Identity—The Consistent Feature

Abstract

In the previous chapter I argued that the explanations that psychology has offered so far do not provide an integrated understanding of nationalist violence. We know about some of the cognitive, social, and individual processes that might facilitate nationalist conflict, but we have no real way of understanding how those processes link together. On the one hand, nationalist conflict is inherently individual; any nationalist rally, or riot, or army is made up of individuals who participate in it, for their own individual reasons. At the same time, however, nationalist conflict is inherently social; the people who experience nationalism are identifying with a specific group of people, and they are acting on the basis of that identification. So any comprehensive analysis of nationalist conflict needs to take into account both the social and individual dimensions of such a conflict. It also needs to deal with the particular qualities of national identity, since national identity—out of the many group identities that each of us potentially has— seems to command such passionate loyalty and action in the world.