The Importance Of Identity

Words: 1386
Pages: 6

As we know, identity is a historically constructed concept that plays a crucial role in helping understand the world and shape us as individuals. There are many aspects to ones identity such as cultural, social, economical and political. Despite the common factors that create ones identity such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, religion, our identity is also based on ideologies that are socially formed. This paper will focus on the identity of the narrator and how all the different aspects of identity affected it.

Through a political lens, we come across ones ethnicity, class, race, and nation and how that forms an individual. The UAE, where the narrator’s from, is a nation where its religion, also a form of political power, is highly influential

As stated previously, ones Nationality is not only based on their birthplace, but on the relationship between the individual and the state. The importance of nationalism and your ethnicity is a huge factor in the political world despite individual development. “In the early twentieth century, many social theorists held that ethnicity and nationalism would decrease in importance and eventually vanish as a result of modernization, industrialization and individualism. This never came about. On the contrary, ethnicity and nationalism have grown in political importance in the world, particularly since the Second World War.” (Eriksen,
Ones individual identity may indeed conflict with the idea of modernization nowadays since western values are implemented with the idea of “modern” and people forget that their culture can remain the same but modern. The UAE is trying to put that concept to life where emerging as a nation is one thing, but to change it is far from the point.
“Due to the economic modernization and social change, people are separated from longstanding local identities. Instead, religion has replaced this gap, which provides a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national boundaries and unites civilizations.” (Huntington,