversity that groupswith some shared collective identity would be able to cope with;whether all individuals and groups belonging to a culturally unifiedgroup should share a common culture or whether the fact that a grouphas a hegemonic culture is sufficient to ascribe cultural unity to thisgroup even if not every group member shares the hegemonic culture;whether the cultural unity of a group implies an acknowledgement ofsuch unity on the part of group members or whether the interlocutorsfrom such group confer the group the cultural unity that it actually has,from the outside, through its interaction with other groups.In order to work on these issues, the author proposes a «sociologist»conception of cultural identity as an alternative theoretical framework.16Tornos, A. (1996) Perspectivas tecnológicas sobre la identidad culturallatinoamericana. Persona y sociedad. Instituto Latinoamericano de Doctrina y EstudiosSociales. 10, 110-119.