Abstract
Belonging, not belonging and their effects on the functioning and well-being of both individuals and societies have been a central running theme in sociological and psychological literature since its early days. Whether it was Tonnies’ differentiation between gemeinschaft and geselschat, Durkheim’s mechanical and organic solidarities, Marx’s theory of alienation and the huge psychoanalytical literature on issues of attachment and separation.
Monserrat Guibernau’s (MG) book on belonging is divided into seven chapters in which she examines different aspects of belonging: (1) Identity as a political instrument; (2) Belonging by choice; (3) Freedom and constraint; (4) The new radical right and the resurgence of authoritarian politics; (5) The rituals of belonging; (6) Loyalty, citizenship and the nation; and (7) Emotion and political mobilization.
MG argues, and rightly so, that the strength and popularity of belonging seriously undermine arguments pointing to the predominance of individualism as the (only) key feature of modern societies. She locates her discussion of belonging in the rise of identity as a political instrument and concludes from this that modern belonging is a belonging by choice. This leads her to a discussion of freedom (of choice) and constraint and to Erich Fromm’s thesis of people’s fear of freedom that might bring them into membership of authoritarian organizations and politics, such as the new radical right in Europe.
In attempting to understand what sustains and reproduces belonging MG discusses rituals of belonging, the ways they sustain loyalty and channel as well as mobilize the emotions which are at the heart of belonging.
While I would agree with MG that the rise of identity politics is closely related to the rise of contemporary politics of belonging, I would argue that MG exaggerates the voluntary element of choice in the construction of modern identities and belonging. Elements of forced, let alone ascribed, identities are not just a characteristic of the identities of members of racialized minorities in the West, but are also important elements of the constructions of social locations of members of working class, racial, tribal, ethnic and religious communities in many societies globally – both in the West and the Rest. Ignoring this fact is, however, I think, just a symptom of another major problem of the book, that is, its Eurocentrism (or, rather, its Westocentrism, as some of the illustrative examples MG discusses concern the USA), although she does mention briefly the Arab Spring. As Francis B Nyamnjoh (2005: 18) points out, ‘in Africa as elsewhere there is a growing obsession with belonging, along with new questions concerning conventional assumptions about nationality and citizenship’. An analysis of contemporary belonging as a political phenomenon would require an analytical global contextualization.
MG’s book on belonging can be seen as part of the more general ‘affective turn’ in Sociology and other social sciences (Ahmed, 2004; Turner, 2005). This is an important and positive development, as ‘rational choice’ theories failed miserably not only in aiding conflict resolution but even in explaining supposedly ‘rational’ economic phenomena such as the behaviour of stock markets. However, one needs to analyse sociologically the importance of the emotional element of solidarity and belonging within the political strategic goals within which it was constructed and used in particular collectivities and groupings. As I’ve argued in my own work on belonging and the politics of belonging, issues of belonging need to be analysed in a theoretical framework in which the sociology of emotions is mutually considered with the sociology of power. To do so we need to separate analytically belonging and the politics of belonging more than MG does.
This prevents MG from exploring systematically the different political projects of belonging she discusses in the book. While, as she states several times in the book, MG considers nationalism as the most important mode of belonging, she also describes a variety of groupings and collectivities, on different scales, to which people develop a sense of belonging. But we do not get a clear sense of what, if at all, is the relationship between all those modes of belonging.
MG rightly emphasizes that belonging to the same collectivity is not homogenous and that it can mean different things to different people. However, this lack of homogeneity is not random and relates to their differential locations and emotive and normative relationships to these collectivities and groupings. Another problem of the book, therefore, is that the differential ways people belong is not analysed in situated and intersectional ways – feminist epistemological tools that would have benefited the book.
This lack also prevents MG from further developing her important emphasis that emotional belonging is not only about attachment and mobilization to action but relates also to people’s assessments and values. The vitality and sustainability of belonging are anchored in the interrelationships between people’s social locations, emotional identifications and normative value systems. Thus belonging and the politics of belonging are crucial linkages between the micro and the macro, individuals and societies, agents and structure.
A thought-provoking book on fundamentally important issues that could have utilized a more sociological analysis.