Beiträge zur geistigen Situation der Gegenwart Jg. 9 (2008), Heft 2
Beiträge zur geistigen Situation der Gegenwart Jg. 9
(2008), Heft 2
The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
and the Truman Research Institute
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Genocide – the extermination of one group of people by another, be it through war or deliberate policy or intergroup violence – constitutes a very widespread, potentially universal aspect of human society and history, a basic manifestation of the destructive potential of human behavior – but its concrete manifestation, intensity and impact vary greatly between different societies.
The general tendency to destructive intergroup behavior is rooted in the very core characteristics of the constitution of collective boundaries and identity – a basic component of human societies, of human social interaction. Collectivities, collective identities and boundaries – be they ‘ethnic,’ ‘national,’ religious, civilizational or under whatever name they are designated – are not, as has been often assumed in relevant literature, epiphenomenal or secondary to power and economic forces and relations constituting ‘imagined’ communities which in modern times developed in response to the expansion of capitalism, industrialism and imperialism, nor are they continual semi-natural, primordial and ontologically independent entities, existing as it were almost in eternity.
The constitution of collective identities and boundaries – a construction which has been going on in all human societies throughout human history – constitutes, like the exercise and regulation of power, the production and distribution of economic resources and the structuring of economic relations with which it is indeed continually interwoven, a basic component of social life, of the construction of human societies. The central core of this analytical component is the cultural, ‘symbolic’ and social – organizational or institutional – constitution of boundaries of collectivities, and of trust and solidarity among the members of such collectivities.
The construction of boundaries of collectivities constitutes an aspect or component of the more general human tendency towards the construction of symbolic and organizational boundaries of social interaction. This general tendency is rooted in the openness of the human biological program; in the concomitant development of basic indeterminacies in the structuring of any continual interaction between human beings and in the consciousness among them of such indeterminacies.[1]
The most crucial such indeterminacies in any continual social interaction are: first, those among actors, whether individuals or collectivities; second, among actors and their goals; third, between actors and their goals on the one hand, and the resources at their disposal, including the activities of other actors on the other hand. It is the first indeterminacy – that in the relations among actors interacting in any situation, also in continual interrelation with the others – that is of special interest from the point of view of our analysis. This indeterminacy is manifest in the fact that the range of actors who are, as it were, admitted to any such situation of continual interaction is not specified either by genetic programming or by some general rules or tendencies of the human mind; and that neither the boundaries of such interaction, nor the criteria determining who is entitled to participate, are automatically given by either of those determinants, and hence they necessarily constitute a focus of continuous change and of at least potential struggle.
The existence of some degree of such indeterminacy in patterns of behaviour and interaction is true of many other species, although in a more limited way than among humans. But human beings are also conscious of that indeterminacy and of the openness of their own biological program. Such consciousness is closely related to the consciousness, manifest in the construction of burial places, of death and of human finitude, and it generates among human beings a core existential anxiety and a closely related fear of chaos. This anxiety is exacerbated by the human capacity for imagination, so brilliantly analyzed by J.P. Sartre, i.e., by the ability to conceive of various possibilities beyond what is given here and now,[2] and in the closely related universal predisposition to play.[3] All these lead human beings to problematize the givens of their own existence and to undertake a quest for the construction of meaningful order as an integral part of their self-interpretations and self-awareness, and of their self-reflexivity.
Such anxiety and fear of chaos and the quest for the constitution of a meaningful order through which such chaos can seemingly be overcome, generate among human beings strong predisposition to construct a realm of sacred, in which direct contact with the roots of cosmic or social order is established, and which serves as a focal point for the construction of symbolic and institutional boundaries inherent in the constitution of such order.
It is such construction of the realm of the sacred that constitutes the core of human charismatic activity. Such activity, oriented towards the construction of a meaningful order, does entail not only constructive but also destructive tendencies or potentialities. Such destructive potentialities are rooted in the fact that the constitution of such order cannot do away with either the indeterminacies inherent in any pattern of continual human interaction, with the awareness or consciousness thereof – however dim – or with the core existential anxiety. Indeed, the very construction of such an order generates a strong awareness of its arbitrariness and a strong ambivalence towards itin general and towards any concrete social and cultural order in particular. Theconstruction of such order gives often rise to a dim, yet deep, awareness that any concrete answer to the problem of potential chaos imposes limitations on the range of possibilities open to human beings, giving rise in turn to a yearning to break through any such restrictions and actualize some differentpossibilities.[4]
Hence the fervor attendant on many charismatic activities may also generate fear of the sacred and hence opposition to it, and contain a strong predisposition to sacrilege, manifest for instance in the close relation between the consciousness of death and search for the sacred to be found in many sacrificial rituals; and it may breed opposition to any more attenuated and formalized forms of this order.[5]
Needless to say, theawareness of the openness of human biological programs, the fear of chaos and the concomitant search for a meaningful vision rooted in the realm of the sacred are not equally developed among different people, and are not structured or definedin the same mode among different societies and cultures. Nor are they necessarily central in most daily activities of most people. But the general propensity to such awareness and reflexivity and to the quest for the construction of a meaningful orderis inherent in the human situation and is of far-reaching importance in the constitution of social life.
The constitution of collective identities and boundaries constitutes one of the most important manifestations of the search for constitution of such order and of charismatic human activity. The central focus of the construction of collective identities is the combination of the definition of the distinctiveness of any collectivity, with the specification of criteria for membership in it; and of the attributes of similarity of the members of these collectivities. Or, in D. M. Schneider's terms,[6] it is the combination of ‘identity’ and membership in different collectivities; the definition of the attributes of similarity of members of a collectivity with the specification of the range of ‘codes’ available to those participating in such collectivities – delineating in this way the relations to other ‘collectivities,’ to various ‘others’ – that constitutes the central focus of the construction of collective identities.
The construction of collectivities and collective identities entails the specification of the distinct attributes of such collectivities as related to basic cosmological and ontological conceptions and visions – i.e. to a specific cultural program – and the concretization thereof in specific location in space and time.[7] The construction of collective identity or consciousness is also related to the distinction, recognized long ago by Durkheim, between the sacred and the profane, and to the different combinations of these two dimensions of social order.
The attributes of similarity of members of a collectivity are manifest in the formation of the human types and patterns of behavior which seem to be appropriate for such members – be it the English gentleman; the ‘good bourgeois,’ or, to follow Norbert Elias,[8] the civilized person; the good Confucian; and the like. The construction of ‘similarity’ of the members of any collectivity entails the emphasis on their contrast with strangeness, on the differences distinguishing them from other or others. It is such emphasis on the similarity of members of a collectivity that provides Durkheim’s[9] pre-contractual elements of social life, the bases of mechanical solidarity, and of solidarity and trust.
The definition of the ‘other’ or ‘others’ – and the relations to such others – poses the problem of crossing the boundaries of how a stranger can become a member; of how a member can become an outsider or a stranger. Religious conversion and excommunication represent obvious illustrations of the crossing of the boundaries.
The construction of collective identities is influenced or shaped, as is that of most arenas of social activity, by distinct codes, schemata or themes, rooted in ontological or cosmological premises and conceptions of social order to be found in all societies. The major codes or themata which shape the construction of collective identity are those of primordiality, civility, and sacredness (sacrality) or transcendence – each of which delineates distinct patterns of specification of the boundaries of collectivities, of the range of codes or patterns of behavior, and of allocation of resources and regulation of power.
The theme or code of primordiality[10] focuses on such components as gender and generation, kinship, territory, language, race, and the like for constructing and reinforcing the boundary between inside and outside. This boundary, though constructed, is perceived as naturally given. The second theme, that of civility or civic consciousness, the civic code, is constructed on the basis of familiarity with implicit and explicit rules of conduct, traditions, and social routines that define and demarcate the boundary of the collectivity.[11] These rules are regarded as the core of the collective identity of the community). The third theme – the sacral or transcendent -- links the constituted boundary between ‘us and them’ not to natural conditions, but to a particular relation of the collective subject to the realm of the sacred and the sublime, be it defined as God or Reason, Progress or Rationality.[12] This code, just as the first two, can be found in all including preliterate and above all ‘archaic’ societies – in which it was usually embedded or interwoven in the two other types of codes -- but the purest illustrations of such distinct sacred codes are the Axial-Age religions which will be discussed later on.[13]
These three themes are of course ideal types. Within each there may develop many variations. Thus, to give only two illustrations, within the general framework of primordial orientation there may develop different emphases on territory, culture, language, or other components of primordiality, and on different conceptions of collective time. Similarly, the differences between, to follow Weber's nomenclature, between this-worldly and other-worldly Axial religious ontological conceptions and orientations, have been extensively analyzed.[14]
The construction of collective identities entails the concretization of themes and the specification of their different contents; and of different combinations thereof, and the designation of different institutional arenas as the bearers of such codes – as for instance the emphasis on primordiality in ‘local’ or ‘ethnic’ collectivities; on civil rules in the political collectivity or in broad religious ones. The different combinations of such codes or themes and the specification of the institutional arenas in which they are implemented vary greatly between different societies and social settings – and it is the specific ways in which such themes are defined, combined and institutionalized that constitute the distinct characteristics of different collectivities. Whatever the concrete specification and combination of such themes in any collectivity, the construction of collective identity entails some – highly variable – combination of most – usually all – such codes or themes, and continual tension between them.
The construction and reproduction of collective identity or consciousness is effected through the promulgation and institutionalization of models of social and cultural order. Such models of cultural and social order -- the Geertzian models ‘of and for society’[15] – represent and promulgate the unassailable assumptions about the nature of reality and social reality prevalent in a society, the core symbols of a society, the evaluation of different arenas of human activity, and the place of different symbolic (‘cultural’) activities as they bear on the basic predicaments and uncertainties of human experience.
The promulgation of models of social and cultural order and of the appropriate code-orientations takes place above all in several types of situations - especially socializing and communicative ones; in different rituals and ceremonies, and through various agencies of socialization and educational institutions, ‘mass media,’ religious preachings and the like.[16] Among such situations of special importance from the point of view of the construction of collective identities are the induction of members into the collectivity and various collective rituals – especially commemorative ones and public ceremonies in which the distinctive identity and cultural program of the collectivity are portrayed.
In all such communicative, ritual, ceremonial and socializing situations, the ‘natural’ givens – sex, age, procreation, vitality, power, force – are presented, dramatized, often highly ritualized, and related to the organizational problems of the respective institutional arenas. In such situations, the distinctive attributes of any given collectivity and its relation to the cosmic order, to the cosmic attributes which it represents; its specific location in time and space; its relations to what is designated as its natural environment and to nature and to the sources of vitality; its collective memory and the perception of its continuity are portrayed, articulated and promulgated in visual and narrative ways and in various combinations thereof. In these situations the distinctive attributes of the collectivities are endowed with some, often very strong components or dimensions of sacrality and with very strong emphasis on the electivity or ‘chosenness’ of the collectivity in terms of such sacrality. Accordingly the designation of the distinctiveness of the collectivity is in these situations often portrayed in terms of inside and outside: of the purity of the inside as against the pollution of the outside.
It is in these situations that the attachment of members of a collectivity to its symbols and boundaries are inculcated; and that such orientation and attachment to collective identities become as it were components of one’s personal identity. But needless to say, the extent to which such attachment to the different collectivities becomes an important component of a person’s identity varies greatly between different individuals and different collectivities.
The construction of collective identity entails also usually very strong gender designations, manifest in such expressions as ‘mother country’ or ‘Father of the people,’ in which different vital forms are related to different codes, attributed to different genders and often defined in opposing yet complementary terms.[17]
The construction of collective identities is effected by various social actors and situations, especially by various ‘influentials’ and elites in interaction with broader social sectors. The core of this interaction is the activation of the predispositions to and search for some such order which are inherent, even if not fully articulated, among all, or at least most, people. Such predispositions or propensities are activated by different ‘influentials’ and actors who attempt to attain hegemony in various settings. Of special importance are those actors - like for instance the different promulgators of the visions of the Great Axial Civilizations or the bearers of the modern Great Revolutions, or of different conceptions of modern statehood and nationality - who attempt to promulgate distinct visions of collective identity, and/or distinct cultural programs. In so far as such activists find resonance among wider sectors of the population, they are able to institutionalize the distinct symbols and boundaries promulgated by them, and crystallize different concrete collective identities and boundaries. Such actors often compete with each other, as was for instance the case of the competition between different religions in late antiquity.[18]
The competition between such activists is not purely ‘symbolic.’ The construction and promulgation of collective identities is not a purely ‘symbolic’ exercise – it is manifest not only in the ‘symbolic’ depiction of the boundaries of the collectivity, but also in the institutionalization thereof. The institutionalization of boundaries of collectivities takes place through the interweaving of the promulgation of such models of cosmic and social order and of the visions of distinctiveness of any collectivity, and of the attributes of similarity of its members, appropriate to the members of these collectivities, with the control of the production and distribution of resources, with regulation of power and with access to such resources.
The construction of collective identities and boundaries – as that of any continual social interaction, of any social order – bears within itself both constructive and destructive possibilities. The constructive dimension of such construction lies in the fact that it is such construction that generates trust without which no continuous human interaction can be assured and creativity take place (Eisenstadt, 1995), but at the same time by its very nature such construction entail exclusiveness and exacerbates the ambivalence to social order.
The destructive potentialities inherent in the construction of collective identities are inherent in the very structure of the situations in which the charismatic dimensions of human activity and interaction are promulgated. The promulgation in such situations of the models of cosmic and social orderattempts to imbue the given order with charismatic dimension, to bring it in closer, often direct relation with the sacred, and concomitantly to ‘convince’ the members of a given society that the institutional order in general, and the concrete order of their society in particular, are the ‘correct’ ones. The symbols and images portrayed in these models extol the given order –the purity of the world inside the boundaries, and the danger of the world outside - or the need to remain within the boundaries despite the continuous attraction of the world outside, reinforcing, as it were, the existing ideologies or hegemonies.[19] Yet at the same time paradoxically there develops in such situations an awareness of the arbitrariness of any social order and of the limitations on human activities which it imposes, as well as a growing awareness of the possibility of constructing new themes and models. Hence in such situations there tends also to develop a potentially strong ambivalence to any social order and especially to the given concrete social order, enhancing the attraction of stepping outside the boundaries thereof as well as the anxiety about doing so.[20]
Such ambivalences and the consciousness of the arbitrariness of social order and of its fragility are intensified by the fact that the promulgation of such models is connected with the exercise and legitimation of power.[21] Consequently there may develop in such situations strong tendencies to sacrilege, transgression, violence and aggression – manifest among others in the close relation between the consciousness of death and search for the sacred which is apparent in many sacrificial rituals and in the concomitant tendencies to exclusion of others, making them the foci or targets of such ambivalence, depicting them not only as strange but also as evil.
It is also in such situations that the continual reconstitution of the concrete specifications of the major themes of collective identity became most visible. One of the most interesting aspects of the processes of reconstruction of collective identities is the continual reconstruction of primordiality. Contrary to some of the recent studies on nationalism and ethnicity which assume that the primordial components of collective identity are almost naturally and continually given, and on the whole unchanging; in fact those components have been continually reconstituted in different historical contexts and under the impact of intersocietal forces. Although primordiality is always presented by its promulgators as ‘primordial,’ as naturally given, yet in fact it is also continually reconstructed under the impact of such forces - and in close relation to promulgation and continual reconstruction of other - civil or sacred, above all universalistic - codes or orientations.
The constitution of collectivities and collective boundaries continuously interwoven with struggles for power and economic resources has been going on throughout human history, but their concrete manifestations varied greatly between different societies and institutions. In all societies the distinctive ways in which collective boundaries are constituted and in which destructive potentialities or tendencies were closely related to the combination inherent in them of the specific cultural program that was promulgated and the internal contradiction and tension in these programs, and the specific historical experience of these societies. It would be beyond the promise of this paper to present a systematic analysis of such variations[22] and we shall focus here on the distinctive characteristics of the constitution of collectivities and of their destructive potentialities as they developed in modern societies.
With the emergence of modernity, of the modern civilization, there emerged, in close relation to the distinct cultural program of modernity and to the specific historical context of the development of the institutional contours of modernity, a new pattern of constitution of collective identities. Such constitution was characterized by some very specific characteristics, which have greatly influenced the entire modern historical, social science and general discourse about collective identity, especially of nationalism and ethnicity – often presenting them as if they were the natural attributes or forms of collective identities, but which have to be analyzed in the broader comparative and analytical framework.
The modern project, the cultural and political program of modernity as it developed first in the West, in Western and Central Europe, entailed distinct ideological as well as institutional premises. It entailed a very distinct shift in the conception of human agency, of its autonomy, and of its place in the flow of time. The core of this program has been that the premises and legitimation of the social, ontological and political order were no longer taken for granted; and the concomitant development of a very intensive reflexivity about the basic ontological premises as well as around the bases of social and political order and authority – a reflexivity which was shared even by the most radical critics of this program, who in principle denied the legitimacy of such reflexivity, and of a concomitant development of continual struggles and contestations about the construction of the major dimensions of social order, including the political order and that of collectivities and collective identities.
The central core of this cultural program has been possibly most successfully formulated by Weber. To follow James D. Faubian’s exposition of Weber’s conception of modernity: ‘Weber finds the existential threshold of modernity in a certain deconstruction: of what he speaks of as the “ethical postulate that the world is a God-ordained, and hence somehow meaningfully and ethically oriented cosmos.”
. . . What he asserts – what in any event might be extrapolated from his assertions – is that the threshold of modernity has its epiphany precisely as the legitimacy of the postulate of a divinely preordained and fated cosmos has its decline; that modernity emerges, that one or another modernity can emerge, only as the legitimacy of the postulated cosmos ceases to be taken for granted and beyond reproach. Countermoderns reject that reproach, believe in spite of it. . . .
. . . One can extract two theses: Whatever else they may be, modernities in all their variety are responses to the same existential problematic. The second: whatever else they may be, modernities in all their variety are precisely those responses that leave the problematic in question intact, that formulate visions of life and practice neither beyond nor in denial of it but rather within it, even in deference to it. . . .[23]
It is because of the fact that all such responses leave the problematic intact that the reflexivity which developed in the program of modernity went beyond that which crystallized in the Axial Civilizations. The reflexivity that developed in the modern program focused not only on the possibility of different interpretations of the transcendental visions and basic ontological conceptions prevalent in a society or societies but came to question the very givenness of such visions and of the institutional patterns related to them. It gave rise to the awareness of the existence of multiplicity of such visions and patterns and of the possibility that such visions and conceptions can indeed be contested.[24] Concomitantly the program entailed a conception of the future in which various possibilities which can be realized by autonomous human agency – or by the march of history – are open.
Such awareness was closely connected with two central components of the modern project, emphasized in the early studies of modernization by Dan Lerner and later by Alex Inkeles. The first such component is the recognition, among those becoming and being modernized and modern – as illustrated by the famous story in Lerner’s book about the grocer and the shepherd – of the possibility of undertaking a great variety of roles beyond any fixed or ascriptive ones, and the concomitant receptivity to different communications and messages which promulgate such open possibilities and visions. Second, there is the recognition of the possibility of belonging to wider trans-local, possibly also changing, orders and communities.[25]
In parallel with this, this program entailed very strong emphases on autonomous participation of members of society in the constitution of social and political order and its constitution and on the autonomous access, of indeed all members of the society to these orders and their centers. Out of the conjunctions of these conceptions there developed the belief in the possibility of active formation of society by conscious human activity.
The modern cultural program also entailed a radical transformation of the conceptions and premises of the political order, of the constitution of the political arena, and of the characteristics of the political process and of the construction of collectivities – all of which became foci of contestation and of struggle.[26]
The core of the new conceptions was the breakdown of traditional legitimation of the political order, the concomitant opening up of different possibilities of construction of such order, and the consequent contestation about the ways in which political order was constructed by human actors, combining orientations of rebellion and intellectual antinomianism, together with strong orientations to center-formation and institution-building, giving rise to social movements and movements of protest as a continual component of the political process.
This program entailed also a very distinctive mode of construction of the boundaries of collectivities and collective identities. In some even if certainly not total contrast to the situation in the Axial Civilizations, collective identities were not taken as given or as preordained by some transcendental vision and authority, or by perennial customs.
At the same time the most distinct characteristic of the construction of modern collectivities, very much in line with the general core characteristics of modernity, was that such construction was continually problematized in reflexive ways, and constituted a focus of continual struggles and contestations.
Such continual contestations were borne by distinct social actors – be they political activists, politically active intellectuals, and distinct social movements, above all national or nationalistic movements – oriented to the constitution of such new collectivities. Indeed one of the most distinctive characteristics of the continual process of reconstruction of modern collective identities was the centrality in this process of special social and political activists, and above all organizations bearing distinct visions of collective identities and ideologies, and mobilizing wide sectors of the population, the best illustrations of which are of course distinct social movements, especially the national or nationalistic ones, as well as the closely related promulgation of distinct ideologies, above all national and also modern ethnic ones, of collective identity.
It was these activists and movements that were the bearers of contestations and struggles, often couched in highly ideological terms, around the far-reaching transformation in comparison with the preceding Axial periods, of the codes of collective identity and of the relation between them.[27]
Among the most important such transformations of the themes of collective identity attendant on the development of modernity and which first emerged in Europe, was the development of new, mainly secular definitions, yet couched in highly ideological and absolutized terms, of each of the components of collective identity – the civil, primordial and universalistic and transcendental ‘sacred’ ones; the growing importance of the civil and procedural components thereof; of a continual tension among these components; and a very strong emphasis, in the construction and institutionalization of the collective identities, on territorial boundaries.
Concomitantly there developed very intensive tendencies to the establishment of a very strong connection between the construction of the political order and that of the major ‘encompassing’ collectivities, a connection that later became epitomized in the model of the modern nation-state. The crystallization of the modern nation-state and its institutionalization entailed the emphasis on congruence between the cultural and political identities of the territorial population; strong tendencies to attribute to the newly constructed collectivities and centers charismatic characteristics; the promulgation, by the center, of strong symbolic and affective commitments of members of society to the center and the collectivity; and a close relationship between the center and the more primordial dimensions of human existence as well as social life, as well as the civil and sacred ones. Such relationships did not entail in most modern societies – with the partial exception as we shall see of Japan – the denial of the validity of the broader, civilizational orientations. Rather there developed strong tendencies of the new national collectivities to become also the repositories and regulators of these broader orientations – but at the same time there developed in them continual oscillation and tension between the national and the broader universalistic ones.
The central characteristic of the model of the modern, especially nation state was the strong emphasis on cultural-political homogeneity of the population within the territorial boundaries. A central focus of such homogeneity, closely related to the basic premises of the cultural program of modernity was the image of the ‘civilized man’ as analyzed by Norbert Elias and, if in a more highly exaggerated way, by Michel Foucault, and in a more systematic way by John Meyer, Ron Jepperson and others, and as presented above all both in the great works of modern literature, especially in the great novels, as well as in the more ‘popular’ literature which thrived in this period, in all of which the mission civilisatrice of modernity, of the modern period were promulgated).[28]
A very central component in the construction of collective identities was the self-perception of a society as ‘modern,’ as bearer of the distinct cultural and political program – and its relations from this point of view to other societies – be it those societies which claim to be – or are seen as – bearers of this program, and various ‘others.’
Concomitantly the images and attributes of such homogeneities and modernity have been promulgated as John Meyer, Ron Jepperson and others have shown through a series of very strong socializing agencies, such as schools, often the army, the major media and the like – all of them emphasizing very strongly the idea or ideal of a politically and culturally homogeneous entity.[29]
A central aspect of such homogeneity was the conception of citizenship which entailed a direct relation of members of the collectivity to the state, unmediated by membership in any other collectivities, and the tendency to relegate the identities of other collectivities – religious, ethnic, regional and the like – to the private spheres as against the unitary public sphere which was seen as constituting the major arena in which the relations of citizens to the state and to the national collectivity were played out. The centers of these states become the regulators of the relations between the central identity and the various secondary, primordial or ‘sacred’ universalistic identities – religious, ethnic, regional and the like.
Concomitantly the distinctive visions of the new modern collectivities above all indeed, of the nation-state, entailed the promulgation of distinctive collective memories in which the universal, often ‘sacred’ components rooted in the universalistic components of the cultural program of modernity and the particularistic national ones emphasizing their territorial, historical and cultural specifities came together – albeit in different ways in different societies, but constituting in all of them one of the major and continual foci of tensions and contestations.[30]
These different orientations of the “overall” collectivities were often symbolized or defined in distinctive gender terms – with the state with its civic components as well as with the organization of political force was often portrayed in masculine terms, and the nation, with strong primordial, nurturing and vitalistic components in feminine ones. Both these gendered symbols were brought usually together under the canopy of the overarching nation state, yet at the same time constituting a focus of continual tensions and of distinct, potentially competing identities.
Yet, despite the strong tendency to conflate, in the ideal model of the nation state, ‘state’ and ‘nation’ there developed within them strong tensions between on the one hand the ‘state’ with its emphasis on territoriality and the seeming potentially universalistic notions of citizenship; and on the other hand ‘nation’ – with its more ‘closed’ definitions of membership with strong primordial components.
Thus paradoxically, one central aspect of the constitution of modern collective identities, closely related to the tension between ‘citizenship’ and ‘membership’ of a primordial community, between state and nation, was also the construction of a growing tendency to a sharper delineation of the boundaries, of different ethnic, regional and even religious communities, transforming the relative porousness of former semi-ethnic territorial, linguistic or kin boundaries into more formalized ones and with strong political orientations. Although in principle such different primordial communities were to be brought together under the overall canopy of the nation state, in fact there developed a potential for the continual development of a multiplicity of such distinct collectivities with strong potential political orientations, which needless to say varied greatly between different societies.
The model of the nation state, closely related to some of the basic ontological premises of the cultural program of modernity, has become in many ways hegemonic in the modern international systems and frameworks that developed in conjunction with the crystallization of modern order.[31]
But despite its hegemonic standing, the model of the nation-state was never as homogeneous, internally within any single society or across different societies. Even in Europe there developed a great variety of nation states.
One of the most important aspects of such variety was the relative importance in them of the different codes or themes of collective identity, i.e. of the primordial and civil and sacral (religious or secular ones) and the different combinations thereof. The second aspect of such variety was the extent to which there developed totalistic as against multifaceted visions of those basic collective identities – i.e. the extent to which the basic codes and the ways in which primordial-national, civil and universalistic orientations were interwoven in them, and especially the extent to which in the historical experience of those societies none of these dimensions is totally absolutized or set up by their respective carriers against the other dimensions, or contrariwise the extent to which there developed rather multifaceted patterns of collective identity.
Such different modes of construction of modern collective identities were promulgated in modern societies by the many political activists and intellectuals, especially the major social movements. It was indeed one of the most distinct characteristics of the modern scene that the construction of collective boundaries and consciousness could also become a focus of distinct social movements – the national or nationalistic ones. While in many modern societies, as for instance England, France, Sweden, the crystallization of new national collectivities and identities, of different types of nation states took place. Without the national movements playing an important role, the potentiality of such movements existed in all modern societies. In some – in Central and Eastern Europe, some Asian and African, and to some extent Latin-American societies – they played a crucial role in the development of nation states.
It was within the framework of the basic characteristics of the constitution of modern collectivities and political realm and above all those between pluralistic multifaceted and absolutizing totalizing visions that there crystallized the specific modes of the destructive potentialities inherent in the modern cultural program. These destructive potentialities became most fully manifest in the ideologization and sanctification of violence, terror and wars which became first apparent in the French Revolution and later in the Romantic movements and in the combination of such ideologization with the construction and institutionalization of the nation states; with the fact that the nation states became the most important agent – and arena – of constitution of citizenship and of collective identity; with the crystallization of the modern European state system and of European expansion beyond Europe especially under the aegis of imperialism and of colonialism, which were very often legitimized in terms of some of the components of the cultural programs of modernity – all of which became reinforced by technologies of war and communication.
These destructive forces, the ‘traumas’ of modernity which undermined the great promises thereof, emerged clearly during and after the First World War in the Armenian genocide, became even more visible in the Second World War, above all in the Holocaust, all of them shaking the naive belief in the inevitability of progress and of the conflation of modernity with progress. Lately they have reemerged again in a most frightening way on the contemporary scene, in the new ‘ethnic’ conflicts in many of the former republics of Soviet Russia, in Sri Lanka, in Kosovo, and in a most terrible way in Cambodia and in African countries, such as Rwanda.[32]
The extent to which such destructive tendencies developed in modern societies was greatly influenced by the mode of constitution of modern collective identities to which we have referred above – above all to the mode in which the different themes of collective identity – the primordial, civic and sacred – were interwoven.
In all modern European societies there developed a continual tension or confrontation between the primordial components of such identity, reconstructed in such modern terms as nationalism and ethnicity, and the modern, as well as more traditional religious, universalistic and civil components, as well as among the latter ones. The mode of interweaving of these different components of collective identity which varied greatly among different European societies greatly influenced the tension between pluralistic and totalistic tendencies of the cultural and political program of modernity and the extent to which the destructive potentialities developed in these societies.
It was insofar as the primordial components were relatively „peacefully’ interwoven in the construction of their respective collective identities with the civil and universalistic ones in multifaceted ways – that the kernels of modern barbarism and the exclusivist tendencies inherent in them were minimized. In England, Holland, Switzerland and in the Scandinavian countries, the crystallization of modern collective identity was characterized by a relatively close interweaving – even if never bereft of tensions – of the primordial and religious components with the civil and universalistic ones, without the former being denied, allowing a relatively wide scope for pluralistic arrangements. Concomitantly in these countries there developed also relatively weak confrontations between the secular orientations of the Enlightenment -- which often contained strong deistic orientations -- and the strong religious orientations of various Protestant sects.
As against situations in these societies, in those societies (as was the case in Central Europe, above all in Germany and in most countries of Southern and Central Europe) in which the construction of the collective identities of the modern nation-state was connected with continual confrontations between the primordial and the civil and universalistic, and as well as between ‘traditional’ religious and modern universalistic components, there developed a stronger tendency to crisis and the breakdown of the different types of constitutional arrangement. In the more authoritarian regimes, such primordial components were promulgated in ‘traditional’ authoritarian terms – in the more totalitarian fascist or national-socialist movements, in strong racist ones – while the absolutized universalistic orientations were promulgated by various ‘leftist’ Jacobin movements.
France, especially modern Republican France from the third republic on, but with strong roots in the preceding periods, constitutes a very important – probably the most important – illustration of the problems arising out of continual confrontations between Jacobin and traditional components in the legitimation of modern regimes - even within the framework of relatively continuous polity and collective identity and boundaries. The case of France illustrates that under such conditions, pluralistic tendencies and arrangements do not develop easily, giving rise to the consequent turbulence of the institutionalization of a continual constitutional democratic regime.[33]
The construction of different modes of collective identity has been connected in Europe – and beyond Europe – with specific institutional conditions; among them the most important have been the flexibility of the centers, the mutual openness of elites, and their relations to broader social strata. There developed in Europe, and later in other societies, a close elective affinity between the absolutizing types of collective identity and various types of absolutist regimes and rigid centers, and between the multifaceted pattern of collective identity in which the primordial, civil, and sacred components were continually interwoven with the development of relatively open and flexible centers and of mutual openings between various strata. It was the concomitant development of relatively strong but flexible and open centers, multifaceted modes of collective identity, and autonomous access of major strata to the center that was of crucial importance in the development of a distinct type of civil society – a society that was to a large extent autonomous from the state but at the same time autonomous in the state and had an autonomous access to the state and participated in formulating the rules of the political game; and it was such conditions that made possible the minimization of the tendencies to barbarism and exclusion.
It was in so far as such multifaceted modes of construction of collective identities and of strong but flexible centers faltered that the two major forms of absolutizing tendencies, bearing within themselves the kernels of barbarism, of destruction, of drastic exclusion, demonization and annihilation of others – the Communist and the extreme fascist, especially the National Socialist movements and regimes – triumphed.
Within each of these movements and regimes instituted by them there developed strong tendencies to exclusivism and to barbarism – as has been recently stressed in the discourse around Alan Besancon’s theses about the equivalence of Communism and National Socialism in and around the publication The Black Book of Communism.[34] But contrary to the claim to a total equivalence of the barbaric tendencies of these two types of regimes, and despite many similarities between them, there was a crucial difference between them. This difference, as Leszek Kolakowski and Martin Mallia have shown in their comments on Besancon,[35] was rooted in the attitudes of these respective movements and regimes to the universalistic and the concomitant potentially – even if only potentially – inclusivist components of the modern cultural and political program.
The socialist and communist movements were fully set within the framework of the cultural program of modernity, above all of the Enlightenment and of the Revolutions, and their criticism of the modern capitalist bourgeois society was made in terms of non-completeness of the modern program – entailing the potentiality of continual inclusion – even if these potentialities were strongly counteracted by the barbaric exclusivist practices of these regimes rooted in their absolutizing tendencies. Hence within the Communist movements and regimes with all their destructive annihilating forces there could develop tendencies of resistance which could at least potentially challenge the barbaric and exclusivist practices of the regimes.
The extreme fascist or national-socialist regimes, aimed above all at the reconstruction of the boundaries of modern collectivities, negated the universalistic components of the cultural program of modernity and promulgated ideologies and praxis of total exclusion, total barbarization without possibilities of challenge from within to the total demonization of the excluded. It is indeed when these two absolutizing tendencies come together – as in Cambodia – that they give rise to some of the most gruesome aspects of modern barbarism.[36]
All these destructive potentialities and forces are inherent potentialities in the modern program, most fully manifest in the ideologization of violence, terror and wars, and the total ideological exclusivity and demonization of the excluded are not outbursts of old “traditional” force - but outcomes of modern reconstruction, of seemingly “traditional” forces in a modern way. Thus indeed modernity is, to paraphrase Leszek Kolakowski’s (1990) felicitious and sanguine expression – “on endless trial.”[37]
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[14] Eisenstadt, 1983, op. cit.
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[19] Eisenstadt, 1995, op. cit., pp. 306-27.
[20] Eisenstadt, 1995, op. cit., pp. 167-201)
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[23] J.D. Faubion, 1993, Modern Greek Lessons: A Primer
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[24] Eisenstadt, 1983, op. cit.
[25] D. Lerner, 1958, The Passing of Traditional
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[26] S.N. Eisenstadt, 1999a, Paradoxes of Democracy:
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[27] Eisenstadt, 1999a, op. cit.; idem, 1999b, op. cit.
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[29] Meyer and Jepperson, 2000, op. cit.; Meyer, Boli and
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[30] Meyer and Jepperson, 2000, op. cit.; Meyer, Boli and
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[31] Meyer and Jepperson, 2000, op. cit.; Meyer, Boli and
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[32] S.N. Eisenstadt, 1996b, “Barbarism and Modernity,
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[32] Eisenstadt, 1999a, op. cit.
[33] Eisenstadt, 1999a, op. cit.
[34] Alan Besancon, The Black Book of
Communism
[35] L. Kolakowski, Modernity on Endless Trial,
Chicago, University of ChicagoPress, 1990.
[36] Ben Kiernan, “Le communisme racial des Khmers-rouges:
Un génocide et son négationnisme: le cas du Cambodge.”
Esprit, Mai 1999, 17:93-128.
[37] L. Kolakowski, Modernity on Endless Trial,
Chicago, University of ChicagoPress, 1990.