An Operational Phantom

Abstract

Chapter 1 explored briefly the conceptual origins and the current use to which idioms of ethnic and national identity are placed in sociology and beyond the academic world. The analysis established that the notion of ‘identity’ in most of its contemporary uses suffers from acute conceptual weaknesses — it is either utilised in a restricted and essentialist or an all-embracing and vague way — which makes it dispensable and possibly redundant as a categorical apparatus for sociological analysis. However, indicating conceptual flaws may not be sufficient in discrediting what has become a highly popular. Indeed many sociological concepts from ‘culture’, ‘state’, ‘community’ to ‘socialisation’ or ‘capitalism’ have endured a much longer history of contention and remain a regular feature of sociological analyses. As Jenkins (2004: 9) argues identity has become ‘an established part of the sociological tool kit’ and cannot be easily discarded. A more damning critique would be to show that ethnic and national identities are concepts of limited use in empirical research. The aim of this chapter is to do exactly that — to demonstrate that neither of the two dominant research traditions (quantitative-empiricist and qualitative-interpretativist/historicist) generated successful operational models to ‘measure’ ethnic and national identity. This is not to say that astonishing amount of research done in this field is of little use.KeywordsEthnic IdentityNational IdentityHigh SupportSocial Identity TheorySociological AnalysisThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.