The Illusion of Identity: Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen on Violence, Identity, and Globalization: International Development Research Centre

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The Illusion of Identity: Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen on Violence, Identity, and Globalization

Video of Amartya Sen's presentation

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Amartya Sen
IDRC Photos: Michael Bedford

2006-04

By Nadine Robitaille

Dividing humans into clearly defined groups solely based on their religion or nationality is not only a simplistic way to view the world, it is also dangerous, argues eminent economist Amartya Sen.

As the inaugural lecturer for the International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) Speaker Series, Professor Sen spoke to a wide Ottawa audience gathered at Ottawa’s National Gallery on 12 April 2006. Professor Sen, the 1998 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, warned that limiting one’s perception of a person to his or her religion, race, or nationality, is often the basis for violence.

“We may suddenly be informed that we are not just Rwandans but specifically Hutus (‘we hate Tutsis’), or that we are not really mere Yugoslavs but actually Serbs (‘we absolutely don’t like Muslims’),” said Sen.

Examples of the havoc this limited identification can lead to include the Rwanda Genocide, the September 112002 terrorist attacks in New York, and the Hindu-Muslim riots that he witnessed as a child in British India.

“From my own childhood memory of Hindu-Muslim riots in the 1940s… I recollect the speed with which the broad human beings of January were suddenly transformed into the ruthless Hindus and fierce Muslims of July,” said Sen.

In reality, says Sen, people have many identities.

Mistaken identities

”We see ourselves as members of a variety of groups – we belong to all of them. A person’s citizenship, residence, geographic origin, gender, class, politics, profession, employment, food habits, sports interests, taste in music, social commitments, etc., make us members of a variety of groups. Each of these collectivities, to all of which this person simultaneously belongs, gives her a particular identity. None of them can be taken to be the person’s only identity or singular membership category.”

Professor Sen’s talk was based on his most recent book, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, published in March 2006 as part of W.W. Norton & Company’s “Issues of Our Time” series.

In the book, as in his lecture, Sen argues that conflict and violence are sustained today, no less than in the past, by the illusion of a singular identity that is predetermined by birth or religious affiliation, regardless of one’s level of allegiance to that particular identity.

“To take [religion] to be the overarching basis of social, political, and cultural analysis in general would amount to overlooking all the other associations and loyalties any individual may have, and which could be significant in the person’s behavior, identity, and self-understanding,” says Sen.

“He offers a systematic and wonderfully liberating reminder that identity—our own and others’—is largely a matter of choice. How we exercise that choice can literally be a matter of life and death,” said IDRC President Maureen O’Neil, in introducing Professor Sen. “This is research intended to inform and expand the choices that people in developing societies have to decide their own futures.”

New focus on development

Sen is widely regarded as one of the great thinkers of our time. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics for his contributions to welfare economics, redefining the ways we measure poverty, understand famine, and form collective decisions. Currently Lamont University Professor at Harvard University, Sen was formerly Master of Trinity College in Cambridge, England and is the author of a dozen books, including On Ethics and Economics, Development as Freedom and The Argumentative Indian.

“When I heard Sen was coming to Ottawa, I was like ‘I have to go, I have to go!’” enthused Kristen Hope, a student in Political Science and Human Rights at Carleton University. “He’s completely changed the way I look at development studies.”

Sen’s wit and good humour delighted the crowd of close to 500 students and academics, civil servants, journalists, economists, researchers, and development workers, among others.

“The fact that so many people came to see Amartya Sen speak clearly demonstrates the public’s desire for thought-provoking presentations,“ said IDRC’s Director of Communications, Chantal Schryer.

Sen’s presentation was the first in IDRC’s new Speaker Series that will feature provocative presentations on issues of social justice and development, “contributions that can re-open our minds to the hardest questions of our age,” said Schryer. “The Speaker Series provides Canadians with an independent forum to debate those issues and ideas.”

Nadine Robitaille is a writer with IDRC's Communications Division