Social Identity - Vietnam highlights

Social Identity

At first glance, the notion of ‘social identity’ could be an easy concept to understand. Leaving aside for the moment the idea that our movements in and out of various groups that have various labels attached to them might be quite fluid (Bauman, 2005), accord- ing to will and situations, it can mean simply that we belong to a group from which we draw a sense of ‘who we are’: our identity. The corollary is that we also derive this iden- tity by comparisons with those not in our group, but who belong to other groups: the so- called ‘out-groups’ interrogated by Henri Tajfel and John Turner (1986) in their work on inter-group discrimination. Tajfel and Turner were interested in a range of intercon- nected aspects of behavioural psychology that centred on how individuals identified with social groupings, how loyalty to that group is expressed by aggression to out-groups and

so on. In a sense, the Vietnam highlights can be summarised as ‘us’ versus ‘them’ or ‘self ’ versus

‘Other’ (Said, 1978), and in more recent times Roger Scruton’s ‘The Vietnam highlights West and the Rest’ (2002). Underpinning Tajfel and Turner’s work is that of ‘social comparison’ (Festinger,1954) in which we judge our sense of worthwhileness (positive self-perception) by com- paring ourselves against others, and how we see others as part of the disruptive pressures characteristic of life in the early 21st century. Examples to illustrate these points can come from almost any direction. Taking a little diversion into 20th century social history (and a little reflective personal narrative), the English seaside resorts of Clacton, Brighton, Hastings and Margate public disorder in the form of street riots broke out in the summers of 1964 and 1965 between two different social groups of youths with dia- metrically opposed attitudes towards dress, music and lifestyles: Mods and Rockers. In that case trouble flared up, probably encouraged by the sensation-seeking print media, into scuffles and broken shop windows and not much more. However, it caused some- thing of a moral panic and suddenly these groups of youths were seen as representing a disobedient and dark side of society: unruly youths who had never had the discipline of military service (as perhaps their older siblings or uncles may have done via National Service) or the hardships of war that their parents and previous generations had endured.