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Issues of Identity in Globalization 2nd

Review Assignment

Name : Andhyta Firselly Utami

Department / NPM : International Relations / 0906550373

Primary resources :

1. Jrgen Habermas, Intolerance and Discrimination inI.CON Volume 1, No. 1(Oxford University Press and New York University School of Law, 2003), pp. 2-12

2. Manuel Castells et. al., Social Structure, Cultural Identity, and Personal Autonomy In The Practice OfThe Internet: The Network Society In Catalonia in Manuel Castells, Ed. The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective, (Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2004), pp. 23-48

A Case for Identity

When Habermas and Castells separately argue about the weakening and strengthening of identity,

what do they mean? Does identity actually contain a certain degree of intensity that can alter from one point

to another as they suggest? If yes, how does this transformation take place? This review is going to offer a

deeper comprehension towards both scholars ideas in the perspective of international relations studies.

According to Habermas, identity has a communicative rationalea logic that allows mutual

understanding yielded by interpersonal linguistic interaction, instead of a given structure of the cosmos as

what realism upholds. He was highly praised for his writings which primarily advance the idea of human

emancipation and propose an inclusive moral framework resting on the philosophical foundation of

universal pragmatics. In Intolerance and Discrimination, he punctuates that religion anddemocracy can

evidently coexist under this notion and spirit.

The word tolerance, he puts out, is a political virtue which plays a major role in a liberal political

culture. It is not mere the willingness to cooperate or compromise, but further to accept different clash ofbeliefsboth politically and religion-wise.

1Habermas translates this as a critique for prejudices and the

combating of discrimination in the form of constitutional democracies. It then leads a series of

consequences: 1) secularization and secular legitimation of states, 2) human-rights-adopting religious

consciousness, as well as the 3) co-existence of different cultural forms of life within the same political

community.2

These outcomes later explain how communicative rationale of identity weakens its initial

nature of toleration for outsiders in which people who belong to a certain group or identity still consider

the others inferior. Such rationale is later manifested into a depoliticization of the dominant religions and an

inclusion of the religious minorities in the political community as a whole, fostered by the legal principles of

a secular society. Since cultural identity is experienced as group identity, the cultural right one has as an

individual will typically be asserted in the form of a group right whenever one of the cultural groups to

which one belongs is singled out for discrimination.3

Multiculturalists raise issues in this regards.

In another literature, it is said that Habermas indirectly defends Luhmanns rejection towards a

concept of the public sphere where a certain collective identity could be constructed from consensus among

1 Jrgen Habermas, Intolerance and Discrimination inI.CON Volume 1, No. 1, (Oxford University Press and New York UniversitySchool of Law, 2003), page 32 Ibid., page 43 David Ingram, Between Political Liberalism and Postnational Cosmopolitanism: Toward an Alternative Theory of Human Rightsin Political Theory, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Sage Publications, Inc., June 2003), pp. 359 accessed from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3595680

on October 27th, 07:16

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individuals.4

Deriving such notion into this theory, it is argued that individuals are perceived to possess a

social determination that would not comply to common identity creation but instead toleration. Habermas s

theory of collective identity restores fundamental elements of the public sphere theory: the categories of

generality, equal opportunity and universality of norms. He implies that in the future, there will be only one

"world society" whose goals include democratization and politicization of its members. In contrast to the

traditional concept of politics anchored in institutions, Habermas stresses the subpolitical character and

informal structure of the new collective identity.5

Additionally, Habermass account of tolerance points out the relationship between the tolerating

and the tolerated parties as the outcomes of symmetrical relations through deliberations among the citizens

affected by their norms and identities. Lasse Thomasse posits this notion through what he calls as paradox

of tolerance: the deconstruction of tolerance does not automatically result in the destruction of the threshold

of tolerance as well as a paternalistic relation between both.6

Persell et. al. in Civil Society, Economic

Distress, and Social Tolerance continue this view by observing that the highest level of social tolerancewould entail full recognition and acceptance of the identity and uniqueness of differences that are seen as not

reducible to invisibility by their bearers.7

In the absence of complete acceptance, a lesser level of tolerance

would include the willingness to grant equal legal and political rights to someone seen as different and an

unwillingness to openly express intolerant attitudes. In other words, interaction between agents yielded

tolerance which implicates the weakening of resistance between different identities.

Castells argues otherwise. The social changes arising out of the network society have, he observes,

redefined identity in both global and local contexts.8

His magnum opus, The Network Society, concentrates

on providing an overview of the major economic and cultural developments and changes which have beeninstrumental in putting network as a major pattern of social organizationincluding the (co-)existence of

identities. According to Castells, we live in a historical period of transformation where a new societal system

is emerging.9

The two key features of this new order are informationalism and globalism with the birth and

rapid spread of information technology as a principal driving force which provides the necessary platform

for new types of interaction between individuals. Technology today represents the society as the human

subsystems of economy, society and culture.10

A network society, Castells puts out, is a society whose social structure is made of networks

powered by microelectronics-based information and communication technologies. By social structure, he

4 Peter Uwe Hohendahl and Marc Silberman, Critical Theory, Public Sphere and Culture: Jrgen Habermas and His Critics inNew

German Critique, No. 16(New German Critique, Winter 1979), pp. 89-118 accessed from http://www.jstor.org/stable/487878

on October 27th, 7.585Ibid.6 Lasse Thomasse, The Inclusion of the Other? Habermas and the Paradox of ToleranceAuthor(s): nSource: Political Theory, Vol.

34, No. 4 (Aug., 2006), pp. 439-462Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20452474

.Accessed: 27/10/2011 00:147 Caroline Hodges Persell, Adam Green, Liena Gurevich, Civil Society, Economic Distress, and Social Tolerance inSociological

Forum, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Springer, June 2001), pp. 203-230, accessed from http://www.jstor.org/stable/685063 on October 27th, 7:15

page 2038 Robert Harding in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1, Technoculture and Science Fiction (SF-TH Inc., March 2006), page 18

accessed from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4241406 on October 27th, 7.079 Markku Wilenius,Acta Sociologica, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Sage Publications, 1998), page 269 accessed from

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4201086 on October 27th, 7.0910Ibid.

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refers to the organizational arrangements of humans in relations of production, consumption, reproduction,

experience, and power expressed in meaningful communication coded by culture.11

Through a set of

empirical researches combining urban sociology and internet studies, he discovers that the internet has

actually created the Fourth World, the socially excluded sub-population whose ways of life beyond the

contemporary industrial society normhighly differentiated by their position in the social structure.12

Indeed, this premise challenges Habermass idea that communication can lead to a reciprocal acceptance and

recognition. Castells outlines three main elements in the information age: production, power, and

experience, each of which is perceived to have constructed another form of class segregation.

In another article entitled Globalization and Identity, Castells reiterate this contention: this is

no coincidence but rather the product of a systemic relationship between the two phenomena (globalization

and strengthening of cultural identities).13

Globalization, he claims, will not overcome local and historical

identities nor supersede some ideologies and produce an undifferentiated universal human culture. The

impression of an ongoing unification and cultural homogenization of the world is said to be misleading.Capturing both of Habermas and Castellss discourses, we can then conclude that the idea of

identity strengthening and weakening relies on the intensity of its verge and interaction between identities

and not merely on the essence of identity itself. Hence alteration ofidentitywhether it is strengthening or

weakeningoccurs when there is a change on the relationship or interaction between agents.

11 Manuel Castells et. al., Social Structure, Cultural Identity, and Personal Autonomy In The Practice Of The Internet: The NetworkSociety In Catalonia in Manuel Castells, Ed. The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective, (Massachusetts: Edward ElgarPublishing Limited, 2004), page 2312Ibid.13 Manuel Castells, Globalisation and identity: A comparative perspectivein Transfer(2006) accessed fromhttp://www.llull.cat/rec_transfer/webt1/transfer01_foc01.pdf, page 1