The Nobel economist turns his attention to how the idea of static, self-contained “civilizations” fragments the world and sows conflict — and how that process can be reversed.

Amartya Sen has won international renown (and a Nobel prize) for his ground-breaking work in economics, but it’s clear from his most recent book, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, that one academic discipline cannot contain his vast intellectual curiosity and concern for humankind.

A sweeping philosophical inquiry, this lively work ponders how the ways we choose to define ourselves shape our global culture. Increasingly, Sen believes, people in opposite corners of the Earth conceive of themselves in very narrow ways — often choosing to be identified almost singularly by religion or nationality. This is a process Sen referred to, in a conversation following his IDRC-sponsored lecture in Ottawa on 12 April 2006, as “the miniaturization of human beings, where we must be [one dimensional people] standing in opposition to the things that are not part of us.”

Not that a strong attachment to place, culture, and community need be a negative thing. As Sen notes in Identity and Violence, the bonds of culture and community lie at the heart of what development theorists call “social capital” — an invisible yet powerful force that can bring about great constructive change.

Furthermore, there’s no reason to think that feeling a kinship with one’s own community precludes defining one’s self more broadly or having tolerance and empathy for others. “There are a great variety of categories to which we simultaneously belong,” writes Sen, noting that he himself identifies as “an Asian, an Indian citizen, a Bengali of Bangladeshi ancestry, an American or British resident… a man, a feminist,” and so on.

Yet when people focus on one strand of identity, Sen believes, they are likely to run into trouble — leaving themselves vulnerable to manipulation by the proponents of ethnic chauvinism who have left a trail of bloodshed from Nazi Germany to Northern Ireland, Nigeria to Rwanda to India and Pakistan and far beyond.

This reflex to define oneself in a singular way has become stronger in the current era of economic and cultural globalization. Sen sees this as largely the product of the mistaken belief that that “modern” society is synonymous with — or a product of — Western culture. But this view, Sen believes, has arisen largely from a misreading of history. For example, although science and mathematics are often viewed as Western inventions, the author notes that the fifth century Indian mathematician Aryabhata was experimenting with trigonometry concepts, toying with models of gravitational attraction, and developing arguments about the rotation of the earth — while the West remained in darkness. Similarly, ideas about democracy and personal liberty — although contentious wherever they’ve been introduced — arguably have deeper historical roots in the East than in the West.

“When at the turn of the sixteenth century,” writes Sen, “the heretic Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Campo dei Fiori in Rome, the Great Mughal emperor Akbar (who was born a Muslim and died a Muslim), had just finished, in Agra, his large project of legally codifying minority rights, including religious freedom for all.”

Against Sen’s view of a global human civilization created by centuries of continual cultural and intellectual interchange, stands the concept of “clash of civilizations” proposed today by Western political theorists but enthusiastically endorsed, Sen notes, by Islamic fundamentalists who want their followers to reject “Western” values. Sen believes that a great challenge in all parts of the world is to break free of the “civilizational confinement” proposed by those who see modernity as a strictly Western creation, and for the non-Western world to reclaim its heritage as innovators in social, cultural, and scientific spheres.

Amartya Sen spoke with IDRC about the personal roots of his interest in the connection between identity and violence, and about the role of rationality and conscious choice in human affairs.

IDRC:

You make your arguments in Identity and Violence in a very meticulous, rational, and calm way. But toward the end of the book, you reveal that you became personally involved in this question during the communal riots that took place in the India of your childhood, when you encountered a man who had been badly beaten simply because he was a Muslim. When you were writing this book, was the confused, frightened young boy — the boy that you were at the time — with you in the room?

Amartya Sen:

I was 11 when that happened. That man — his name was Kadar Mia — was attacked right outside our house. He came in when I was alone in the garden and it was I who had to get my father down to take him to the hospital, where he died. Until my father put him in the car, I gave him water. He was lying in the garden with his head on my lap, bleeding profusely from the injuries from which he would ultimately die. The reality of that death experience could not possibly go away from me.

Looking back at it with a distance of 60 years, it’s a different world. Also, I have experienced — as most people do — other misfortune and bereavement and the agitation that comes with them. At a long distance what remains is not the agitation itself but the memory of the agitation those events caused. As Gautama Buddha said as he left his home, human life is full of challenges and agonizing events, which we have to understand and come to terms with and see what our reaction should be.

But at the time of the event to which you referred, when I was 11, if I regarded that as a nonremarkable event to perhaps be intellectualized someday but nothing else, I would have shown myself to be lacking in humanity — which I don’t believe I am. There are occasions when it is right to show just anger.

IDRC:

How is today’s world different from then?

Amartya Sen:

We don’t have Hindu-Muslim riots in Dhaka, in Calcutta at all now. There are parts of India where it has happened, mainly in Gujurat, but when Hindu extremists were trying to pursue a violent course against Muslims in Gujurat in 2002, happily it became clear, when they were defeated in the general elections two years later, that the people reject this.

But at a broader level, the kind of narrowness and miniaturizing that a singular pursuit of identity means, remains a reality in the lives of everyone, everywhere. So I think we still need to analyze the adversities and calamities of the past.

IDRC:

Is it correct to infer that you are optimistic that people can choose to define themselves in a more pluralistic or broad sort of way?

Amartya Sen:

I think that’s absolutely correct. I think we underestimate the power of reason. I think all of us have these reasoning faculties that distinguish human beings from other species — even though sometimes questions are raised that dolphins are capable of sophisticated thought and reasoning. They might be; I don’t know. I do know that humans are capable of that.

One clarification I would make is that not only does the power of reason allow us to take a much more plural understanding of our identity, but sometimes — contingently, contextually — it allows us to focus on a particularly singular identity that might be very important. For example, if you are standing up against a tyranny in a place where a particular group is being suppressed, even if you are alone in fighting it, then emphasizing an identity as someone who is resisting and standing up to be counted would be very important. That’s often how rebellions are born. The great leadership of Gandi or Mandela or Martin Luther King was built around important singularities of emphasis and importance and that is to be celebrated. But these too come from reasoning, rather than from just a kind of instinctive sentimentality.

IDRC:

Is it more difficult to choose one’s own identity in the face of organized pressure? There are many interests — from leaders of sectarian, racist movements to those who profit from the global arms trade — for whom a simple “us versus them” idea has great utility.

Amartya Sen:

Sometimes we assume these singular identities because of persecution or propaganda or railroading. But one point that Jean Paul Sartre made with some force is that we may forget how much freedom we have — that quite often the limitations of freedom arise from thinking that we don’t have the freedom that we actually do have. The starting point is to recognize the very basic idea that we have many identities. Nothing could be more obvious than the fact that the same person could be a Canadian citizen, of Chinese ancestry, a vegetarian, a woman, a heterosexual, a supporter of gay rights, without any contradiction.

I’d also like to point out that it’s possible to have a new form of global identity that derives from the commitment to equity in the world and development, which I do know is something IDRC is very much linked to. Pursuing those economic and institutional reforms that have made development possible and human life more bearable is very much the basis for a distinct group identity. I see it as part of a global identity that is competing with the religious divisiveness, civilizational divisiveness, Western parochialism, and a hundred other examples of the narrowing of humanity that we are observing today.

2006-06

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