Afin d’expliquer comment la mondialisation reconstruit les politiques publiques et les comportements sociaux nous étudions les échanges et interactions entre les acteurs politiques, économiques et sociaux -publics et privés, individuels et collectifs- et la façon dont ils redessinent les relations internationales. Ce cours prend sa source dans les approches sociologique et historique françaises des relations internationales. This course is also available in english version: www.coursera.org/learn/global-studies
Le retour du politique
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來自 Sciences Po 的課程
Espace mondial, une vision française des global studies
個評分
從本節課中
Les identités
L’identité est une notion à revoir et à considérer comme une construction sociale et politique.
與講師見面
Bertrand BadieProfessor
Marie-Françoise DurandProfessor
Let’s move now
to the political nature of identities,
that’s to say now politics is back.
When we talk about identities,
we feel that we are in a new world
which is less political
and more let’s say <i>identitory</i>.
That’s an illusion.
“Politics is back” means that
politics is still shaping,
structuring identities
and especially on the international arena.
I mentioned in my previous lecture
that identity was constructed,
and was particularly constructed
by political and identity entrepreneurs.
That means that identities play an important,
a major role on the international arena
because identities have not only
a political substratum,
but are permanently manipulated
by political strategists,
that’s to say by political actors.
That’s to say also
that identities must be considered
as a part of a political expression,
as a part also of a political mobilization,
as a part of a strategy
of a political legitimization.
Expression, mobilization, legitimization,
those three famous level of the political action
must be considered at the different level
in which identity issues are really involved.
The role of a political substratum
for interpreting identities
and competition among identities
is a permanent factor of shaping
and reshaping of the international system.
Let’s consider for instance
the partition of India.
Partition of India was achieved,
as you know, in 1947
at the moment of the independence
of the former British empire of India,
the famous Raj India.
In a first look, we can consider
that this is an <i>identitory</i> partition,
that Identity played
as such a role in shaping, structuring
these two states India and Pakistan.
But this is an illusion.
It would be a grave illusion
to consider the Indian partition
as a result of two antagonist identities.
If we consider for instance the father,
the founding father of Pakistan,
Muhammad Ali Jinnah,
Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a Muslim
but he was not a radical Muslim,
he was not a fundamentalist.
He had a very liberal and even secular,
secular vision of Islam.
The man was eating eggs and bacon as breakfast
and was also drinking whiskey
and was emancipated from a vision,
a religious vision of Islam.
The problem of Jinnah
was not to consider that Muslims and Hindus
were not able to coexist.
His problem was to consider
Muslims as a minority,
as a minority inside the Indian Empire,
and as such, Muslims had no chance for him
to reach the level of power of domination
inside the new state.
And the only chance for Muslim people
to rule the state would be to share India
between Pakistan and India,
that’s to say to construct
the famous two nations.
It was not for a religious reason,
it was not for an identity reason,
but the real motivation has to be found
in the minority status of Muslims
that’s to say in a political condition.
This political condition is probably
one of the main factors
which has to be considered
when we try to understand these situations
made of apparently conflicting identities.
And we have also of course
to take into account the strategies
of the identity entrepreneurs
when manipulating,
when instrumentalizing identities,
the political identity entrepreneur
has a political strategy,
that’s to say he is reaching a political goal
which is generally conquering the power
inside the political system.
So the two questions
we have now to set up
would be first what are the factors
of these identitary dynamics
in the world order?
Why is it more active
in some countries than in others?
And the second question:
what are the political reasons?
First, what are the factors
of this political manipulation of identities?
Why this political manipulation
is so high in some countries?
I think that we have
to distinguish four factors.
The first one would be
the ideological collapse,
that’s to say what we commonly call
“the end of ideologies”.
I’m not sure that ideologies are ending,
but my point is to say that
there are some situations
in which ideologies play a major role,
and it was the case during
the Cold War for instance, bipolarity
and there are some other situations
in which ideologies are declining.
When ideologies are declining,
and it was the case
just after the bipolarity collapsed,
the identity plays a role of substitute.
When ideologies are no more mobilizing,
for instance in Algeria after independence,
identity is much more able,
prompt to mobilize people than in a situation
in which competition is structured
by the duality or plurality
of competing ideologies.
The second point, the second factor
will be the institutional collapse.
When the state is no more working,
when the political institutions
are no more working,
that’s to say are less and less legitimate,
of course people are prompt to go
to a cultural ideology
for finding a substitute
to this absence of political institutions
and political organization.
That’s why when state is collapsing;
we can observe
this increasing influence of identities.
The third one will be empire collapse.
Our world is made of several empires,
which are generally coming from very far,
that’s to say are very old,
are very strongly rooted
in the history of the world,
I mean the Chinese empire,
Russian empire,
Ottoman Empire and so on.
When an empire is declining,
or even more, when it is collapsing,
this is liberating, emancipating identities
which are not able to fix themselves
through new nations,
and that is creating a very strong,
very harmful competition of identities.
As it was the case
in the former Yugoslavia for instance,
the case now in Caucasia,
or it’s the case also in Ukraine,
and so many other countries,
because we know
that the collapse of the Russian empire
is a very strong event,
which is really redefining the international
and especially the regional context.
The fourth factor
is to be found in the integration collapse.
Integration that’s to say
when international social integration is low,
when individuals, when peoples
are determined by a high level of poverty,
a low levels of human development,
the reaction is commonly
to go back to its own identity
and use it as an emblem for protesting
against this situation of low integration.
So ideological factors, institutional factors,
Empire collapse, integration collapse,
all these factors are very important
in our present world,
are playing a major role for giving,
for providing to identity
a very structuring role
in the present international system.
What are now the results?
The results now are considered as something,
which would be very close to anarchy.
We had with the nation order
a kind or harmonious coexistence among people;
of course sometimes this coexistence
was moving to war,
but however the national order
was ordering, was structuring
the international arena.
Identities and identity competition
is not really resulting in a new order
and this is the crucial point
of the present international instability.
For many reasons; because identity
is made of communautarism
and not made as nation was,
not made of a political program,
of a political vision of the city,
of the order, of the political order,
of the political institutions
and of the political structures.
Identity is a kind of strategy
of expressing themselves against the others,
but which is not looking for defining
a new political order.
The second point is that identity
doesn’t consider alterity.
Identity as I mention is a vision of oneself
but is not a vision of the others
and is not setting the question
of how coexisting with the others.
The third one is of course the risk
of transformation of identity
to radical identity and to radical vision of identity
and to radicalism and fundamentalism.
But the main dangerous result
is that identities are not territorialized;
it’s impossible to imagine a harmonious,
a homogenous city made of one identity.
This incompatibility
between territory and identity
is the major difference
between identity and nation.
Nation is made of a territory,
of a territorial support
and especially as we mentioned
in its political vision.
But identity is made only of ethnicity,
that’s to say of cultural properties.
These cultural properties
cannot be transferred
to a territorial order.
That’s why this ethnicization of the world
is a kind of aporie.
