Samenvatting Amartya Sen – Identity & Violence
Chapter 1 – The Violence of Illusion
Identity can provide strength, pride and confidence: integrated community with social capital.
However, an exclusive sense of belonging to one group can distance and divert one away from
other groups: cultivated violence and identity conflicts.
Recognition of Competing Affiliations
Where can the remedy for the latter be found?
o Identity can never be suppressed, since it’s not inherently evil.
o One solution could be to drawn on other identities that neutralize certain classifications.
A human belongs to countless groups, and all of these provide a certain identity.
Constraints and Freedoms
Communitarians think that there’s one communal identity, and that one can’ choose the
relevance importance of various groups which provide additional identities.
There are constraints that restrict our choices, it can only occur within certain limits.
Convincing Others
Seeing ourselves in a certain way is one thing, but one also needs to convince others to do so.
Charged contributions lead to misdescriptions of the other and an insistence that the
misdecribed attributes are the only relevant features of the other’s identity (singular identity).
To prevent this the relevance of alternative identities and reasoned choice need to be highlighted.
Denial of Choice and Responsibility
Without choices there’s conformism, even old customs such as human inequality.
In the face of questioning and scrutiny many assumed identities have crumbled.
Civilizational Incarceration
Humans can be classified according to countless systems of partitioning.
is the relation between different humans equal to the relation between different civilizations?
o All civilizations were internally divided and had a degree of outside interaction.
Thinking in dialogues or clashes between civilizations reduces the many-sidedness of humans.
More than a Federation of Religions
Focus on religious classifications magnifies the religious authority and misses the core ideas.
Muslims and Intellectual Diversity
There’s more to a person’s identity than their religion.
For this reason Islamic history needs to be separated from the history of the Muslim people.
The Flames of Confusion
The insistence of a choiceless singularity should be replaced with the plurality of identities.
Chapter 2 – Making sense of Identity
With multiple identities to choose from eachs get a different priority, depending on context.
o The importance of one identity can’t obliterate others.
o A person has to make choices about this relative importance, explicitly or by implication.
There are two ways in which the idea of a multitude of identities is neglected:
o Identity disregard: ignoring any sense of identity with others, for selfish values.
o Singular affiliation: any person belongs to one collectivity only, no more, no less.
Chapter 1 – The Violence of Illusion
Identity can provide strength, pride and confidence: integrated community with social capital.
However, an exclusive sense of belonging to one group can distance and divert one away from
other groups: cultivated violence and identity conflicts.
Recognition of Competing Affiliations
Where can the remedy for the latter be found?
o Identity can never be suppressed, since it’s not inherently evil.
o One solution could be to drawn on other identities that neutralize certain classifications.
A human belongs to countless groups, and all of these provide a certain identity.
Constraints and Freedoms
Communitarians think that there’s one communal identity, and that one can’ choose the
relevance importance of various groups which provide additional identities.
There are constraints that restrict our choices, it can only occur within certain limits.
Convincing Others
Seeing ourselves in a certain way is one thing, but one also needs to convince others to do so.
Charged contributions lead to misdescriptions of the other and an insistence that the
misdecribed attributes are the only relevant features of the other’s identity (singular identity).
To prevent this the relevance of alternative identities and reasoned choice need to be highlighted.
Denial of Choice and Responsibility
Without choices there’s conformism, even old customs such as human inequality.
In the face of questioning and scrutiny many assumed identities have crumbled.
Civilizational Incarceration
Humans can be classified according to countless systems of partitioning.
is the relation between different humans equal to the relation between different civilizations?
o All civilizations were internally divided and had a degree of outside interaction.
Thinking in dialogues or clashes between civilizations reduces the many-sidedness of humans.
More than a Federation of Religions
Focus on religious classifications magnifies the religious authority and misses the core ideas.
Muslims and Intellectual Diversity
There’s more to a person’s identity than their religion.
For this reason Islamic history needs to be separated from the history of the Muslim people.
The Flames of Confusion
The insistence of a choiceless singularity should be replaced with the plurality of identities.
Chapter 2 – Making sense of Identity
With multiple identities to choose from eachs get a different priority, depending on context.
o The importance of one identity can’t obliterate others.
o A person has to make choices about this relative importance, explicitly or by implication.
There are two ways in which the idea of a multitude of identities is neglected:
o Identity disregard: ignoring any sense of identity with others, for selfish values.
o Singular affiliation: any person belongs to one collectivity only, no more, no less.
