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Identity Mania : Fundamentalism and the Politicization of Cultural Differences

Name: Identity Mania : Fundamentalism and the Politicization of Cultural Differences
Author: Thomas Meyer
ISBN: 9781842770634

by Thomas Meyer

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Overview

A critically important question confronts many countries in the post-Cold War epoch: are culturally determined political conflicts inevitable?

While acknowledging people's need for identity, and that different cultures necessarily produce differentiated identities, Professor Meyer argues that difference only leads to intolerance and violence when politically ambitious leaderships exploit it. Fundamentalism is therefore essentially a political phenomenon that has occured in all civilizations, particularly in contemporary Europe and North America. In the present age of globalization, Meyer suggests that social crisis grows out of an exclusionary dynamic that marginalizes growing numbers of people. Little wonder that the deepening of inequality between North and South has undermined popular confidence in secular leaders' vision of development and triggered a divisive fundamentalism that declares war on modernism and, ironically, on traditionalism too.

This argument contains real grounds for optimism. In seeking political strategies to defeat fundamentalism and the identity mania that accompanies it, the focus must be on developing economic and social structures that give all citizens a common interest in the operations of a socially responsible market economy, which delivers to all.

About the Author, Thomas Meyer

Thomas Meyer is Professor of Political Science at the University of Dortmund. Born in 1943, he studied philosophy and political science with Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas and Fetscher in Frankfurt am Main. He has taught and conducted research in several countries, including India, and is the author of numerous essays and books on culture and politics, political communication, and socialism. These include Fundamentalismus: Aufstand gegen die Moderne (1989), Was bleibt vom Sozialismus? (1990), and Die Transformation des Politischen (1994).

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This is an English version of Meyer's text originally published in German as ts-Wahn: Die Politisierung des kulturellen Unterschieds/> in 1997 by Aufbau Taschenbuch-Verlag GmbH, Berlin. A foreword by Hartmut Elsenhans (U. of Leipzig) provides a brief analysis of the text. Meyer (political science, U. of Dortmund) examines the problem of why, despite their general agreement on basic cultural values, enmities continue between cultures. He includes a critique of Samuel Huntington's argument about the inevitability of cultural conflicts, and discusses ways in which politically ambitious leaders exploit differences. English translation by Madhulika Reddy and Lew Hinchman. No subject index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)