We and Us: Two Modes of Group Identification
Abstract
This essentially theoretical essay is intended as a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the relationship between social identification and enemy images. Empirical material from Mauritius is used to illuminate various dimensions of identification, and a number of general points are made: First, identification shifts circumstantially and is contingent on symbolic legitimation as well as personal experiences. Second, and perhaps less evidently, the composition of groups shifts accordingly - both as relevant system boundaries change and as perceived social contrasts change. Third, identification is contingent on two basic mechanisms: we-hood or internal principles for cohesion, and us-hood or contrasting with others. Fourth, the encouragement of multiple loyalties may reduce conflict potential.
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1. Sartre's distinction between `we-as-subject' and `we-as-object' is illuminating, but his usage of the concepts (`we-as-subject' as a `subjective and psychological experience', his teachings on subject-object relationships, etc.) cannot fruitfully be applied here. I use the terms tentatively in referring, on the one hand, to we, the social and/or cultural unit held together chiefly through its internal workings, and, on the other hand, to us, kept together against the `gaze of the Third (Tertius)'. He is looking at us, but we are producing meaning together. The two are, empirically, non-existent poles in a continuum. The distinction is valuable, in my opinion, because it enables us to make an important distinction. In the long run, it is not enough merely to state that identities are `relational', which we anthropologists have grown accustomed to do: one must also distinguish between external and internal relationships.
2. The Rodriguan independence movement, existing since the mid-1970s and represented in parliament by the OPR party (Organization du People Rodriguais), shows the importance of delineating changes in systemic boundaries. (Rodrigues is a small dependency of Mauritius.) According to the OPR and some Mauritian intellectuals, tiny Mauritius has a colonial problem in (even tinier) Rodrigues, exploiting and underdeveloping the dependency much in the same way as the previous colonial powers (mis-) treated their colonies. Nobody thought of this before independence, as the relevant system in question was then the British Empire or, more specifically, the system containing Mauritius-and-Rodrigues, on the one hand, and the UK, on the other. The new self-sustaining system of Mauritius-and-Rodrigues provided the structural conditions for a Rodriguan independence movement. The formal relations within the respective delineated systems may be similar, although their substantial properties are not.
3. Even expatriated Mauritians sometimes activate ethnic networks, although they tend to be more nationalistically minded than those living in their island of birth. In Strasbourg, for instance, a large segment of the resident Mauritians are Tamils from a particular suburb of Rose-Hill, many of them relatives.
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