From: Sultanov Arsen

To: Aida Baigarayeva

Course: Political Science
Group: 10-N
Topic: Identity Politics
What is identity?
Identity encompasses the memories, experience, relationships, and values that creates someone’s
sense of themselves. This complex creates a steady sense of who one is over time, even as new
faces are developed and incorporated in one's identity.
Identity includes many relationships that people cultivate, such as: identity as a child, parent,
partner. It involves external factors over which people have little or no control such as: height,
socioeconomic class. Identity also encompasses political opinion, religious beliefs and moral
attitude, all of which guide the choice one makes on a daily basis.
People who are overly concerned with the impression they make, or who feel a core aspect of
themselves, such as gender or sexuality, is not being expressed, can struggle acutely with their
identity. Reflecting on the discrepancy between who one is and who one wants to be can be a
powerful catalyst for change.
What defines Identity?
Identity encompasses multiple roles: Father, Teacher, Citizen of KZ - each of them has meaning
and expectation that are internalised into identity. Identity continues to evolve over the course of
an individual's life.
Identity formation has three key tasks: Discovering and developing one’s potential, choosing
one’s purpose in life, seeking opportunities to exercise and accomplish one’s purpose.
Identity in Politics
Identity in Politics is widely used in many different movements. Identity Politics' purpose is to
overthrow any kind of oppression and bond with each other in order to create influential, same
minded identity groups.
Race and Ethnicity
In seeking to challenge economic and social marginalisation, black nationalism in the USA
and elsewhere constituted the prototype for identity politics, especially through its emphasis on
‘consciousness raising’. It reached its apogee in the 70's in the USA, three different movements,
“NAACP” “Black Panther” “Black Muslim”, with their own vision on solving the same problem,
fought for race and ethnicity right equivalency. Head of the NAACP, Martin Lutor King, fought
for the rights through politics in a non-military way. Contralely, members of “Black Panthers”
were convinced that they had to use violence. “Black Muslim” obviously used religion as a
foundation to fight against discrimination.
Most recent and relevant movement was “BLM”. It was extremely violent, however
influential, those people chanted their slogan “Black Lives Matter” to the whole world, drawing
to a huge racial problem - Racism corresponding attention.
 Even though any kind of racism is impermissible, we must avoid any sort of violence. High
moral issues in modern civilisation must be solved appropriately, with minimum cruelty.
Cultural diversity
One of the most powerful factors underpinning the global significance of identity politics has
been the increase in international migration, particularly since the 1950s, and the consequent
growth in cultural diversity. Attempts to balance diversity against cohesion are usually dubbed
‘multiculturalism’.
The central theme within all forms of multiculturalism is that individual identity is culturally
embedded, in the sense that people largely derive their understanding of the world and their
framework of moral beliefs from the culture in which they live and develop. Distinctive cultures
therefore deserve to be protected or strengthened, particularly when they belong to minority or
vulnerable groups. Will Kymlicka (1995) identified three kinds of minority rights:
self-government rights, polyethnic rights and representation rights. Self-government rights
belong, Kymlicka argued, to what he called ‘national minorities’, peoples who are territorially
concentrated, possess a shared language and are characterised by a ‘meaningful way of life
across the full range of human activities’, for instance Native Americans. Polyethnic rights are
rights that help ethnic groups and religious minorities, that have developed through immigration,
to express and maintain their cultural distinctiveness. They would, for instance, provide the basis
for legal exemptions, such as the exemption of Jews and Muslims from animal slaughtering laws,
the exemption of Sikh men from wearing motorcycle helmets, and the exemption of Muslim girls
from school dress codes. Special representation rights attempt to redress the underrepresentation
of minority or disadvantaged groups in education, and in senior positions in political and public
life.
Free will is the main concept of the current civilization and we need to support it in all
morally appropriate manifestations. Here, in Kazakhstan, we have a well-developed multicultural
system. More than 125 nationalities live in peace and harmony, without the restrictions of their
ethnic culture. We just have to support this system.
Gender and Identity
Identity politics in gender politics represented in the movement called Feminism. In what
may broadly be called equality feminism, difference implies oppression or subordination; it
highlights legal, political, social and other advantages that men enjoy but which are denied to
women. Women, in that sense, must be liberated from difference. However, although most
feminists have regarded the sex/gender distinction as a source of empowerment, it was criticised
by another form of feminism - “Difference Feminism”: A form of feminism that holds that there
are deep and possibly ineradicable differences between women and men, whether these are
rooted in biology, culture or material experience.
Hence there are still misunderstandings between men and women, we must stay alert and
think critically about gender inequality. Gender equality brings plenty of advantages not only for
women, but for the whole society. It's estimated that the consequence of distributing equal
opportunities is a rise of the country’s economy as it was in the Netherlands.
Religion and Politics
Back in the days Religion played a crucial role in Politics, the rulers of the churches had a
huge influence on the decisions of kings, events in the country and so on. However, people came
to the decision that religion should not interfere in secular affairs. This principle is called
Secuarilism.
Beginning in the 70's with the “Iran revolution” in 1979, religion in the form of Islamism
began to play a more important role in world politics. It is worth adding that Islamism is not a
religion itself, it’s a political view of the particular people who believe in Islam, hence it doesn’t
make an Islam a military religion. Although religious revivalism can be seen as a consequence
of the larger upsurge in identity politics, religion has proved to be a particularly potent means of
regenerating personal and social identity in modern circumstances. As modern societies are
increasingly atomistic, diffuse and pluralized, there is, arguably, a greater thirst for the sense of
meaning, purpose and certainty that religious consciousness appears to offer. This applies
because religion provides believers with a world-view and moral vision that has higher authority,
as it stems from a supposedly divine source. Religion thus defines the very grounds of people’s
being; it gives them an ultimate frame of reference, as well as a moral orientation in a world
increasingly marked by moral relativism. It also links people between each other, creating a
strong Identified group with its own moral principles and preferences.
(Heywood, 2019, #)
References

Heywood, A. (2019). Politics (5-th ed.). Red Globe Press.