What is Identity and what does it do Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

What is Identity and what does it do - Essay Example Ethnic groups (that is groups with real or apparent genetic similarity) are a central source of values and identity, significantly more so than class, so much so that the modern state has been unable to absorb them. What the modern state has done, however, is to carry through a far-reaching integration of ethnic groups, so that those living in the same state share a range of features, attitudes, values when it comes to politics. Such groups are the central mechanism for providing individuals with their identity; "rather than thinking about individuals 'sacrificing' part of their identity when the become part of a group, [we should regard] individual identity as possible only in the context of secure group attachments...The notion of individuals apart from groups...is a product of western thought, not the human experience" (Gellner, 1993: 76). "Groupism" then as a primary human behavioural pattern is the readiness to form groups round any observed or imagined differences in bodily or mental characteristics; almost anything will serve: proximity, language, age, sexual inclination, skin colour, eye and hair colour, shared historical or individual experience, metaph