Collective identity inside and out: Particularism through the looking glass

Birindelli, P. (2019) Collective identity inside and out: Particularism through the looking glass, European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 6:2, 237-260.  DOI: 10.1080/23254823.2018.1551146

This article analyses literary sources that have influenced interpretations of the Italian collective identity, focusing on the conceptual pairing ‘familism-particularism’. In 1958 Edward Banfield coined the term ‘amoral familism’, generating an intense, persistent debate among Italian and foreign scholars. However, by expanding the analytical focus, similar explanations for Italian social, economic and political ‘backwardness’ can be traced much further back: to Alberti’s ‘land of self-interest’ or Guicciardini’s particulare. Representations of the cultural absence of civicness in Italy developed over the centuries, stemming initially from Italians’ own recognition of their self-image. It was only later, through the diaries of travellers on the Grand Tour, that this image was incorporated into the hetero-recognition of Italians by Northern Europeans and North Americans. When an identity feature maintains this ‘dual recognition’ for such a long historical period, it becomes a recurrent cardinal point in individual and collective representation of a people. Attempts to sustain theories conflicting with Banfield’s are confronted by other obstacles: the absence of comparable ethnographic studies translated into English and the rhetorical force of the expression ‘amoral familism’. The symbolic power of Banfield’s interpretation, which might be considered a stereotype, goes beyond its (in)ability to reflect social reality.

This contribution, with its historical perspective and non-‘presentist’ slant (Inglis 2014), can be located within the discussion on the construction of a European post-national sense of collective identity, or identity mix linked with national identities (Kohli 2000, 131). Here I do not address European identity with all its possible articulations and perspectives, but the interpretations of a specific collective identity – the Italian one – constructed by social scientists through the key concept “familism-particularism”, a reading that has led to a hegemonic narrative about Italian society and culture.

The scientific image of a collectivity (with its profound historical, literary and cultural roots) offered by outsiders and insiders is a valuable hermeneutic path. Instead of wondering how the Italians feel about Europe, I speculate on how North European and North American scholars interpreted Italy and the reactions provoked within the Italian scientific community. 

I believe that research on collective identity in the context of Europe, and generalizing from this context, should not be performed only in a “beyond the nation” interpretative framework, as Eder (2009) and others have suggested. The supranational, post-national and transnational European narrative needs to be accompanied by attention to national narratives old and new. The outside and “inside-out” narrative of a collective identity is as important as the cross-boundary one. We can in fact transcend a narrative boundary only by recognizing its existence.

In this article ‘identity’ is conceived as a psychological, sociological and anthropological mechanism whose foundations do not reside in an ‘entity’: identity is a ‘process’ not a ‘thing’. Identity is made up of the relations that the individual – along with the intersubjective inside-outside group recognition – establishes, through memory, between the different and shifting perceptions of him/her Self in relation to the ‘Other’ and to the wider sense of belonging to a (national, regional, transnational, global) collective identity (Birindelli 2008). Thus, identity is a process, a construction of – and through – the individual and collective memory framework (Halbwachs 1980). Substantially, this is the shared meaning of ‘identity’ within social sciences, which speak of identity or of identity crisis depending on the solidity or the fragility of this construction.

Identity is the human capacity – rooted in language – to know ‘who’s who’ (and hence ‘what’s what’). This involves knowing who we are, knowing who others are, them knowing who we are, us knowing who they think we are, and so on: a multi-dimensional classification or mapping of the human world and our places in it, as individuals and as members of collectivities. (Jenkins 2008, 5)

Using ‘identity’ and ‘collective identity’ as heuristic concepts means to partially disagree with those who, like Brubaker and Cooper (Brubaker and Cooper 2000; Brubaker 2004), make the distinction between non-existent groups and real ‘groupness’. According to Jenkins, this distinction does not seem to make much sociological sense because groups are constituted in and by their ‘groupness’: being social constructions doesn’t make groups illusions, and everyday life is full of real encounters with small groups and manifestations of larger groups: “It is the distinction that Brubaker draws between groups and ‘groupness’ that is an illusion, and it does not help us to understand the local realities of the human world” (Jenkins 2008, 12).

What is at stake here is also the question of common sense brought to our attention by Alfred Schutz. Sociological models not only need to be scientifically adequate, they must also be commensurate with common sense (Schutz 1962, 44). When a scholar forces concepts that are too rigid onto the ambivalences and haze of social reality, there is the risk of ending up further away from it, replacing the “reality of the model” with a “model of reality” (Bourdieu 1990, 39).

By seeking unambiguous ‘really real’ analytical categories, Brubaker takes a broadly sensible argument to a logical extreme that is less sensible: attempting to impose theoretical order on a human world in which indeterminacy and ambiguity are the norm. Social scientists must aim for the greatest possible clarity, but their concepts must also reflect the observable realities of the human world (Jenkins 2008, 9-10).

Maleševic´ (2006) also argues that identity – more precisely ethnic identity – is a confusing analytical concept: it means too much and includes too many different dimensions. But the dumping of the term ‘identity’ for the sake of analytical clarity is not an appropriate solution (cf. Ashton et al. 2004, 82). As Jenkins puts it “the genie is already out of the bottle” and not only is ‘identity’ an established concept in sociology, it is also a widely-used construct in common parlance and public discourses, from politics to marketing and self-help (Jenkins 2008, 14).

References

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