Social and Political Dimensions of Identity

This paper points up a number of issues concerning the topic of identity, to stimulate further debate and discussion without, however, solving any of the intellectual and practical problems that are inherent in this subject. It dwells on some conceptual matters and also describes some current policy and legal developments that have important implications for the way in which we understand identity and identification, as well as privacy and other matters that are closely related to these. ‘Identity’ is a fashionable focusing concept that indicates a host of contemporary anxieties. Whether it will have long-lasting value as a concept that crystallises and expresses these, or whether it will be overtaken by the next wave of fashion, cannot be foretold. But concerns over personal, social, national, ethnic, cultural, religious and other identities, and problems involved with verifying the authenticity of persons’ claims to be who they say they are, have long been with us, and are likely to live long. So, too, may the contemporary absorption with matters of selfhood and otherhood. In addition, there are political, economic, bureaucratic and security issues around identity theft, identity fraud, identity cards, identity management, and so on, which are also likely to persist. Philip Agre notes that identity, as a ‘public, symbolic phenomenon that is located in history, culture and social structure’, and one that embraces national, ethnic, selfadopted or ascribed attributes, differs from information technologists’ conception of identity as ‘epitomized by proper names’ or by mathematical denotations in which ‘the identity of a thing is strictly separate from, and prior to, its attributes’. This is one broad conceptual distinction that characterizes discourse about identity. It is apparent that both senses are ‘political’, albeit in different but partially convergent ways. The former is political in that national or ethnic identities play a major part in power relations in and among jurisdictional political systems (e.g., states), and because adopted or ascribed identities affect individuals’ and groups’ citizenship or participation rights. The latter is political in that the identification of unique persons has always been a task carried out by states for a host of reasons to do with taxation, movement, voting, and other functions. It is the latter that is particularly relevant to the present discussion, because – as we shall see later – the development of identity cards and means of identification by states (and also the commercial sector) involves, in the first instance, the ability to distinguish among people with unique identifying characteristics. But competing concepts make this far from straightforward.