Who am I, who are We?
What I like about 'identity' is that it is a delightfully slippery concept. On the one hand, individual identity develops and changes throughout one's life course, from dependent new-born to grumbling lone widower. As a result, a person consciously identifies with ever-changing status, from school child to student, from single to married, from mother to grandma, and so on.
People also identify with ethnicity, nation, religion, economic status, social rank, caste and group, and these, too, are subject to change. In this era of internationalism, globalisation, world-wide migratory streams and communications, no identity is impermeable to outside influences. This is what is apparently meant by the crossroad of our collection's title.
The book brings together an Introduction and twelve (revised) ICAS conference papers that offer a wide variety of viewpoints on 'identity and nationalism' and that pursue different lines of inquiry, so demonstrating that 'identity' defies to be pinned down and stands in perennial need of rethinking. Moreover, it is also in the hands of individuals that may be filling it in - in spite of what school, state and nation teach us to believe.
A dialogue with Huntington and Anderson
No wonder that Huntington's identity as circumscribed by monochrome civilisations is the whipping-boy of many contributors. In view of the part that human agency plays in shaping conscious and less-than-conscious individual identity, and the seemingly arbitrary 'identity bricolage' involved in it, also Anderson's imagined community calls for continuous re-imagination. As a result, the book highlights the dynamics of the linkages among identity, nationalism and globalisation.
According to the editors' Introduction, the current socio-political and ideological world discourses appear to be ruled by globalisation, nationalism, and ethnicity as competing forces in identity formation. As globalisation seemingly homogenises—and westernises—it evokes the backlash of ethnicisation and its cultural politics. After all, people, states and institutions experience the need for their particular identity.
The discourse on 'Asian values' is a prominent reaction, especially in its denial of 'universal' human rights that are founded on the idea of the inviolability and integrity of the human person. As a result, we are confronted with an East-Asian ideological regionalism that goes beyond ethnicity and nationalism yet resists a globalised identity. In opposition to the individualist, freely choosing persona, it emphasises communal, societal and national constraints, such as argued in Elena Asciutti's essay.
The chapter on 'creating Malaysians' exemplifies a government-induced, relatively gentle form of instilling national identity and culture that still seeks to embrace the cultural diversity of the five distinct major populations that comprise Malaysia. This stands in tragic contrast to Bhutan's mono-cultural nationalism that alienates and excludes significant minorities and literally drives them into exile. Alas, the Bhutanese example doesn't stand by itself, as religious and cultural identities fire the unending communal violence in neighbouring India.
As a recipient of immigration from mainland China, Hong Kong demonstrates that there is no such a thing as 'Chinese identity', and that individual agency is very much at work in the processes of adaptation, of finding work, and new identity-building in the former outpost of western empire. Also, that a small forest-dwelling tribal community is at the receiving end of the intrusion of state and economic greed offers little cause for wonder. It simply is the fate of such communities world-wide.
Middle-class identity
More interesting are the dynamics of re-inventing English in Indian post-colonial space and its role in setting a growing middle class apart from traditional identity markers, such as caste and birth. It is not just language; it is part of changing life-styles as the popularity—and indigenisation—of birthday cakes demonstrates. In the process, it is safe to say that English, cakes, and much more non-traditional gadgets strengthen the new middle-class Indians' national cultural Self. The popularity of participating in the singing and listening to Beethoven's Ninth—especially its Ode to Joy in Japan—is somehow comparable to said birthday cakes, and highlights individual motives in a culture that is often slovenly said to be driven by 'groupism'.
The continental Malaysian situation of the co-existence of three distinct ethnic-cultural groups evokes the importance of intercultural dialogue, not in order to effect agreement or a 'melting pot', but to disagree with and respect each other on the basis of shared humanity and similar everyday preoccupations. Practically, this was pioneered by Krishen Jit's theatre-making in his fascinating effort of 'performing cosmopolitan clash and collage'.
Whereas the previous case studies are set in local frames, the last two of them transcend their settings of the Philippines and New Zealand as they focus on minority Muslim-identity that is defined by membership in the global Muslim-hood of the umma and a plethora of symbols that sets it apart from others, which challenges nationalism's imagined community. It has proven to be a rich source of prejudice and setting-apart.
Going global?
Is consuming McDo's soggy hamburgers a sign of cultural homogenisation, or is it the first step to experience borderless vagueness? Identity is a need that requires anchors and borders; versus the 'We' stands the necessity of the 'Other'. Even as the collection offers a wide variety of viewpoints and lines of inquiry, I would have appreciated to see reflection on individual identity and agency in the widely open field of ethnicity, nationalism and globalism. Of course, at that level reactive identity constructions—ethnic nationalism, 'Asian values', communal violence—have been reviewed, but the primordial level of identity has been neglected. In the Philippines where I retired, educated people are not so sure about what it means to be Filipino, but they find themselves happily embedded in families, their circle of relatives, groups of classmates, circles of patronage, and locality. These particular bonds are amazingly alive, such as they are in many other places in the Southeast-Asian region and probably in all other Asian societies mentioned in the collection. Another absence is that we have to do without the benefit of Indexes that would have brought together themes and persons in these scattered and varied case studies.
Niels Mulder has retired to the southern slope of the mystically potent Mt. Banáhaw, Philippines, where he stays in touch through <niels_mulder201935@yahoo.com.ph>