"Identity and Violence The Illusion of Destiny"
by Amartya Sen
W. W. Norton | March 2006 | ISBN 0393060071
At first glance, Amartya Sen's latest book marks another move away from the area of welfare and development economics that won him the Nobel Prize in 1998. In fact, this discussion of identity - covering, amongst other things, religion, culture, globalisation, the relationship between 'East' and 'West', Muslim history and multiculturalism - represents only an extension of his abiding concern with the nature and possibilities of human freedom.
Characterised by Sen's typically lucid and accessible style, Identity and Violence challenges the communitarian philosophy that our identity is something fixed, to be realised and acknowledged as one would a pre-existing natural phenomenon. Such a perspective is often bolstered by the purported "singular identity" of cultures and civilisations. Sen describes both these approaches as central to a process through which the fluid and evolving nature of identities, as well as the differences within cultural or civilisational groupings, are obscured.
As Edward Said helped us to understand, this practice has been (and remains) part of the way in which the West has viewed and constructed identities for its 'others': the superficially diverse but essentially monolithic body of humanity that Europeans began to encounter from the fifteenth century onwards, and which - bound together by their supposed irrationality - acted as a foil to Europe's self-identified 'Age of Reason' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In turn, however, the rise of 'Occidentalism' has come to countervail 'Orientalism' and inform the way in which 'the East' views Europe, America and 'the West'; often exhibiting a similar tendency to caricature and simplify. Sen shows that books such as Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilisations (1996) rely on a similar rationale (a "foggy perception of history") which overlooks both "the extent of internal diversities" and "the reach and influence of interactions - intellectual as well as material" within and between these civilisational categories.
For Sen, pluralities of identity are not only descriptively more accurate than the notion of 'singular identity', but are also normatively desirable: "a choiceless singularity of human identity not only diminishes us all, it also makes the world more flammable." But Identity and Violence refers to "the need to see the role of choice in a context specific way." Sen rejects the basis of fundamental neoclassical economics: the 'rational agent' who makes decisions independent of political, social and historical situations. "Nothing can be more elementary and universal than the fact that choices of all kinds in every area are always made within particular limits." Our freedom to determine our loyalties and priorities is dramatically varied.
The various motivations we have for choosing identities pose another thorny problem. A contemporary issue - currently causing much consternation in Britain - is the 'liberal' criticism of the small number of Muslim women who wear the niqab. This liberal opposition is not surprising. Mainstream liberalism has always been more inclined to argue for an explicit kind of freedom: the freedom to choose within pre-defined boundaries. Yet the irony of liberals forcing women to take off their veils, as their 'fundamentalist' counterparts force them to keep them on, seems lost on many commentators.
The issue of the niqab elaborates Sen's theoretical framework, encouraging us to address the web of meanings within which women might choose to wear such a garment. Some women may wear a veil through fear of punishment. Others may be rejecting the degrading commodification of the female body in modern capitalist societies. Or they may be computing a host of factors at the same time, allocating different weight to each.
Accepting the multiplicity of choice in identity does not necessarily require concessions to relativism, since there is a distinction to be drawn between the explanation of choices and judgements made about them. It does suggest, however, that if identities must become matters of public policy, a subtler understanding of motivation is central to adopting an appropriate response.
Sen asks his reader to rise above the narrow-mindedness, or indeed, the laziness, of those who are not prepared to think beyond simple categories. This is vital because, as Sen puts it, "the reductionism of high theory can make a major contribution, often inadvertently, to the violence of low politics." As someone who witnessed the communal conflict that marked India's independence in 1947, he is in a better position to know than most.
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About the author: Amartya Sen was born in Bengal in 1933. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998, was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1998-2004, and is currently Lamont University Professor at Harvard. His most recent books are The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity, and Identity and Violence: the illusion of destiny. His books have been translated into thirty languages.
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