Workshop: Beyond Identity? New Avenues for Interdisciplinary Research on Identity

GENERAL INFORMATION

The workshop was organised by the University of Wrocław and the Academia Europaea Wrocław Hub.

The workshop was organised with the financial support of the AE Hubert Curien Initiatives Fund, Riksbankens Jubileunsfond grant, and Wrocław Municipality funding allowing the coverage of the costs of travel and accommodation for the participants.

As one of the outcomes, the organisers planned a publication.

The conveners were Professor Ireneusz P. Karolewski, MAE, from Leipzig University, Professor Virginie Mamadouh, MAE, from the University of Amsterdam, and Dr. Dorota Kołodziejczyk from the University of Wrocław, Postcolonial Studies Centre.

The purpose of the workshop was to map out positions of compatibility, difference, and even disagreement in theories and methodologies in various disciplinary takes on identity, with the intent to develop cross-disciplinary analytical and theoretical frameworks and thus deepen our understanding of identity-related processes.

Identity has been a contested concept in social sciences and humanities. On the one hand, there are some doubts about whether the concept has much analytical value given its broad meaning between constructivism (dynamic nature) and essentialism (fixed nature). While some scholars proclaim radical social construction of individual identity (e.g. Bauman’s “liquid identity”), others point to fixed parameters of, for instance, national identity and the unparalleled power of identity-making entities such as states.
Against this background, the workshop sought to devise an interdisciplinary dialogue spanning social sciences and humanities – sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, philosophy, history, cultural studies, literature, and linguistics. The main aim of the workshop was to bring together insights from various disciplines into how individual and collective identities are formed, negotiated, and fixed, as well as how individual and collective formats and purposes in identity interact or clash. In particular, the fixed aspects of identity-making versus socially constructed factors (including xeno-formatting of identity, for instance, by states) were of interest in order to determine the degree of “constructability” in identity-making processes. A further goal was to debate the long-established, classical research positions, and the newest advancements in theory and empirical findings in various disciplines to better grasp possible changes of paradigms in exploring identity.
In addition, the scholars engaged in discussions on how to combine various disciplinary insights into an analytical framework that could be used to explore the contemporary issues of identity, devise common approaches, and find possible solutions to current identity problems including sectarianism, nationalism, ethnic violence, violent identity politics, and identity-fuelled wars.

Workshop: Beyond Identity? New Avenues for Interdisciplinary Research on Identity Vol.4 from Marcin Opęchowski on Vimeo.