Interests and Identities

Abstract

Abstract Citizenship creates a problem of collective action. In rejecting kinship-like criteria as the basis for rule and membership, citizenship raises the question on what basis can “society” be shaped as a shared collectivity? The concept of interest has provided a contractual grounding for linking individuals into a social whole. Identity, alternatively, pointed to cognitive and emotional foundations for anchoring the individual in a collectivity. The concepts of interest and identity mirror the framings of, respectively, demos and ethnos. In the nation-state, the ethnos of nationalism has been the basis of describing the collective identity. While citizenship has served the role of defining rights and membership, its transformative role in making the individual part of a collective civic identity is less evident. Citizenship has not been the basis for invoking the sense of a collective, emotionally felt identity. Arriving at a “collectively felt” civic identity is key for repairing democracies.