Dialectics of the Global and the Local in Contemporary Neo-Identities

Abstract

Today’s social reality is shaped by controversial yet simultaneous phenomena of globalization and localization - overwhelming unification and interconnectedness in technology, economy, politics and culture that goes together with intensification of striving for recognition by local communities. The trends of constructing and presenting new, generally more fluid and flexible identities are strong and visible in different parts of the world and on various social levels. The aim of this research is to analyse contemporary phenomenon of paradoxical and complex interrelation and dialectics of processes of global unification and localization through study of newly constructed identities, articulations of individuality and uniqueness by certain communities. The new understanding of these creatively-constructed identities is coined into a new term of neo-identity, the title notion of this thesis. Neo-identities are constructed of a peculiar interplay of the global and the local: they emphasize differences and distinctiveness, local in other words, but they also originate to the global processes (global threat or global fashion) and tend to construct themselves in order to find better ways of inclusion into a global societal network, either economic, political or social and ideological. The practical part of the analysis provides illustrative material to the theoretical description of neo-identities. Two unrelated phenomena of South Ossetian national identity construction and emergence of Internet slang that unexpectedly fast spread offline in Russia are turned into case studies of neo-identities.