Identity is a key cornerstone of any person and forms a central part in helping a person to place themselves in society. People will ask who they are from the time they are very young and will take on various cultural aspects to their psyche that they use to create an identity.
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/ouco...36§ion=1.1
We choose to identify with a particular identity or group. Sometimes we have more choice than others. This chunk will address the relative importance of structures, the forces beyond our control which shape our identities, and agency, the degree of control which we ourselves can exert over who we are.
although as individuals we have to take up identities actively, those identities are necessarily the product of the society in which we live and our relationship with others.
This brings me to the question how does nationalism and identity fit in together? Notions such as borders and countries create a shared and common collective conciousness and invariably this leads to the banding of people together from everyone such as travellers to Irish nationalists to loyalists, from Dubliners to country people, identity creates these groups with common bonds. Nationalism stems from one group with a collective conciousness that want to control for themselves as a group . These groups are more than likely to work together to compromise for the best deal for themselves as a group rather than individuals.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...e-do-they-come
The research on cultural differences in thinking suggests that the patterns of differences that have been found are related to the distinction between individualist and collectivist cultures. That is, members of collectivist cultures tend to exhibit behaviors like being likely to compromise and for their memory for objects to be influenced by context. Members of individualist cultures show a preference for one side or the other of a debate rather than compromise, and their memory tends to be uninfluenced by culture.
Regarding the issue in Belfast with the British flag over city hall and Unionists feeling aggreived at it it only being flown 15 days of the year, are nationalists and unionists collectivist cultural groups or individualistic? The Alliance party put forward a motion to keep the butchers apron flying a few days a year while one side of the argument seemed to react in extremis nearly storming city hall. SF the Guardian seems to think that this is some sort of passive move to split the Unionist identity and perhaps make them lose confidence in Unionism:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...flag-loyalists
Sinn Fein's desire to see the union flag removed from the city hall may not be written into its manifesto – but it is abundantly clear in its passive-aggressive politicking that this is an orchestrated tactic. The message is obvious: destroy unionist and loyalist confidence and the rest will follow. In fact, the message hasn't changed that much since the summer of 1971, when the then Sinn Fein president Ruairi O'Bradaigh claimed: "We're on a high road to freedom, and what we need to do now is to rock Stormont and to keep it rocking until Stormont comes down."
Through manipulation of identity on a psychological level a lot of parties are building their support by telling people they must pledge allegience to either one side of the argument or another. As per Sideys "Im either Irish or Im not" rhetoric it fails to take into account that there are numerous grey areas in between . Some of us may see ourselves as being European , some of us may simply see ourselves as being part of humanity or some us are just simple products of a capitalist regime .
