GROUPS AND CATEGORIES SOCIAL IDENTITY

GROUPS AND CATEGORIES SOCIAL IDENTITY

In common is our difference from others. In the face of their difference our

similarity often comes into focus. Defining ‘us’ involves defining a range of ‘thems’ also.

When we say something about others we are often saying something about ourselves. In

the human world, similarity and difference are always functions of a point of view: our

similarity is their difference and vice versa. Similarity and difference reflect each other

across a shared boundary. At the boundary, we discover what we are in what we are not,

and vice versa. Even when the matter is expressed as superficially as this, it is possible

to see an internal–external dialectic of identification at work collectively, and to begin to

identifications such as gender, ethnicity and kinship which, whatever else they are, are

also definitively collective. However, although the ‘individual’ is an easy enough notion

to grasp – in the sense that the human world is peopled by real bodies that are also

persons – a ‘collectivity’ is more abstract and elusive. So what might ‘collectivity’ mean?

Similarity among and between a plurality of persons – according to whatever criteria – is

the clearest image of the collective that I have offered so far. In sociology and social

anthropology it is generally taken for granted that a collectivity is a plurality of individuals

who either see themselves as similar or have in common similar behaviour and

circumstances.

Centuries and still informs much contemporary social theory. It underpins most,

difference between the Verstehen of Weber and Simmel, and the positivism of Durkheim,

between ‘the cultural’ and ‘the social’ (Nadel 1951: 75–87), and between ‘subjectivism’

and ‘objectivism’ (Bourdieu 1977, 1990). This might suggest that there are two different

types of collectivity, and hence two different modes of collective identification. In the

first, the members of a collectivity can identify themselves as such: they know who (and

what) they are. In the second, members may be ignorant of their membership or even of

the collectivity’s existence. The first exists inasmuch as it is recognised by its members;

the second is constituted in its recognition by observers. Nadel is, however, correct to

emphasise (1951: 80) that these are not two different kinds of collectivity. They are,

rather, different ways of looking at interaction, at ‘individuals in co-activity’. He is equally

Categories of substance or agency with which embodiment allows us to endow

individuals (something that was discussed in the context of Brubaker’s recent critique of

the concept of the ‘group’ in Chapter 1). It is not that collectivities lack reality or the

capacity to do things – if that were so they would be of little sociological interest – but

they differ in these respects from individuals. Similarly, the boundedness of a collectivity

is different in kind from the bodily integrity of an individual. Where a collectivity begins

and ends is not mappable using the sociometric equivalent of a dressmaker’s tape.

Nadel and Bourdieu also remind us that our necessarily systematised and carefully

drafted view of the human world is, after all, just that, a view. It is a necessarily abstract

and simplified view, which we should not mistake for reality; and, what is more, it is a

significant others we draw upon identifications of similarity and difference, and, in the

process, generate group identities. At the same time, our self-conscious group

memberships signify others and create relationships with them. Thus categorisation, no

less than group identification, is a generic interactional process, in this case of collective

external definition. I have, for example, already suggested that the identification of others

recognise) – is often part of the process of identifying ourselves. More generally,

categorisation is a routine and necessary contribution to how we make sense of, and

impute predictability to, a complex human world of which our knowledge is always

limited, and in which our knowledge of other humans is often particularly limited. Our

of the sociological beholder, the conceptual distinction between them mirrors generic

interactional processes, external and internal moments of collective identification:

group identification on the one hand, categorisation on the other. groups and categories

105 This means that groups and categories are something more than products of the

sociological imagination. But what? THE POWERS OF CATEGORISATION It is an article

of sociological faith for all but the most obdurate positivists that if people think that

people act. How people define the situation(s) in which they find themselves is thus

among the most important of sociological data. From this point of view, a group is

intersubjectively ‘real’.

However, a group that was recognised only by its members – a secret group –

would have a very limited presence in the human world. What’s more, its discovery (and

categorisation) by others would be perpetually immanent. Furthermore, even if secrecy

were maintained, such a group would necessarily be shaped to some extent by the

categorising gaze of others: one of its identifying features in the eyes of its members

would be precisely its freedom from external recognition. Thus categorisation by others

is part of the reality of any and every group. A category, however, is less straightforward,

are often distant from the people to whom they refer, and their uses apparently arcane

and remote. It seems unlikely, for example, that anthropological debates concerning the

Nilotic peoples of the southern Sudan – about whether ‘the Nuer’ are a definite

collectivity in their own right, whether ‘the Nuer’ and ‘the Dinka’ 106 groups and

categories are separate collectivities, whether one is the other, or which one is which

(Burton 1981; Hutchinson 1995; Newcomer 1972; Southall 1976) – have been audible to

Dinka or Nuer themselves or have had any consequences for their lives. A similar point

could be made about sociological debates concerning the categorisation of populations

in terms of social class (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1993; Goldthorpe and Hope 1974;

Marshall et al.

1988; Savage 2000; Stewart et al. 1980; Wright 1985, 1989). It doesn’t seem likely

‘Nuer’ and ‘Dinka’ are locally recognised identities in Sudan, are part of the present

political landscape (embroiled in the conflict between the Khartoum regime and the

south) and earlier had resonance for colonial government (who also tried to ‘pacify’

them). Similarly, people in industrialised societies routinely identify themselves

according to class, and those identifications have implications for everything from voting

to courtship, housing and schooling choices – or their absence – and policing patterns.

classificatory, procedures of the social sciences are part of the bureaucratic practices

of government of the modern state, and thus not wholly disinterested. Scientific notions

of ‘objectivity’ and ‘truth’ derive their epistemological power in part from their grounding

of individuals and populations that is the stock in trade of the social sciences is one way

in which humans are constituted as objects of government and subjects of the state, via

censuses and the like.

The reference to taxation in the definition of ‘category’ quoted earlier was

apposite. More pointedly, ‘objective’ knowledge about the human world provides one

‘governmentality’), categorising people is always potentially an intervention in their lives,

and often more.3 Although they may not be aware of their categorisation, that they have

been categorised is always at least immanently consequential for a category’s members.

It’s more common that people know that they have been lumped together in the eyes of

others, but aren’t aware, or fully aware, of the content and implications of that

categorisation. A category may be recognised by its membership without its implications

for their lives being clear or obvious to them. We have probably all had the experience of

realising that we are being categorised in a particular fashion – in a new workplace,

perhaps, or on moving into a new neighbourhood – without knowing what this means in

terms of the responses or expectations of others. Imbalances of this kind may be

nonetheless concealed. Both nominal and virtual are obscured. This highlights another

characteristic of categorisation. Group membership is a relationship between members:

even if they do not know each other personally, they can recognise each other as

members. Membership of a category is not a relationship between members: it doesn’t

even necessitate a relationship between categoriser and categorised. Any interpersonal

relationships between members of a category only involve them as individuals. Once

categorising others is one aspect of identifying ourselves, this need not involve explicit

notions of difference vis-à-vis ourselves and those others. Nor need we have any

expectations of them.

The examples of the Nuer–Dinka, or social class, can help again to 108 groups and

categories make the point. The most important themes of these categorisations are not

‘Nuer–Dinka are different from us anthropologists’, or ‘the working class are different

from us sociologists’ (although these sub-themes may be present). As aspects of their

disciplinary world-views, categorisations such as these do other kinds of identificatory

work for anthropologists and sociologists: recently, for example, Brubaker and Cooper

(2000; Brubaker 2004: 28–63) used the Nuer case to establish and highlight their own

through the categorisation of music and musicians. In my youth, for example, questions

such as whether white musicians could play the blues, or whether Tamla-Motown

counted as soul, had an urgency which seems disproportionate only in retrospect: the

answers were a significant part of style and ‘who’s who and what’s what’. Thus the

categorisation of others is a resource upon which to draw in the construction of our own

identities. That categorisation has consequences, even if only trivial or immanent ones,

returns the discussion to the distinction between the nominal and the virtual. Collective

identification also has nominal and virtual dimensions. The nominal is how the group or

category is defined in discourse, the virtual how its members behave or are treated. As

with individual identification these are conceptually distinct. In practice they are

internal definition – after all, without their members relating to each other, and defining

themselves as members, there would be nothing to belong to – this should not be

misconstrued literally and chronologically, to mean first group identification, then

categorisation. There may, however, be situations in which group identification is

generated by prior categorisation. But although categorisation necessarily conjures up a

possible group identity, it doesn’t inevitably create an actual one. Marx understood this

class for itself and realise for themselves what their interests are. This, for Marx, signifies

the emergence of the working class as a collective historical agent. The process of group

identification encourages and is encouraged by class struggle. Subsequent refinements

classes; it has to be inspired or produced. Hence Lenin’s notion of the ‘vanguard party’,

and hence the need for politics. Whether or not we agree with this, it illustrates my

argument. Given appropriate circumstances, groups may come to identify themselves

as such because of their initial categorisation by others. The point is that there was no

class ‘in itself’ until its common interests were perceived and identified. The categorical

constitution of the working class as a class in itself with a situation and interests in

common – by socialists and other activists, on the one hand, and, as a ‘dangerous class’,

by capitalists and the state, on the other – was a necessary although not a sufficient

condition for the birth of the class for itself and, hence, for working-class politics (if not

necessarily revolution). Before the working class could act as a class, working people

logical category? To become a category it would at the very least have to be recognised

by appreciable numbers of others. In order for that to happen the condition of being

married and suffering with in-growing toenails would have to possess some significance

to those others.

As for groups. Or, to come closer to the spirit of this discussion, it is as true for

discovery. In one case group identification may be the dominant theme, in another

categorisation; but, as argued above, both will always be present as moments in the

dialectic of collective identification, even if only as potentialities. Second, identificatory

processes are practices, done by actually existing individuals. There is thus nothing

idealist about this argument. Collectivities and collective identities do not just exist ‘in

the mind’ or ‘on paper’. The distinction between groups and categories is an analogue of

identification always implies categorisation. The reverse is not always the case.

Categorisation, however, at least creates group identification as an immanent

possibility. groups and categories 111 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COLLECTIVE . . . AGAIN

these are distinguished from each other in the way that I have distinguished them here:

groups are defined by, and meaningful to, their members, while categories are externally

defined without any necessary recognition by their members (e.g. Turner and Bourhis

1996: 27–30). More consistently in this approach, however, the distinction between

groups and categories is weak and only implicit: a group is an actually existing concrete

point of reference for its members, while a category is a collectively defined

classification of identity, part of local common knowledge.

identifications. Social identity is sometimes the more salient influence on individual

behaviour. • Group membership is meaningful to individuals, conferring social identity

and permitting self-evaluation. It is a shared representation of who one is and the

appropriate behaviour attached to who one is. • Group membership in itself, regardless

of its context or meaning, is sufficient to encourage members to, for example,

discriminate against out-group members. Group members also exaggerate the

similarities within the in-group, and the differences between the in-group and out-group.

• Society is structured categorically, and organised by inequalities of power and

resources. It is in the translation of social categories into meaningful reference groups

that ‘social structure’ influences or produces individual behaviour.

Behaviour: cognitive simplification, comparison and 112 groups and categories

similarity and external difference. • Groups distinguish themselves from, and

discriminate against, other groups in order to promote their own positive social

evaluation and collective self-esteem. • Individuals and groups with unsatisfactory

social identity seek to restore or acquire positive identification via mobility, assimilation,

creativity or competition. • Moving from inter-group to intra-group matters, self-

categorisation theory focuses on the universal psychological processes that produce

themselves and the contingencies with which they are faced. This is merely a thumbnail

sketch of a complex and still growing body of research and literature that has become an

established social psychological paradigm in its own right (Brewer and Hewstone 2004;

Tajfel, for example, in his last word on stereotyping (1981b), went beyond cognitive

simplification as an explanation, adding the defence or preservation of values, the

creation or maintenance of group ideologies, and positive in-group differentiation (see

Chapter 12 for a further discussion of stereotyping). As might be expected, three decades

of development have generated considerable debate about ‘social identity theory’,

within the approach itself and with external critics. One of the most pertinent issues

concerns the empirical underpinnings of Tajfel’s – and Turner’s – foundational

propositions.

been asked by both supporters and critics about whether ‘social identity theory’ can be

generalised beyond its experimental context (e.g. Maass et al. 2000; Skevington and

Baker 1989). To stick with the example above it may, for example, be at least partly

because a minimal group is a simplified, no lose–no gain situation that experimental

subjects discriminate against the out-group in this way. Within the checks and balances

of the everyday human world, in which actions have real consequences, choices are

likely to be more complex (or may not be available at all). More specifically, there are

questions about whether the evidence supports generalisations about themes such as

inter-group evaluation and bias (Crisp and Hewstone 1999; Hewstone et al. 2002), inter-

group negative discrimination (Migdal et al. 1998; Turner and Reynolds 2004), the

approach seem to be uncontroversial: ambitious generalisations about large-scale

collective processes deriving from the investigation of micro-micro-level situations –

whether experimental or not – require considerable modesty in their formulation, even

when they are not completely unsafe. This issue has, however, been hard fought and has

yet to be accepted by most social psychologists, working as they do in a field in which

the experiment is still the gold-standard research design. From my point of view, there

perspective: groups are, at best, taken for 114 groups and categories granted as

simplified and reified features of the human landscape, actual interaction is largely

ignored, and identification appears to take place solely ‘inside people’s heads’. With

motivational factors such as ‘esteem’, ‘attraction’ and ‘liking’.6 These criticisms aside,

some recent writing within this paradigm resonates loudly with the arguments advanced

in this book. Deschamps and Devos (1998) have, for example, explored the relationship

between similarity and difference and ‘personal’ and ‘social’ identity, while Deaux (2000)

has looked at the range of motivations for social identification and the varying intensity

of group identification. Abrams’ account (1996) of how, depending on situational factors

and goal-orientations, selfidentification and self-attention may vary in their salience and

interact to produce self-regulation of varying intensity, suggests fruitful lines of inquiry

into the hows and whys of identification’s variability.

generic processes and is in itself a powerful influence on human behaviour. • These

experiments further suggest that categorisation, in my definition – i.e. external

identification, the process of placing people, in this case arbitrarily, into collectivities –

is also an important generic process, which can contribute to group identification. • The

approach understands collective identification as not just an internal group matter, but

as coming into being in the context of inter-group relations: thus groups identify

themselves against, and in their relationships with, other groups. • ‘Social identity theory’

also recognises that collective identifications are real for individuals – that they mean

something in real experience – and seeks to understand how that reality works. Probably

more to the point are personal factors, the nature of the discipline in question, and the

which natural science, rooted in the laboratory, held sway (even today, ‘humanist’

approaches remain a peripheral minority interest, often located outside mainstream

psychology departments). Tajfel himself was committed to the natural science model: it

isn’t obvious that anthropology, for example, or the work of Goffman would have

interested him. Finally, once established, the social identity and social categorisation

theorists pursued their work within a taken for granted normal science paradigm. Most