Let’s move now to identities in a global world. This issue is probably one of the toughest one in the investigation of the new international order. Identity is a very difficult concept, it’s very difficult to define it, and however it’s commonly used, and especially in the political rhetoric. So we have to take care of the way by which we will try to define it, to conceive it, to build it as a concept. But the problem, the issue of identity is probably one of the crossing issues of the present debate in world politics and also in international relations. First of all we can, through the concept of identity, rediscover and reconstruct the concept of international actor. What is an international actor? Is the international actor free from every kind of constraint? Or is he determined, defined by his own culture? What is the part of liberty, of freedom of the actor? And what’s the part of the cultural determinant of his own action? Can we consider an individual in Iraq for instance as acting as an Iraqian citizen or as a Shiite citizen, Sunni citizen, Kurdish citizen? Or may we consider him as a Muslim individual? How the individual is built by himself is probably one of the most difficult part of the analysis. The second point is the nature of political system. Can we conceive a Muslim political system, or a Christian political system, or a Western political system? I mean what is the part of the cultural substratum of a political system? Is it possible to coin the concept of Muslim political system or political system in Islam as it is commonly said? It’s clear for instance that there are different kinds of Islam, different kinds of Muslim cultures. So how to connect the concept of culture to the global concept of a political system? Is it a way for investigating it or is it a kind of deadlock? And the third issue would be: What about the international relations? Are international relations made of a clash of civilizations as it is pointed by Samuel Huntington? Can we consider that culture is shaping, structuring the international relations in the present world? Or is the cultural cleavage one of the possible cleavages among others. Or is it a construction, which is an illusion more than a real factor of international dynamics? There is also a fourth question about the context of international relations. How can we take into account an international situation? Is a situation made by culture and cultural cleavages? Or is it made of a conflict, which is reinterpreted through the culture? Is this reinterpretation made by the actor or it is made by the observer? So, the status of the cultural factor and the identity factor is not really clear, and that’s why it’s important for us to try to make a synthesis and to discuss this very important problem. Let’s start by a definition. We are probably puzzled by all these substantial, essential definitions of identity like if identity is natural but in a sociological point of view: there is no natural identity. There is no identity, which could be considered a priori as shaping the social behavior. Identity is a social construct. Identity is pointing on the very sensible and very important issue of how to define themselves, how to define myself in relation to the others. How can I imagine, how can I draw up the line separating myself and the others? What is my group? What is the group to which I identify myself? That’s to say identity is first of all a decision, a decision, which is taken by every individual when he is facing a situation. That’s why I consider identity as a strategy, it’s a strategy of self-definition, and of definition of the others, that’s to say of the exclusion those who are not members of my group, of the group to which I identify myself. If we consider identity as a strategy we have first of all to consider it as instable. When I define my identity, it’s not for a permanent behavior but for structuring my behavior in a moment of the time, in a special context, that’s why it’s instable and identity is also volatile. If I define myself one day as a Muslim, maybe, in another context, I will define myself as an Iraqi citizen or as a Sunni or as a Kurd or as a Shiite. That’s to say this volatility of identity is probably one of the key problem of the international, of the regional, of the national, of the local order. The future of Iraq will depend on the strategy of every individual in Iraq who has to determine in a precise context what kind of identification he will opt for. But for this reason, identity is not only decided by myself, but also instrumentalized, also manipulated by political entrepreneurs. My decision, as an individual, is never sovereign, I am also determined by the pressure, by the influence, by the strategies of entrepreneurs. And that’s why I would conceive identity as a kind of transaction between the individual and all the entrepreneurs who are competing for shaping your own identity. If the entrepreneurs, the identity entrepreneurs and the political entrepreneurs are able to shape your own identity it means that the entrepreneur’s job will be also depending on your own expectations. That’s to say identity is shaped by the entrepreneurs according to their expectations. If there are no expectations meeting the influence of an entrepreneur, the entrepreneur has no chance to influence, to shape and to structure your own identity. That’s why there is a clear connection between identity building and frustrations, inequalities, stigmatization and so on, and we don’t wonder when we see that identity mobilization is especially strong where the frustrations and the social expectations are so important. With a lot of frustrated expectations, the chance of the identity entrepreneur to influence your own choice will be higher and higher. Now, if identity is the result of these kinds of transactions, we have now to consider the substance of identity. When I hope for an identity I identify myself to a group, but I am also identifying myself to a culture. That’s why the concept of culture is so important and that’s why also using the concept of culture is so difficult and so risky in social sciences. Culture doesn’t mean values. In a society, a conflict of values, a plurality of values is possible and however this society is also defined by a common culture. You can share a culture with other individuals without sharing the same values, in every nation, we can observe this conflict of values. Conflict of values is not destroying culture, that’s why culture is at another level we have to take into account, we have to consider. There is a very interesting, fascinating book written by this great anthropologist Clifford Geertz. Clifford Geertz published in 1973 a very important book, which is entitled “The interpretation of culture” in which Geertz is pointing that culture doesn’t mean national character as it is commonly said but is a system of meanings, that’s to say the meanings, which are shared among a society and by which individuals are able to understand each other. And Geertz is pointing that individuals in a group are weaving this system of meanings of which they are then depending on. So this system of meanings is probably the best way for understanding what culture means, and he is pointing on the fact that a society is possible with cleavages, with a plurality of values, but it’s not possible without a code, that’s to say a common system of meanings. By which politics doesn’t mean, in Arab word for instance, what it means in Western countries. The meaning of political institutions is changing according to the history, that’s to say according to the culture of societies and nations. But the real problem now is to consider that there is no homogeneous cultural spaces and that in a society there is a permanent hybridization between different kinds of cultures. That’s why culture is not making a territory and in a territory are coexisting different kinds of cultures. The last concept is identity crisis. What is an identity crisis? Something very clear, that’s to say when there is no coincidence between the imagined community as Benedict Anderson said, and the real community, when you are living in a system which doesn’t coincide to the imagined community to which you consider to belong.
