Identity, Identification, Habitus: A Process Sociology Approach

Identity is a polysemic, politically saturated and even polemical notion. Sometimes considered a formidable problem when it is associated with fundamentalism and extreme nationalism, identity is seen at other times as a precious asset, a project to be built or a treasure to be regained, for example when it is a question of a European identity. However, the term identity remains difficult to replace. The many phenomena it evokes are nothing less than existential, for individuals and groups, in that they refer to the questions ‘Who am I?’, ‘Who are we?’ and ‘Who are they?’, as Charles Tilly pointed out. By focusing more on processes of identification than on given identities, historical sociology reveals the relational and changing character of these phenomena and avoids the trap of essentialism. But it also avoids the pitfalls of constructivism, of seeing identities everywhere or nowhere. In particular, Norbert Elias’s sociology of figurations and processes considers the long-term transformations of political and psychic structures. Reconciling macro- and micro-sociological perspectives, this approach focuses on interdependent relationships and power differences between social groups as well as on the place of affects, notably when political identities are at stake. Eliasian-inspired historical sociology thus makes it possible to question the feelings of belonging and the process of identification with a post-national Europe. In the end, process sociology allows for a better understanding of the resistance that the tenacity of ‘national habitus’ continues to put up against it on the part of the citizens of the European Union Member States