THEORETICAL CONCEPTUALISATIONS OF IDENTITY: ON THE FALSE PROBLEM OF NON-COMPLEMENTARITY OF COLLECTIVE AND PERSONAL IDENTITY

Abstract

The research subject refers to the theoretical perspectives of the identity of several authors – N. Sekulic, Z. Golubovic, B. Anderson, N. Djukic, E. Goffman, M. Castells, R. Watson, G. Small, Z. Bauman, S. Hall, V. Jerotic, R. Jenkins and A. Benoist. The search is for an answer to the question: Could priority be given to personal or social identity, according to importance? A noticeable research problem is the pluralism of conceptions that attach more importance to either individual or collective identity. The main hypothesis is that there is a false problem of non-complementarity of collective and personal identity, as well as an experiential connection (scientific law) between the political construction of collective identity and totalitarianism. The scientific goals are: 1) to describe the identity and the process of its creation; 2) to classify and explain the difference between personal and collective identity, with an emphasis on the integrative point of view of Golubovic and Jenkins on the complementarity between them; 3) to anticipate the experiential connection between the political construction of collective identity and totalitarianism due to the exclusion of Others from the constructed identity pattern, in order to establish complete state-political (party) control over all dimensions of everyday life beyond States. The methods of (descriptive and comparative) analysis, deduction, synthesis, induction, case studies and content analysis of identity conceptions based on a simple classification (significant - less significant type of identity) (Kukic & Markic, 2006: 217) and desk research will be used. The results of qualitative research are knowledge about identity, its types, its construction and the consequences of identity engineering, which were obtained through secondary, qualitative data (Kothari, 2004; Dale, Wathan & Higgins, 2008) during 'research in the library' (Kuba & Koking, 2004: 90) on bibliographic units from an abstracted sample.