417. Networks, credence and identity
In this blog I used the distinction between specific/individual and general/cultural identity and discussed the relation between them. The crux was that people develop individual identity in interaction with others, in given culture.
I denied that cultural identity entails some essence, some property that all members of a nation share, identically, and all non-members lack.
I proposed to see cultural identity in terms of roles people play and positions they have in different networks of relations. Those can overlap, for different people, and hence are shared more or less. There are, for example, networks of family, neighbourhood, region, job, profession, sport, religion, political affiliation and, yes, also nation or state.
Note that individual identity is not fully determined by relations in networks. The individual retains its identity as an actor operating in such networks. While its development depends on action in networks, the actor has its own constitution that is continuous across those relations.
The network view of cultural identity allows for European next to national identity. Less educated and less globally involved people have fewer network extensions across borders, and hence their identity is more nation-bound.
What, then, remains of national identity? For interaction between people in networks more is needed than the mere structure of those networks. There needs to be a behavioural basis to enable interaction. The task now is, in my view, to specify what is needed for that while allowing for as much diversity as possible. One thinks. in particular, of the need to have common laws, language and institutions. Some of those will not apply to a nation as a whole but to specific industries or markets. And some will be shared between nations.
What I object to is national identity in terms of religion, race, ethnicity, provenance (land of birth), and ideology or set of ideas, such as the ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’, or the Enlightenment. Systems of thought are too diverse and mixed for that. Note the division, in Christian heritage, between Catholicism and Protestantism, and rival streams within them. English is a mix of Saxon, French and Latin. European cultures have further sources, next to religion and enlightenment, such as Romanticism, and Roman, Germanic and Keltish, even Arab influences.
Reading Francis Fukuyama’s recent book on identity[i] I came across the notion of ‘creedal identity’, identity based on a ‘creed’, apparently going back to Samuel Huntington.[ii] A creed is a set of opinions and directions for action, or a philosophy of life (so I read in the Oxford Dictionary). It is not the same as ‘belief’ or ‘faith’, but something more oriented towards practical conduct. It can follow from a belief, but it can also arise as no more than some pragmatic rules of conduct. For the US, it would include, for example, a work ethic, personal initiative and responsibility, civic and family values.
This is rather broad and vague, and here I want to make it more specific. Again, I aim to make it as sparse as possible, reduced to what is needed to enable relations.
Here, I connect with the discussion, at several places in this blog (items 96, 289), of Aristotelian multiple causality, which I have used as a causality of action.
To recall, the different causes are:
Efficient cause: who are the actors (here: where do they come from, who is recognized as
a citizen)
Final cause: with what aims (material, intellectual, spiritual, existential, ..)
Material cause: what are the resources used (land, water, energy, finance, ….)
Formal cause: how (with what knowledge, competence, skill, language, … )
Conditional cause: under what enabling and constraining conditions (markets, laws and
regulations, infrastructure
Exemplary cause: with what models (role models, symbols, myths, …)
I need to separate the formal cause into two types: the behavioural, which needs to be widely shared, and the cognitive/spiritual, which can be and preferably is diverse.
I now propose that what is shared, nationally, more or less, lies in the following causes:
The behavioural/formal: what enables human interaction, mostly in morality: trust, honesty,
openness, loyalty, empathy, ..
The conditional: climate, laws, regulations, institutions, public services, a constitution, and,
for liberal democracies: freedoms of expression, association, religion, voting, and
separation of powers (judicial, executive, parliamentary).
The exemplary: some canonical examples of good conduct. Nelson Mandela, Ghandi.
I think every country will be distinct, have its own creedal identity, when scored on these dimensions. However, this still does not constitute an essence that all people within a nation share and outsiders do not. In continental Europe, for example, in a number of countries law is based on Roman law, imposed by Napoleon. Liberal democratic norms are still widely shared, though authoritarianism is eating away at it here and there (Poland, Hungary). Moral principles and moral role models are widely shared.
Within a country there is variety in the following causes of action:
The efficient: the provenance of people, access to citizenship, ..
The material: resources that come in an flow out, in trade
The final: what aims, goals and other values people have
The cognitive/formal: knowledge, competence, skill, morality, …
In sum, I see important commonalities within nations, but I still do not see any national essence.
I grant that next to this utilitarian approach to culture as enabling relations, culture also has an intrinsic value in giving people a sense of belonging, of community, with local roots. However, I think that is stronger on a regional and local than on a national level. Consider France. I had a house in the department of the Corrèze, south of Limoges, in the region of the Limousin. The department, I learned, yields a strong sense of identity, stronger perhaps than feeling French. At some point there was a policy initiative to abolish the level of the departments, but that yielded an outcry of protest, with this argument of identity.
[i] Francis Fukuyama, 2018, Identity; Contemporary identity politics and
the struggle for recognition, London: Profile Books.
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