We explain what collective identity is, how it is formed in a society, its characteristics and various examples.
What is collective identity?
The collective identity, unlike the identity individual, is the sense of belonging to a certain community experienced by its members, and that constitutes to some extent an answer to the question of who they are. It is at the same time a phenomenon of self-perception (how individuals perceive themselves) and a way of relating to others (social identity).
The Humans we are gregarious and social beings, who are always part of not just one, but multiple communities, each of which contributes to the formation of our individual identity, at the same time that we contribute to the formation of a collective identity. This phenomenon, which has been of interest to scholars of psychology and the anthropology throughout the decades.
Collective identity is the fruit of affective relationships, social and cultural that occur within a given community. These relationships lead in different ways to the construction of a "we" (ingroup), that is, of a group identity with which its members are distinguished from the rest of the group. society (outgroup).
In this way, certain symbols, practices, traits, traditions or ways of being are valued as belonging to the group and at the same time to each individual.
For example: between urban tribes of England in the 1980s, Punk they used to dress in an outlandish way: jean jackets, military boots or even leather clothing, as well as multicolored mohawks, piercings and tattoos. In addition, they mostly adhered to a political current anarchist either socialist, and professed slogans like “There is no future" ("There's no future").
The principles of collective identification are the brotherhood of values and belonging to an "us" in conflict with the majority. They can be traced in different minority communities of contemporary societies, and even, on a much larger scale, between nationalities or regional ethnic groups.
For example, Latin Americans tend to think gastronomy based on corn as a feature of the "own" identity, despite the obvious differences that may exist between a taco, a pupusa, an arepa or a tamale.
The nature and functioning of identities, however, are the subject of much debate among social Sciences. There are voices that warn against a certain essentialism in the matter, that is, against the idea of believing that something as complex as identity (individual or collective) can be reduced to a fixed and recurrent set of characteristics.
In fact, the same individual can profess different collective identities at the same time, especially if they are migrant individuals.
Characteristics of collective identity
In general, collective identity is characterized by the following:
- It belongs to a cluster that can range from a few individuals to nations whole, and is understood as the sum of their individual identities, although in reality it is not: an individual can feel part of a community without necessarily adhering to all its characteristics.
- They make up a "we" or ingroup, opposed to the rest (outgroup), and this differentiation is reinforced by rites, practices, physical features or ways of expressing themselves.
- They are not really absolute identities: their individuals can feel part of different collectivities at the same time, or they can jump from one to another over time. The edges of a collective identity are porous, and there are more radical positions and others more lax.
- They group together and give meaning to different aspects of everyday life, such as culture, the idiom, the religion, clothing, gastronomy, ideology, political militancy or ethnicity, to name just a few.
Examples of collective identity
Some examples of collective identity are the following:
- The urban tribes, typical of industrialized nations, which bring together young people from different strata and backgrounds around certain values of consumption as the music, clothing style, personal decoration (piercings, tattoos, hairstyles, etc.) and, in general, around certain interests and certain ways of speaking. For example: punks, goths, gamers, geeks, etc.
- Ethnic minorities, when they organize themselves to exert a certain resistance against the culture perceived as “hegemonic” or center in the Condition. For example: in American society, Afro-descendant groups are distinguished from the so-called Latinxs and even from the southern white working classes (derogatorily referred to as “White Trash”).
- The national identities, which try to assimilate entire populations of millions of inhabitants around a founding national story, a set of national symbols and a language, for which they have a education system, a civic education and different mechanisms of protection of a "own" culture.