My interest in identity is long standing. My foray into the world of psychotherapy and fine arts was in fact a way to delve into identities. What makes someone who he is, is a fascinating puzzle that drives a lot of my intellectual curiosity. Identity is made up of so many different pieces that overlap, shift and change according to context, circumstances, needs, geographical situatedness, academic conversation, new interest, new role, work, culture, values, beliefs, etc. Most of what we do that is of any significance has identity marking potential built into it. How much or how litte we let these etchings transpire through our public and private selves is a complex human and social mystery.
This curiosity about identity has of course taking me on a cultural journey across anthropology. The journey I seem to be returning to more and more, the landscape of which has so much to reveal. That says something about me these days. A topic for another time.
But I am confused. I came across an upcoming conference I knew nothing about yet it is hosted at my own university. I had to find it online, querying some search engine about anthropology. That tells you how much the local is completely disconnected and further how disciplines don’t talk to each other. This is a department in the same building ! Yet nothing. I guess for most Education, and Anthropology are unrelated.
The conference will be held on May 9-14 2006 at Concordia University in Montreal. CASCA 2006:
HUMAN NATURE/HUMAN IDENTITY: ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVISIONINGS is a conference on identity and rethinking what we mean by identity.
some of the topics covered are as follow:
The theme we propose would seem to connect directly, for instance, with the following areas of current anthropological concern (amongst others):
1) …the embodied nature of identity, whereby mind is part of body, and individual body part of social body, such that any conceptualization is partial, partisan and provisional. What does ‘human nature’ mean when to be human and natural (healthy, sentient or sick) are discursive notions owned by collective systems of signification?
2) …the political nature of identity, whereby positioning in and by social discourses determine the conditions of being. What weight (freight) does ‘human nature’ carry in a milieu where identity politics would deploy subaltern notions of ethnicity, religiosity, gender and indigeneity so as to classify a sovereign space beyond the purview of others?
3) …the relational nature of identity –recursive, cybernetic– whereby things are epiphenomenal upon the relations between them. On this view, human nature is that which is elicited in particular moments and places by the contingent and relative qualities of what ‘the human’ is seen to engage with.
4) …the existential nature of identity, whereby each of us individually manifests the potential of the species, and constructs world-views, life-projects and life-courses which embody the capacities for conscious creativity intrinsic in the nature of the human as such.
5) …biogenetics, nature and identity: new reproductive technologies, the genome project, genetically modified foods. What does genetic engineering tell us, as anthropologists, about current public understandings of human nature and of our own?
6) …environmentalism, nature and identity: Gaia, new-age travelling, tribalism, religiosity and dissidence. What does the global phenomenon of environmental awareness tell us about a political reconceptualisation of the relationship between humanity and nature?
7) …’neo-materialism’ or ‘neo-ecologism’ variously argue for anthropology to consider how humanity’s identity is to ‘dwell’ in nature. Methodologically one overcomes distinctions between culture and biology, human and animal, ideal and material, by a holistic appreciation of the way human nature is at once a matter of evolution, adaptation and enculturation.
Yet nothing about technological identities, virtual identities, disembodied identities in media, trace identities in technology and the like. They are missing the newer research in Media Anthropology and CyberAnthropology and identities of globalization (many links in spanish). Some interesting authors on the subject are Anne Beaulieu, Christine Hine, and a number of others. I wrote a paper (up for publication in Anthropologie et Société) on these trace identities and what we are looking for when we track behavior on the Internet.
On the other hand you have conference presentations on Identity 2.0 (by Dick Hardt), that talk about data constructed identities with much hype around managing the implications. This is linked to Attention Economics trends and ownership of ‘click logs’ that are traces of browsing behavior on various sites. I’ve written about this previously here and here the subject is only beginning to be unpacked and showing the many sides of its emerging personality. Such as Google and Yahoo logs which are now under political scrutiny and efforts to control information.
The conversation about Identity 2.0 is one of commerce, not people; of management across platforms (avoiding silos) for ease of access… for whom do you think? Jon Udell’s recent posting on “Controlling our data” concludes with this:
Controlling our data is an idea whose time has come. In different ways, Root and Sxip are exploring how to build businesses around that idea. Whatever the outcomes, we are bound to learn important lessons.
I hope our lessons won’t be regrettable ones. In the meantime there are wider social implications here. Centralized identity data….??? Serious discussions about the repercussions and ramifications this may have must first be had. And sooner than later.
I’ll say more at some other time. I need to go sit my family for some embodied tête à tête and my mother’s Sunday lamb roast! I’m licking my chops 