Collective Identity - Collective Identity in Political Science

Collective Identity in Political Science

Marxist concepts of class consciousness can be considered a root of collective identity. The identity of the class was tied to its values and interests, and includes solidarity. This idea of solidarity is shared by Durkheim, who argues that collective identity helps create bonds between individuals through shared morals and goals. In the late 1970's, Weber critiqued Marx's focus on production and instead suggests that class, status, and party form the three sources of collective identity.

Alexander Wendt is well known for his writings on constructivist political theory, in which collective identity play a prominent role as identity is a major determining factor in the role of states in the international order. His approach focuses on group and individual identity, at the domestic and international level. This application of collective identity to explaining and describing the international system is the basis of constructivism. Constructivism has a strong focus on the social discourse that create these identities, which not only designate a country as a collective actor but possible alliances as collective groups. By grouping together countries, either by their own decision or by third parties, new alliances or blocs form through the collective identity assigned to them, even if sometimes this assignment is based on inaccurate binary groupings. Regardless of accuracy of grouping, the very act of grouping these countries together affects how the international system views them and thus treats them, which in return causes the countries to identify with each other in terms of their common position internationally.