The Role of Social Consciousness and Collective Identification in the Formation of Inter-Civic Conflicts

This article analyses the role of social consciousness and collective identification in the formation of inter-civic conflicts, that is, of antagonisms arising between groups of citizens within a single polity. The study proceeds from the thesis that difference of identity is not the cause of such conflicts but their medium, since societies containing every variety of difference remain peaceable for long periods; the explanatory question is therefore not which identities exist but how a dormant category becomes a mobilised one. The author substantiates the mechanism of identity flattening, by which the plurality of a person’s affiliations is reduced to a single membership absorbing the remainder, and distinguishes four stages of this reduction. The analysis establishes that the decisive variable is the structure of social consciousness rather than the content of the identities concerned, and that the preservation of overlapping and cross-cutting affiliations is correspondingly the principal preventive resource. The polemic between S. Huntington and A. Sen concerning the singularity of civilisational identity is subjected to critical examination.