Nested cultural identities reinforce rather than displace loyalty to larger wholes

Evidence

Along any single dimension, identity is usually most meaningful at the immediate face-to-face level. Narrower identities, however, do not necessarily conflict with broader ones. A military officer can identify institutionally with his company, regiment, division, and service. Similarly, a person can identify culturally with his or her clan, ethnic group, nationality, religion, and civilization. The increased salience of cultural identity at lower levels may well reinforce its salience at higher levels. As Burke suggested: “The love to the whole is not extinguished by this subordinate partiality. … To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ, as it were) of public affections.” In a world where culture counts, the platoons are tribes and ethnic groups, the regiments are nations, and the armies are civilizations. The increased extent to which people throughout the world differentiate themselves along cultural lines means that conflicts between cultural groups are increasingly important; civilizations are the broadest cultural entities; hence conflicts between groups from different civilizations become central to global politics. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 344

Categorization

• XREF: Edmund Burke’s ‘little platoon’ quote invokes a conservative social theory that parallels the nested-identity argument; connects to readings on patriotism and group solidarity. — connects to: Weakening national identity reduces minorities’ capacity to affirm belonging — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 2074; Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model frames identity as nested social-environment systems — Tatiana I. Zamora and Amado M. Padilla, Making sense of conflicting messages of…, 41