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Identity in the globalising world

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2001

Zygmunt Bauman
Affiliation:
1 Lawnswood Gardens, Leeds LS16 6HF, England
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Abstract

The paper suggests that instead of talking about identities, inherited or acquired, it would be more in keeping with the realities of the globalising world to speak of identification, a never-ending, always incomplete, unfinished and open-ended activity in which we all, by necessity or by choice, are engaged. The frantic search of identity is not a residue of the pre-globalization times not yet fully extirpated but bound to become extinct as the globalization progresses; it is, on the contrary, the side-effect and by-product of the combination of globalising and individualising pressures and the tensions they spawn. The identification wars are neither contrary nor stand in the way of the globalising tendency: they are a legitimate offspring and natural companion of globalisation and far from arresting it, lubricate its wheels.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2001 European Association of Social Anthropologists

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Footnotes

Plenary lecture, 6th EASA conference, Krakow, July 2000.