We explain what identity is and its meanings in the personal and cultural sphere. Also, what is national and gender identity.
What is identity?
The term identity comes from the Latin word identities, which refers to the group of traits and characteristics that differentiates an individual, or group of individuals, from the rest. It is from this that the persons they manage to distinguish themselves from the rest and this always depends on the worldview and its own history and the context in which it is lived.
A trouble What arises is that there are personal and collective identities, so many times people can enter into conflict for the existing differences. It is identity that shapes people, which determines their tastes, needs, priorities and actions.
Personal identity
Personal identity refers in the first instance to the name and surname that each person has received. In this way, a person can be differentiated from the rest. With the advances of the technology and the significant increase in population Worldwide, new elements have been implemented that allow differentiating one person from another, such as fingerprints and DNA.
Also, personal identity may refer to issues more closely related to the culture, as are the profession, the abilities, ethnicity, religion, work activity, personality, tastes or behavior.
Cultural identity
This concept implies everything that has to do with beliefs, traditions, symbols, behaviors, values and pride that the members of a certain group of people share and that are in turn those that allow the existence of a feeling of belonging.
This feeling helps that, despite individual differences, the members can have something in common. This can also be defined by opposition to others, this means that a group can be identified as such precisely because it presents explicit and notable differences that allow establishing the existence of different groups.
National identity
National identity, on the other hand, is one that links individuals with the nation of which it is a part. This can be given by the fact of sharing certain traditions or traditions, religion, worldview or behaviors; for inhabiting the same territory or for having feelings of belonging.
This concept is clearly opposed to that of globalization, in which the integration total number of nations or, the predominance of one region over the rest, which would end up imposing the traits of a group on the entire world population.
Gender identity
In recent years, people began to talk about the identity of gender understanding it as the gender with which a person manages to identify. It can also be used to refer to the gender that is attributed to a person from elements that respond to the gender role, which can be the clothes they wear, their behavior, appearance, etc.
In this way, the feeling of femininity or masculinity that a person has does not necessarily coincide with their genitality. The term gender identity is usually equated with that of sexual identity, although there are those who establish differences between the two.