Isma il Sarageldin

On Boundaries

The intelligentsia's role both as makers of a cultural outlook and product of the milieu-is central to my view of what is happening in the world generally and in the Muslim societies of the Middle East particularly. These important questions will appear throughout this essay like a leitmotif. The intelligentsia needs a space of freedom in which it can perform its dual role and shape the boundaries by which we define ourselves.

Are such boundaries important? They certainly are. Shared values reflected in predictable behavior not only are the basis of all social organization but are at the core of "cultural identity" a hackneyed expression that nevertheless remains essential to anyone who lives in a group. Yet individuals within a group are not clones, interchangeable units within a collectivity. Each person interacts with others in an expanding series of circles starting with high intensity vis-a-vis the immediate family circle and with decreasing intensity to the limit of the group(s) with which the individual identifies.

Social values clearly do not have the same impact on all members of a society or cultural group. Obvious cleavages are sex, age, wealth, race, creed, and national origin. Opinions-mostly concerning social values and whether and how they should or should not change-further subdivide the shifting mass of humanity. What prevents an explosion along one or more of these cleavages is a sense of shad cultural identity and the human need to organize social groupings around the family-still essential for reproducing the species and still the basic element of social organization.

Boundaries are multiple. Each individual identifies to varying degrees with different sets of individuals: immediate family, extended family, and groups based on ethnicity, nationality, region, religion, profession, and so on. At no time is one boundary the sole definer of an identity. Yet at different time - and for different issues – there is a most relevant boundary that becomes prominent and defines the us/them divide. It tends to reject the "other" and frequently reinforces itself by defining the "us," not by its members' specific positive attributes but by the elements in opposition to the "other." This mode stresses the negative, expands elements of separation, and makes it harder to stress the broader groupings that always exist, albeit in weaker form. Ultimately, we all belong to one group: humanity.

Despite this common humanity, other boundaries tend to prevail. When the "Yugoslav identity" weakened, it could not keep Serbs and Croats voluntarily in the same Yugoslav group. Thus the relevant boundaries were redefined inward to a smaller group. On the other hand, the strength of the "Swiss identity" is sufficient to hold together a population With several languages (German, French, Italian, and Romanche), several religious affiliations, and multiple local identities.' Further along, we see the emergence of a European identity, by which Germans, French, Italians, British, and others are gradually expanding the most important boundary outward-from the nation-state to the pan-European one.

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