Page 133 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

110 Communication and Evolution of Society

the ego then withdraws behind all particular roles. An ego ex-
pected to judge any given norm in the light of internalized
principles, that is, to consider them hypothetically and to provide
justifications, can no longer tie its identity to particular pregiven
roles and sets of norms./® Now continuity can be established only
through the ego’s own integrating accomplishment. This ability
is paradigmatically exercised when the growing child gives up its
early identities, which are tied to familial roles, in favor of more
and more abstract identities secured finally to the institutions and
traditions of the political community. To the extent that the ego
generalizes this ability to overcome an old identity and to con-
struct a new one and learns to resolve identity crises by re-
establishing at a higher level the disturbed balance between itself
and a changed social reality, role identity 1s replaced by ego
identity. The ego can then maintain his identity in relation to
others, expressing in all relevant role games the paradoxical rela-
tionship of being like and yer being absolutely different from the
other, and represent himself as the one who organizes his inter-
actions in an unmistakable complex of life history.
In modern society this ego identity could be supported by in-
dividualistic vocational roles. The vocational role, understood in
Weber’s sense, was the most significant vehicle for projecting a
unifying life-historical career. Today this vehicle seems more and
more to be slipping away. Thus feminism is an example of an
emancipatory movement that (under the catchword of self-
realization) searches for paradigmatic solutions to the problem
of stabilizing ego identity under conditions that render problem-
atic—especially for women—recourse to the vocational role as
the crystallizing nucleus of life history.
In looking for homologies between patterns of identity de-
velopment and the historical articulation of collective identities,
we have to avoid, again, drawing hasty parallels. The provisos I
mentioned above hold here as well; and I would like to add three
special ones.

a. The collective identity of a group or a society secures continuity
and recognizability. For this reason it varies with the temporal concepts
in terms of which the society can specify the requirements for remain-