National identity and national identity

National identity and national identity belong to the individual's identity with the whole, but there are differences between them.

The first is that the identified objects are different. The object of ethnic identity is "ethnic group". With regard to the connotation of "ethnic group", Max Weber first defined it as "a human group with similar body shape, customs or both, or with the same subjective belief of origin because of colonial or immigrant memory, which is crucial to the formation of the group and has no necessary connection with the existence of objective blood relationship". Benedict Anderson believes that ethnic groups are "fictional". People with the same beliefs are different because of their myths, history, cultural attributes and national ideology. Banton defined ethnic groups as "people with the same blood and culture". Guo Hongji, a famous scholar, said: "Nationalities are mainly based on the same names, myths, values and customs, with ancestral home, historical narrative and folklore as their cultural roots. There are cultural elements such as race, descent, language, religion, customs and local culture, as well as psychological feelings and non-political behaviors based on historical traditions. As a symbol of a certain identity, a nation has its own living space and related traditions, including religious organizations and clergy, such as temples, rituals and doctrines, as well as nostalgic motifs and identity symbol systems, such as national heroes, religious leaders, loyalty consciousness 150, grasslands, forests, mountains and ethnic origins. "

Correspondingly, the object of national identity is "country". Regarding the connotation of "country", Cicero defined it as: "the country is the cause of the people, but the people are not some random aggregate of the people, but the people are an aggregate of many people based on the consistency of laws and the unity of interests." On the basis of in-depth study of the causes of the emergence of the state and its laws of development and change, and summing up the characteristics of various types of countries and their position and role in social life, Marxism puts forward a comprehensive and scientific definition of the state: the state is a machine in which one class oppresses another class and one class controls all the ruled classes. This is Lenin's most comprehensive and accurate summary of Marx and Engels' national views.

It should be said that the state is the product and expression of irreconcilable social contradictions. When a nation lives in a fixed territory (often the same nation or the same consciousness) and exercises legal political power in this nation, there is a country. The so-called people, in the past, especially in western Europe, first referred to a nation. In modern times, it refers to all people who are subject to sovereign power. It can be one nationality or several nationalities. In the domestic political field, people are more defined as citizens, that is, people who have the right to participate in political affairs. This is a concept in legal and political sense. It transcends people's differences in economic status, culture and occupation, and gives people a new identity.

National identity is based on blood and culture. They emphasized the importance of primitive feelings in culture. The so-called primary connection or emotion refers to the origin from the assumed tradition. The acquisition of national power comes from the basic cultural characteristics of the nation. These basic cultural characteristics include biological inheritance from parents' genes, that is, personal physiological characteristics, such as skin color and facial contour. It also includes social characteristics obtained through family intermediary, such as language, nationality, religion, history and origin. These primitive emotional connections form the basis of identity and recognition. Because human beings belong to a fixed ethnic group, because of gene evolution and blood relationship, ethnic group is generally a priority, established and powerful social constraint. Ethnic relations have priority in logic and time, and are coercive and emotional. Racial restraint trumps other loyalties. This strong sense of identity and unity, that is, primitive identity, may create some obstacles, hinder or even destroy the process of national construction.

National identity is more based on citizens who take the constitution as the criterion. Confirming the ownership of one's country is a spiritual activity and an abstract philosophical thinking. National identity mainly refers to the individual's confirmation of his political identity and what expectations he has for the political identity he wants to belong to. In a sense, national identity is the most important identity among all collective identities. The country has a better sense of morality. National identity must first have the same contact basis, one is blood relationship and historical memory, and the other is the sense of unity formed by enjoying a certain public space or interpersonal relationship with others. Ernest Lennan believes that "seeking a balance between memory and forgetfulness, past and future ..." "The country has preset a history, which has now been reduced to an obvious fact, that is, national identity." For different people, a country may be a nation-state, a cultural country or a political country. These three levels are usually together, but they may also be based on one level. The standards of citizens' national identity can be divided into three categories: ethnic consanguinity, historical and cultural traditions and political, social and economic systems. Accordingly, national identity can be discussed from these three levels: national identity, cultural identity and institutional identity. From this perspective, national identity actually includes national identity.

Because ethnic groups and countries belong to two different levels of identity orientation, multinational countries sometimes face disharmony between ethnic group identity and national identity (hereinafter referred to as "identity disharmony"). The reasons for this disharmony are not only the internal differences between nations and countries, but also the economic, cultural and psychological factors.

The first is economic factors. Economic factors mainly refer to the disharmony between ethnic identity and national identity induced by economic inequality psychology. This kind of unequal psychology may exist in the marginal areas with underdeveloped economy or in the marginal areas with high economic level. "Ethnic identity is consciously manipulated and applied in economic competition." "Ethnic organizations are actually similar to political organizations. Social interaction and organizational essence are dual phenomena, and politicians are also symbolic people. Race is an organizational form that develops this duality for special purposes. "

Generally speaking, the marginalization of non-main ethnic groups or ethnic minorities is manifested in their traditional closed and autonomous small society, which integrates into the larger society and becomes its marginal component (the main ethnic groups and developed ethnic groups are in the larger social center); It shows that their primitive natural economy began to turn to commodity economy, and their transitional economy is in a subordinate and unequal position in the national commodity economic system. Because the economic status of the center and the periphery is relatively unequal, it is easy to breed dissatisfaction objectively, leading to disharmony in identity. This relative inequality is related to the theory of relative deprivation. The theory of relative deprivation emphasizes that what causes national psychological imbalance is not objective inequality, but a sense of frustration or relative deprivation, which promotes the occurrence of identity disharmony. The definition of relative deprivation is that people think they should have the right to living materials and conditions, and there is a relative difference in psychological feeling between them and the living materials and conditions they can actually obtain or maintain. Regarding the viewpoint of relative deprivation, Marxism has already had a good explanation. Its basic view is that social groups and their members generally compare their status and destiny with other groups or individuals only in a limited range, and usually only in the sense of social scale. Although status, material and society may be absolute progress, compared with other groups, they still care about their own progress. Social movements and political behaviors are the result of frustration of some members or groups, who feel that they are relatively deprived and hindered in the competition for wealth, status, services and power. According to this view, identity disharmony is the result of relative deprivation of regions. This kind of identity disharmony generally occurs in typical backward areas, and sometimes in areas with more developed economic level than the central region, such as the Basque country in Spain and Quebec province in Canada.

Followed by cultural and psychological factors. Ethnic disharmony caused by cultural and psychological factors is more accompanied by the process of modernization. With regard to modernization, economists define it as "the process in which human beings gradually improve their ability to control the external environment and use this ability to improve their per capita output". Sociologists believe that modernization includes the characteristics of "arousing and stimulating public interest in present and future life, thinking that human life is understandable rather than subject to supernatural forces, and the trust in science and technology that has only been established until now". In fact, modernization is not only a homogeneous process, but also a differentiated process. Modernization not only does not cause homogeneity and dispel pluralism, but often causes heterogeneity and pluralism.

"The development of modernization has broken the traditional way of production and life, and social changes have brought people insecurity." With the political and cultural evolution of modernization, although a wider range of groups have been brought into the central field, at the same time, it is quite contradictory to produce the potential of alienation of these groups from the central political and social system and the growing potential of indescribable and abnormal isolation from society. And these are more intense as their expectations of participating in the central field increase. However, all these changes have not only caused various disintegration situations, but also increased the interdependence and influence between major groups and strata, thus increasing the possibility of conflicts between them. Bringing various groups and strata into a relatively similar framework and strengthening their interaction can greatly increase the cracks and conflicts between them. Different groups are more interdependent and understand each other, which not only increases the scope and frequency of conflicts between them, but also increases their feelings and intensity. When some ethnic groups enter the stage of modernization, they constantly feel the crisis of disintegration of social structure and traditional culture, and have emotional resistance to the integration of foreign advanced culture. Strong ethnic identity will naturally become an expression of venting pain. Therefore, in order to maintain the purity, continuity and superiority of the national cultural tradition, a strong pursuit of national identity has been formed. "Although the central government of a multi-ethnic country tries to spread its language and culture to all the people as widely as possible, it is always difficult to realize this ideal in some marginal areas beyond the power of the central government ... Even if external factors pose a bottom-up danger to marginal culture in the future, it will serve as a stimulus to urge ethnic groups in marginal areas to take corresponding group actions to defend traditional culture and local customs."

Therefore, a puzzling problem of modernization is that "nationalism has not died out with the development of politics and economy. In fact, a high degree of political participation and a rapidly expanding gross national product often give new life to nationalist groups and enable them to seek more benefits in the development process. " Therefore, for multi-ethnic countries, modernization is more likely to catalyze the tendency of ethnic separation within them. Because modernization has led to a sharp increase in contacts between different ethnic groups, the probability of conflict has also increased than before. Although modernization may bring different groups together more, the impact of modernization is different due to ethnic differences. The process of modernization may be beneficial to some ethnic groups, but it may also be unfavorable to others. These different influences often cause a sense of relative deprivation of some ethnic groups, which is amplified by modern media technology and good interpersonal communication. The gap between ethnic groups increases, which eventually leads to identity disharmony.