Introduction

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Sonja Lehmann
Furthermore, ‘identity’ is used to describe group as well as individual conditions
since definition two speaks of a “collective phenomenon” whereas definition
five focuses on the “contemporary ‘self’” and definition three unites both aspects.
10 This is especially problematic as one’s personal identity is often linked to a
collective identity, such as nationality or a certain culture (Horatschek 276) but not
necessarily in the same definition of identity. One can easily imagine that one admits
the possibility that someone’s personal identity is somewhat fluid as described
in definition five but that they are part of a collective identity which
stresses a “perceived sameness” among its members as in definition two. Yet, the
term ‘identity’ is used for all of these different definitions alike so that if one
comes across it in some theoretical text one can often only guess at which sense
and which category is used and what exactly is meant by it.
To circumvent this confusing usage and have better analytical tools, Brubaker
and Cooper therefore propose three groups of “alternative terms” which capture
aspects that are generally covered by the term ‘identity’ (14). ‘Identity’ can thus
stand for processes of “identification and categorization” (Brubaker and Cooper
14). This encompasses identification and categorization of oneself and of or by
other people as well as “by powerful, authoritative institutions”, for example a
nation-state (Brubaker and Cooper 15). In this sense ‘identity’ appears to be
mainly concerned with the act of naming or being named and the (self-) ascription
of certain facts to an individual.
This is quite different from the second group under which Brubaker and Cooper
subsume the terms “self-understanding and social location” (17). ‘Selfunderstanding”
is defined as “one’s sense of who one is, of one’s social location,
and of how (given the first two) one is prepared to act” (Brubaker and Cooper
17). The emphasis on “social location” here is important since people define and
understand themselves in relation to social connections of varying intensity surrounding
them, for example via religious practices and other traditions (Brubaker
and Cooper 17-18). This group differs from the first by stressing more “subjective”
understandings people have about “themselves and their social world”
(Brubaker and Cooper 17). It may, however, be influenced by identification and
categorization by others and is not necessarily stable over time (Brubaker and
Cooper 18). The second group therefore brings with it new facets of an individual’s
behaviour in relation to their environment and how they feel about themselves
in relation to the place they inhabit in their social world. McLeod sums this
10 One might add that the condition described in the fifth definition is clearly not only used to
describe individuals’ identities but also that of larger groups. For example, Stuart Hall’s definition
of cultural identity describes it as “not a fixed essence at all, lying unchanged outside history
and culture” but on the contrary as something which “is always constructed through memory,
fantasy, narrative and myth. Cultural identities are the points of identification, the unstable
points of identification or suture, which are made, within the discourses of history and culture.
Not an essence but a positioning” (226; emphasis in original). Hall clearly speaks of a group phenomenon
here.