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Academic Skills For Life-long Knowledge: Words on Personhood, Culture and Identity Part 2 of 3

2020.03.17
  • Jackie Kim-Wachutka
  • Culture
  • 2020

Discovering a sense of self and belonging, allowing social forces to take hold, is through the humanistic emotion of what every person has felt at one time or another – love. Love is a very complex thing and it can happen to anyone at any point in time. Love, for example, for an elderly woman, is coming back home and seeing her grandchildren happy, and love for a young man is riding his motorbike. People feel something beautiful when they talk about something or someone they love, and love is the thing that binds social beings and forces together.

 

On the other hand; however, we form communities and seek a sense of belonging due to the underlying driving force of fear. People are afraid of being social outcasts and feel helpless in a growing disconnected society. Furthermore, we construct identity in response to challenges. Natural disaster, for example, served as a driving force to unite people together through the construction of “victim” identity. There can also be cultural challenges, such as foreign economic and cultural domination. It seems that people can also use and manipulate identities for securing social well-being. In the process of modernization and the making of nations and ethnicities, it is clear that the construction of shared identity helps to unify people. However, this is only one side of the picture. It is dangerous to think that all people have an equal level of agency in constructing their preferred identity. In many cases, people fall victim of other people’s construction of their “superior identity.” In the modernization process, the making of “us” is inevitably accompanied by the construction of “other.” While sometimes the “other” is the powerful West, there are cases in which the domestic “other” – the minority groups in a nation state – becomes the victim of discrimination and suppression. To put it differently, when the majority group builds the ideology of superiority, the minority group automatically becomes the victim whose identity is categorized as inferior.

 

However, identity is a fluid concept. If we take a thorough observation of identity formation in different generations, we can see different reasons for constructing an identity. In the case of Zainichi Koreans or Nikkeijin, some in the later generations have chosen to retain their “roots” and identity and prefer not to assimilate into the “homogeneous” Japanese society. It can be argued that their cultural roots offer them shelter and a signifier in which they can find a sense of belonging as they pursue a society that recognizes and respects the difference.

 

Minorities in Japan such as the Nikkeijin, Zainichi Koreans, Muslims, and also Japanese minorities such as day laborers, women, and LGBT people and their activism reveal Japan’s transition into a multicultural society that aims to create an environment more open to change and accepting of differences. It is clear that learning about the existence of this growing diversity through education will help start that shift to making Japan a comfortable living environment for everyone. Even if minorities feel integrated in society, it will not work unless the Japanese people also feel comfortable with minorities and foreigners in their midst. People fear what is perceived as “different.” But if the consciousness that we are all people and we should not be segregated or discriminated against is nurtured through education, it will create a society where marginalized individuals will no longer feel unwelcome due to “difference.” Does the term/category “Japanese” even hold any meaning anymore? Multicultural theorist Bhikhu Parekh writes that a multicultural society cannot be connected by ethnicity, race, religion, etc. because the society is simply too diverse. Instead, it must be connected by a common political agenda. This entails having shared political goals and forming a political community. What are some concrete political goals? One could be changing the existing system to create a more tolerant and accepting society by accommodating ethnicities and cultures of the “others.” It can also mean that true acceptance of diversity entails an understanding that people relate to others who stem from similar life experiences and those who are different can more easily discover that sense of empathy with other people who are different.

 


To be continued next week.



Photo Credit: (fauxels@pexels.com)

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