On “Identity” in the Social Sciences: Uses, Overuses, and Misuses of a Concept
On “Identity” in the Social Sciences: Uses, Overuses, and Misuses of a Concept

Summary/Abstract: The article aims to study the relevance of the concept of identity to research in contemporary social sciences. The concept is discussed in terms of both collective and individual identity. Following the analyses of the American sociologists Brubaker and Cooper, the author argues that the meaning of “identity” is incompatible with the specificity of social phenomenon as objects of scientific research. In this respect, constructivism and naturalism both lead to a groupist social ontology and to a conceptually impoverished sociology of identity that inevitably thwarts the understanding of the complexity of the social world. At the level of individual identity, the article focuses on the analyses by the French philosopher Vincent Descombes, who reestablishes the uses of the concept in the framework of three meanings: numeric identity, social identity and expressive identity. Criticizing the oxymoronic use of expressions such as “multiple identities” and “changing identity”, Descombes emphasizes the necessary social foundations of personal identity and hence points out the inadequacy of philosophical individualism, and individualist approaches in general, with regard to social phenomenon.

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