The Significance of Collective Identities

One of the most striking features in the developing world is the strength of collective identities such as ethnic, religious or regional identities. While the emergence of these collective identities was not confined to the developing countries, there seems to be sufficient evidence that conflicts over allocation of resources in the developing world were often more successfully mobilized along ethnic, religious or regional identities rather than along class lines. Thus the early assumption of modernisation theories that these identities labelled as “pre-modern” will vanish in the course of development turned out to be wrong: Many examples across the world demonstrated strikingly that ethnicity and religious belief were reinforced or even invented in the course of modernisation in the 1950s to 1970s and globalisation since the 1980s – often enough as a particular protest against the penetration of modernity.

Especially in the context of nation and state building processes these collective identities became a major political resource and a means of political aggregation, agitation, and articulation. In most cases the accentuation of collective identities targeted the relationship between citizen and the state. Thus the particular policy or ideological shape of the nation-state provoked the emergence or underpinning of deviant collective identities: Unequal access to economic, political, and symbolic resources controlled by the state are considered to be the main reasons for the politicisation of ethnicity in periods of political transformations.

Furthermore it has to be taken into account that ethnic, religious and regional identities constitute a forceful “social glue” of movements, militias, societal networks etc.; because the belief in sharing the same values and the same legal perceptions provides the ideal ground for mutual trust – an important prerequisite for the emergence of organisational structures.

Against the background of the significance of collective identities research at ZEF investigates the importance of ethnic, religious and regional identities in manifold ways.

Firstly, research at ZEF takes account of the understanding of the inherent logic behind ethnic, religious or regional identities. Research at ZEF aims to detect and analyse the discourses which generate and affect these identities time and again. Furthermore, we examine the ingredients to make these collective identities stable and vivid in the societal and political arena.
Secondly, research at ZEF looks at the significance of these collective identities in violent conflicts. Conflicts related to ethnic, religious and regional identities seem to be characterised by their protracted nature. In many cases, open violence or even civil war is mutually interrelated to the collapse of state structures and thus opens the path to warlordism and prebendalism. This is why ZEF wants to understand in a better way how these collective identities are mobilised to claim political, symbolic and economic resources, to enlarge the own constituency and to legitimise violence.
Thirdly, research at ZEF focuses on the impact of these collective identities on governance issues. Unresolved claims which are based on collective identities are one of the foremost obstacles for achieving good governance and for providing a political environment conducive to sustainable development. Thus ZEF is carrying out research on how ethnic, religious and regional tensions and claims are managed and settled during the process of state building, democratisation, and economic transformation. In this context ZEF deals with political arrangements such as proportional representation, political party systems, election systems, constitutions etc.

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