Modern Britain’s Identity Crisis – Mark Easton

[Music] you welcome everyone to the campaign for social science annual lecture I'm Bobby Duffy and this is my first major event for the campaign in a new role for me as chair so I'm therefore particularly delighted it's such an important and timely subject that we're focusing on today on shifting social identities in the UK and and that we have such an excellent speaker in mark Easton home editor of BBC News and such expert respondent in professor Maria Saba lifts Kerr from the University of Manchester we'll hear from mark Maria shortly but first I wanted to say how delighted I am in general to take over the role of the chair of the campaign it's such a crucial time when making a clear case about the real value of the social sciences then what it brings in improving decision-making to society individuals lives is more vital than ever the campaign was formed by the Academy as a key initiative in making this case and it relies entirely on the support of a host of individuals and groups many of them in this room today including Academy fellows know very welcomed a number of universities who form our supporters scheme an excellent board drawn from across the sector and of course a small but very dedicated staff including our great new chief executive Rita Gardiner who was instrumental in encouraging me to take on this role which I'm very grateful for Rita we've been working with each of these groups to develop our refresh strategy building on great work that's been done in the past from previous chairs including people like James Mills din and shamit cigar and we'll be launching the new strategy in the coming months the aim is to draw in our incredible assets which are mainly again you and our other supporters and then a couple of other things I think are clarity of purpose in being a campaign having that in our title in at the core of our objectives and then secondly our dedicated focus on social sciences we have this very clear remit I hope that we can use these to be of service to the sector as a whole which will mainly be through community communicating the clarity and consistency the vital importance of your work all of your work and achieving this by crucially working in partnership with the many friends and allies that we have inside and outside of the sector we have a lot of friends who understand that good decision-making that doesn't happen in a vacuum instead it needs an understanding of how societies and individuals both think and act so that includes hugely contributing to the Grand Challenges of our day understanding individuals and society's response to climate change clean growth our aging population how new technology in AI interact at an individual and societal level is a core element of good decision-making on this not optional so we'll communicate the campaign's refresh strategy directly to all of you but we're keen to hear your views at the same time so you get your ideas in to us please do get in touch with me with Rita other members of the board Oh your other contacts in the Academy and campaign for social science one of our key friends and allies in this work has been saige publishing and in particular oh I like that yes we need more audience participation in this and in particular ziad Marat another clip who is global president of publishing Sage have Candice posted this evening and before we introduce mark I'd be delighted of ziad's would say a few words it's wonderful actually to be here on what I think might be the occasion of the seventh lecture of sage and the campaign for social science and to welcome you all here again so many of you have heard me talk seven times or six times already but I promise be brief I was thinking actually just it was a couple of months ago that I went to the memorial of one of our authors professor Rahm Hari who many of you will have read and known as a eminent figure in philosophy and social science and but I think was probably slightly less known is that his original was as a physicist and it seems relevant in terms of that perspective that when looking at a the last book that he published with sage that he opened it with this phrase that struck me which was the universe is composed of exactly two things molecules and meaning and the implication being that there is a whole set of fields which are engaged with understanding the one and understanding the other and I found it quite a telling way to think about what the social sciences and the related fields that are looking at understanding meaning are engaged with more prosaically but equally importantly I noted a month ago that the government's chief scientific officer advisor Patrick valence put up on a slide the 700 a RI is the areas of research in interests that at least 14 government ministries are engaged with right now and they range from smart cities to immigration to knife crime you name it but the striking point was that he said that fully 63% of those 700 a our eyes would benefit from a primarily social science approach and so in two different ways have had reason to think about the value and importance of social science and it's been central to sages identity since our founding as many of you know Sarah Miller McCune started the company is a 24 year old in you know nearly 55 years ago her birthday today so well done Sarah but um I kind of was thinking that it's the animating spirit that started out with her view about social sciences importance in creating healthy minds and healthy cultures that is as true today as it ever was its age and so it's for that kind of reason that sage is so deeply aligned with the aims of the campaign for social science with the Academy of Social Sciences and various other bodies that we work with around the globe it's profoundly important to us to help the important work that we believe our friends at the campaign are doing such a great job of leading leading out on in particular we we've spent a lot of time lately on the question of impact and value and trying to engage with it on a number of dimensions the first of which obviously as you might expect from academic publisher is is looking at the dimension of scholarship in education and looking for ways to try and get beyond the sort of blunt traffic of metrics short term assessments the value of social science is recognizing that the impact in scholarship can be diffused a long term and in fact have put out a prize for the most cited articles from ten years ago that we're going to keep rolling forward each year as a way to try and bring out that perspective but we're working with people like Google Scholar and various other people to try and think about ways to broaden an understanding of social science impact in a scholarly dimension and on the educational side to think not just about the domains in which students are being taught but also to think about the way that they are bringing a social science imagination to the to the lessons and study and in particular with a view to thinking about critical thinking beyond then scholarship and education we're obviously interested in the impact on policy making evidence-based policy making is no doubt everyone in this room is is keen on we work with our various individual contributors and authors to help help that bridge to policy impact happen a bit more easily and a bit more transparently and it's complicated but it's an important area in which we're engaged the third area of momoka impacts and value is around working in the practitioner space thinking about the various people who use social science in different ways and we're particularly interested in there's social media technology companies in that regard and have a our third social science foo camp this weekend in the belly of one of the beasts Facebook in in their headquarters at Silicon Valley where we bring together through an unconference academics from social science and other fields but data scientists computer scientists writers develop different kinds to try and create a cross-pollination and mutual understanding to hopefully enable social science have that broader kind of impact and in the final area is really about social sciences impact on the public sphere and we do that a number of ways we're engaged with the conversation UK is one of the ways of doing that and to do that well we need great interpreters and translators and so it's particularly apt then that this evening we've got mark Eastern a renowned journalist it's always taken social science so seriously to be the the animal lecturer tonight who's such an interpreter of the social science effort that he bring to bear on his journalism I'm gonna let Bobby do the introduction but I wanted to say that it just feels particularly out for Sage and we on behalf of sage are delighted to have you speaking at the lecture tonight I'm looking forward to doing what you have to say thank you thank you see identity or continuing support we really value it and so now I know you want to get on to Mark's lecture so do i so i won't say lots about mark to start with it you'll be very familiar with you I think I'll only say really echoing what he had said my particular interest in in mark giving this year's lecture is that what was a my two key aspects of his reporting I think which is firstly his talent for storytelling and clarity which is such a vital asset in improving the impact of our research we need people to be engaging with our evidence but second that he vigorously resists over simplification oversimplification for an easy headline which I've had that sort of conversation with him in our dealings around our research it's not about finding the easy answer instead he outlines the inevitable complexity and contentiousness of social issues but he does that while keeping that clarity and he's not shied away from complex or contentious issues this night tonight talking about identity shifting identity in the UK particularly contentious if you're a Tottenham fan just to give you a heads up on some of these early content so all dear sorry mark so do feel free to tweet away during the lecture on other social media hashtag campaign lecture gives me great pleasure to welcome mark Eastern to the stage please well thank you very much Andy Bobby those are really lovely words so thank you very much it's absolutely my privilege to be here tonight and to help celebrate social sense I'm wearing the badge I'm proudly wearing the badge I'm told it actually matches my tie so all is good and thank you very much daddy for talking about my my journalism in such generous terms and the BBC might my employers as as you almost certainly will have read are going through another sticky patch at the moment you may have where's my slide there we are you may have read something about it in BBC news we have to say we're always having to say it this time having to say 40 million quid in two years and the conclusion has been that the only way we can do that is by a substantial number of job losses which you may have heard about and the reorganisation of the way that the the BBC news operations sort of thinks and Doulton does its job and it's a it's a difficult time for for many at the at the corporation however you may be interested to know that as part of the reorganization the powers that have be have produced a Venn diagram we always need one of those this is a Venn diagram of what are called story teams now you probably can't see it very clearly but this is how we're going to be divided up in the new slimmed-down BBC news so you can see there are various story teams there's planet and learning and politics and culture and and and and the that the largest laws Inge there you can see is is society and which means of course that despite the cuts however difficult and and painful it is for the BBC there are opportunities for social scientists here ladies and gentlemen said there is a silver lining perhaps to what is going on at the moment at the BBC I guess what I want to talk to you about tonight would inevitably fit into the society lozenge because as Bobby you're saying it is about identities so first and bobbies rather Stella my but first a confession my name is mark Easton and I'm an Arsenal fan and it is it is an identity that I wear around my neck on match days I also invariably wear Arsenal socks and Arsenal Underpants because I know that if I don't the footballing gods will conspire against my team my tribe they don't always listen of course especially this season so why am I telling you this because because I want to talk about identities and tribes in the context of the United Kingdom a United Kingdom that doesn't feel very United right now and the story of Arsenal please bear with me I think is quite relevant to the discussion so this is this is the view from my seat at the on the upper tier at the Emirates and like many Islington i'ts who'd been on the waiting list for a season-ticket four years at the old Highbury ground it was only when the club moved to the new and much larger stadium the amorous that we were able to get a guaranteed seat so where I sit on the upper tier you will find lawyers bankers film directors journalists novelists along with people from all other backgrounds but you know there are the professionals who move to North London when it got trendy in the 1980s but there are also people from really every social classification and every ethnicity on the lower tier I would say it is a significantly different demographic these are the seats that were offered first to the existing season ticket holders from the old ground and as a result it's a much more traditional white male working-class crowd Arsenal like many of the early members of the Football League in England came out of the factories and mills of the Industrial Revolution it was it was workers there they are at the Royal Arsenal at Woollett who started the club courage by employers and an establishment which saw in rules-based organized sport activity that promoted solidarity and healthy competition and crucially a controlled release for male aggression both on the pitch and in the stands and there is a song that Arsenal fans have traditionally sung which goes we hate Tottenham and we hate Tottenham repeated twice and before the final line we are the Tottenham haters what the chart lacks in poetry I think it gains in clarity ever since Arsenal moved from Woollett to North London in 1913 close actually to where Tottenham Hotspur already played you could see how this might go wrong the supporters of the two sides have basically defined themselves in part by the detestation of the other identity I think we can agree is not only who we are but who we are not and for traditional Arsenal fans they are definitely not Tottenham and there is a another Arsenal chant along similar lines which goes stand up if you hate Tottenham sung for reasons lost in the mists of history to the tune of go west by the village people really don't know why and now at this the lower tier will stand up almost as one the upper tier however I've noticed is much more reluctant from my seat I can see some of the banners which have been fixed to the upper tier by the Football Club there they are gay gunas Arsenal Kenya hakuna matata Arsenal Germany and Slovenia Nepal Italy Peru the Seychelles Arsenal Mumbai and Australia and some in the upper tier do like to applaud the the Arsenal for everywhere there it is the Arsenal for every one banner in Racing diversity and equality when that's brought in and this is clearly a very different vibe from we hate Tottenham it's partly of course about global corporate values Arsenal is big international business but it also changes the nature of the Arsenal identity it was once an exclusive identity a white working-class largely male identity now it's an inclusive identity Arsenal for everyone the big change came I think with the move from Arsenal's previous Stadium just up the hill in Highbury now the architecture of the old ground was in the traditional classic style of the designer Archibald Leitch if you imagine a football ground almost certainly thinking about something designed by Archibald high straight almost windowless walls enclosing the pitch season tickets were scarce and passed down families across generations now the Emirates is glass curves you're encouraged to look in its welcoming in a way that the old Highbury was intimidating the crowds are far more diverse by ethnicity nationality gender age wealth in every way Arsen Venga the multilingual polymath the professor the philosopher the european who managed the club to such success in the 90s and naughty steering the club to the new stadium he symbolized the Emirates inclusive character he was everything the old days of of hooliganism and racism and sexism and fights in pubs were not in 2018 as Britain struggled to complete its departure from the EU arson Venga was forced out of the club his opponents in the stands called it except I'm not going to pretend that that bricks it and waxes are the same but I do think there is an important philosophical divide present in both that relates to our identity and I'm going to call it island miss and what do I mean by that well John Donne was quite wrong when he said no man is an island because this is to completely misunderstand the nature of islands they are not closed systems unaffected by the outside world entire of themselves we are all islands in that we are individuals bounded by the attributes of our bodies and our minds but shaped by all that washes up on our shores the experiences and influences that come from outside Island nests then is the balance between those two aspects of our identity the part that is individual and separate and the part that is connected and open Britain is proud of its island status tradition and heritage a way of life framed and protected by white cliffs and rocky shores are central to the character of the nation but Britain is also a country that wants to reach beyond its boundaries to be part of a bigger conversation open to new ideas and embracing change taking the risks that keep an island from ossifying and stagnating and that contradiction I think is the source of the storm over brexit it helps explain the Furious waves crashing not just on my own Islands sure but on communities and nations around the world it is about the contested nature of Island mmus where nationalism meets internationalism local meets global people looking in seeing people looking I wanted to test that sense of British island us and I found a proxy for it I'm so excited about this I found a proxy for it using Hansard I searched for the phrase island nation from the earliest records in 1800 to the present day it turns out the expression was not uttered by any parliamentarian in the entire 19th century at a time of course when Britain saw itself as builder and commander of a global Empire the first occasion it crops up is in 1904 when an MP referred to Britain as an island nation of Island people lying as we do between the old world and the new perhaps its use on that occasion marked a moment of anxiety a niggling worried that the tectonic plates of power was shifting along the mid-atlantic ridge but the phrase didn't catch on as you can see it cropped up fewer than 50 times in the next 70 years there was a brief flurry in the early 1980s as mps and peers discussed the Falklands War and the decline of the UK's once dominant shipbuilding industry but if the language of the houses of parliament can be used as a measure of Britain's sense of its Island --mess then it has reached levels never before seen the phrase was deployed more times in the three years after the EU referendum than in the first 180 years of ham sods record we have a foot on both sides of this debate our own personal continuity versus change settings the emphasis and importance we place on protecting what we know and what we have and and at the same time being open to new ideas and new ways of doing things Arsenal fans can rejoice in the history and heritage of the club while also wanting it to be modern and aggressive similarly I think there is a danger in trying to characterize the leave remains split to rigidly the practice of describing people places regions and nations as leave or remain polarizes the argument with binary description that fails to reflect the nuance behind the choice and indeed behind the result London is often described as a remained city but actually you know more Londoners voted to leave the European Union than voted for Sadiq Khan to be their mayor even in that most Pro brexit town of Boston in Lincolnshire a quarter of those who took part opted to remain though just had a whole list of reasons for choosing to support one side or the other often weighing up different arguments before deciding they might have been about immigration or sovereignty or jobs or wanting to put two fingers up to the establishment because you feel ignored or fearing the economic or political consequences of of leaving the club a whole range of factors were at play no place was a hundred percent for leaving or remaining in the EU but that said social science can help us identify and understand the core beliefs the core beliefs associated with the way people voted generally data which helps explain why feelings ran so high and which might help identify what healing Prime Minister talks about the need for that what healing might look like at this point I want to thank Kelly beaver along with her team a tip sauce Mori who ahead of this speech helped me devise some questions to test my argument and very generously put them into the field so thank you to them and some exclusive new data for you tonight so I wanted to test the the two visions or worldviews theory and so we we devised a series of propositions and asked which came closest to people people's view there's the slide fair there's the slide for Kelly thanks right influences from other countries and other cultures make Britain a better place to live 56% of remained voters picked that just 23% of lis voters now the alternative proposition was influences or other countries in other cultures threaten the British Way of life and they're the same story the main voters 18 percent leave voters 52 percent so he tried it another way asking a people agreed with this statement Britain will be stronger in the future if it sticks to its tradition and way of life remain 14 percent went along with that leave 56 percent these are stark differences the alternative proposition we tested was Britain will be stronger in future if it is open to changes and influences from other cultures and other countries 58% of remained supporters agreed with that among lead voters it was 22% well as I said earlier we must not be overly dogmatic about this difference but I think it is reasonable to say that brexit the brexit vote did broadly align with the two visions of the country that I mentioned earlier if you voted leave you are more likely to associate with a precious way of life that requires protection from white cliffs and rocky shores if you voted remain you are more likely to celebrate a spirit that that looks at to the wider world for opportunity what the brexit debate did was force people to choose a side and reveal often for the first time something significant about their core principles their core beliefs the kind of country they wanted to live in in 2018 I commissioned a big survey for the BBC to answer what I called the English question I wanted to understand people's sense of identity in England and the attributes or values that underpinned those identities particularly in the light of the brexit referendum result we did I must say smaller surveys surveys in other parts of the United Kingdom of course we did I work for the British Broadcasting Corporation after that but my particular interest was in England which I felt and still feel is that is though really the conundrum at the center of the Union working with YouGov on this occasion we designed a survey which was put to 20,000 people across England so it's a seriously chunky bit of work so here are a few of the results from that which I think reinforce the findings from the Ipsos MORI survey questions we asked about diverse cultural life as a contributor to identity remain voters emerged a significantly more likely to say England's diversity was a strong part of their identity sixty-two percent compared to thirty eight percent do you feel European unsurprisingly perhaps almost half of remain voters said they had a strong European identity among leave voters it was just 8% I mean maybe in the context of the post referendum but still a surprisingly small number more than half of leave voters said England's history and heritage are contributed very strongly on this occasion to their sense of identity among remain voters it was just under a third is a similar story with tradition again very strongly 40 percent of lead voters 22 percent of remain voters and the Christian tradition was important to 29 percent of lead voters but 47 percent of leave voters to instead of remain voters that I think there's a story emerging here and there is one other very striking difference that emerged and we asked whether people thought England was better in the past best right now or had its best years in the future among those who voted to leave two-thirds thought England was better in the past among remain arraign voters it was one-third roughly half the country overall thought England was better in the past and only 17% incidentally thought its best years lay ahead now we also did as I said representative polls in Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland we asked that same question did you think that your nation was better in the past best right now or better in the future and what was really interesting is that in in each of those countries many more people said they thought their best years lay in the future than lay in the past England emerged as very different from the rest of the UK on this one measure leave voters in England emerge as so we've seen as prouder of the English identity but with a strong sense that England is not the country it used to be a nostalgia perhaps for for bygone times a feeling that their identity was losing its specialness maybe that it was threatened it won't surprise you to learn that there was a noticeable brexit divide in our poll when it came to whether people felt more English or more British 3/4 75% open that's not right why is that there anyway that's quite interesting so there's pride in being English 44% of remain voters proud to be English 75% of lead voters as I recall of that 44% 11% said they were positively embarrassed to be English so leave voters yesterday emerges prouder of the English nationality that nostalgia for bygone times and leave photos are more than twice as likely to say that they felt more English than British 47% to 22% and they were half as likely to say they felt more British than English 15% to 32% so I think we can see that there is clearly a correlation between the brexit vote and whether you feel English or whether you feel British I wanted actually to consider that English British divided a bit more generally so our survey tested the relative strengths of people's relationship with English identities I'm sure you've come across this kind of survey data many times before our service there's 20,000 people in England so as I say big and chunky it suggests that 80% of the residents of England identify strongly as English but it also finds a similar proportion 82% identified strongly as British only small proportions I should say said they were one but not the other British and English identities are intertwined they are they are strands of the same national thread now you will read this some have suggested that the British identity is currently being strangled by rising English nationalism but that idea was not borne out by my survey indeed the British identity is felt strongly by all generations in fact exactly the same proportion 83% of both 18 to 24 year olds and 50 to 64 year olds report a powerful association with Britain Britishness emerges as a strong national characteristic across almost every demographic that we looked at politics education class and geography the English identity however is felt much more variably we asked about pride in being English and found a clear generational divide among the young a minority 45% said they were proud to call themselves English but look at that among the over 64 one more over 65s almost three-quarters felt pride in being English and interestingly this is the reverse of the experience in Wales where the strength of the Welsh identity reduces with age I mean it's not an ongoing thing I suspect this is to do with wealth being taught in in schools in more recent years but quite an interesting alternative view in Scotland actually pride in being Scottish is pretty much universal across all the age groups people said they felt very strongly Scottish 80% of all the age groups felt that so I think we can say that being English tends to be seen as an exclusive identity a birthright a white anglo-saxon identity traditional Christian and that of course has consequences for the way that ethnic minorities relate to the English identity among white people sixty-one percent were proud to be English among the BME respondents just 32 percent said the same many remember how the flag of Sir George was co-opted by the far-right during the 70s and 80s but you know despite real efforts to rehabilitate the English identity it still does not enjoy general support across racial groups ethnic minorities were much happier to describe themselves as British 73% of BME said they had a strong British identity and you know given that 46% of BNE people said they have a strong identity with another country outside the UK I think that figure is really quite impressive if English is an exclusive identity British is a much more inclusive identity we need to be careful about the difference between identity and nationality here the difference between a a psychological sense of belonging and a kind of technical bureaucratic status I do I do sometimes worry that when we collect this data and identity we may miss the point and I'm probably as guilty as anyone some people asked about their identity we'll see the question less as delving into their inner sense of self which is obviously what we all want and more as a quiz on official definitions so do you feel strongly British oh I know I know that one don't tell me they turn yes obviously totally um I have a British passport I'm a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on the other hand even if you're not eligible for a British passport you might feel that the label reflects a personal commitment to the UK a decision to settle and put down roots the English identity might simply be seen as a consequence of being born in England living in England or even speaking English for some people the question is weird they've never thought about their identity that way they would describe themselves maybe by their time or their county or their region their place in the family I'm a mum or a dad partner carer grandparent by their job or religion or ethnicity or their hobbies I'm a stamp collector and the brother I'm an Arsenal fan identity can be seen as the detail printed on your ID or something visceral that rests in your in your soul the term has its roots of course in the Latin word idem meaning the same it is a reflection of sameness similarity who is like me but it is also about drawing a line around yourself who's not like me identity might be seen like the the BBC reorganization as a as a Venn diagram I suspect I remember as a as a young boy amusing myself by writing my address like this mark Easton my bedroom my house there's Dan Glasgow Scotland United Kingdom Europe planet Earth Milky Way universe quite a few will have done the same thing it was a way of defining myself visualizing my identity as sort of concentric circles of territorial belonging I was both a resident of my bedroom and of planet Earth but not obviously a resident of my parents bedroom or of Venus I did not belong in those places now you could put this in another way at me my family I street my neighbourhood my city my nation my country my continent my planet my galaxy infinity it is a simplistic model to an audience like you I feel almost ashamed to put it up but but I think it helps idiots like me to see where the where the friction points are my nation my country for me back in the 1960s it was Scotland and Britain of course there are people who would like to redraw the lines to to skip that particular concentric circle of belonging and then there's the sense of belonging to my country my continent again as we've seen in the very low proportion of leave voters who say they have a European identity that is a contested Junction again there are people who would skip that circle of belonging entirely and the junction between my country my continent and my planet is also controversial it was tourism a who said at the conservative conference in 2016 if you believe you are a citizen of the world you are a citizen of nowhere to be fair it was really an argument about globalization and how that had become disconnected from the concerns and interests of ordinary people but it it also suggested that identities that don't have limits are not really identities at all we get lost in a sea of infinity unable to find our Island our Ithaca our home which brings me to a very important question so what it's a question that we don't ask enough and don't answer enough in my view it was John Lennon who asked us to imagine that there are no countries or religion nothing to kill or die for a brotherhood of man and it was Mark Twain who said the universal brotherhood of man is our most precious and here because I thought you might like to be reminded of former British glories and couldn't resist it is a picture of brotherhood of man be the singing group which won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1976 with the classic save your kisses for me enough nostalgia for the past and bygone days but the point here is that wars are fought over many things power and money and prestige and hunger and religion and borders and territories but really they are fought over identities the lines we draw on maps and in our heads that define us and them if we could just bring ourselves to ignore our differences the argument goes lower our flags see each other as fellow human beings and the world as John Lennon said could live as one but it may be that human beings are hard-wired to recognize or even manufacture differences to form ourselves into groupings and tribes and then to compete with each other a few years ago an article in Nature looked at warfare in chimpanzees Jane Goodall's pioneering work you may remember in the 1970s had revealed how chimps organized themselves into warring gangs raiding each other's territory leaving mutilated bodies on the battlefield this new research published in Nature suggested there was eeveelution Reeb Enif it in this behavior rewarding the winners with food mates and the opportunity to pass on their genes few people I think probably identify themselves strongly as a great ape could be on that address list I suppose but it might be that this part of our identity helps explain why exclusive identities matter so much to us they play to a a primeval part of ourselves in a way in a way that that more inclusive identities don't it does seem that we are driven to emphasize our differences differences which make us feel distinctive and special and perhaps make us feel superior when I met the legendary American social scientist Robert Putnam there he is some 15 years ago he took me aside and revealed almost conspiratorial I remember he whispered it to me he said mark birds of a feather flock together segregation was natural that's what he was saying we like to surround ourselves with people who are like us the reason for the conspiratorial tone was that Putnam who sure many of you know this but he famously chronicled the decline of u.s. social capital in in Bowling Alone his book was trying to explain his new research which in the short term at least showed a negative correlation between diversity and community cohesion he told me that in diverse neighborhoods people of all races tended to in his words hunker down Trust is lower altruism and community cooperation rarer friends fewer now more recent research looking at super diverse London concluded the opposite with a very important difference in methodology once you took account of deprivation and segregation the authors found social cohesion was significantly higher in more ethnically diverse neighborhoods now we are talking London here of course and as the research team accepted that is one of a kind but this contradiction in two pieces of research is to me an answer to the so what question just now if we can understand identity the descriptors that show us how communities and societies label and think of themselves we can use that information as an early warning system for potential tensions in the social fabric before they tear I want to return to the idea of exclusive and inclusive identities some identities have a higher bar than others of course they do being a cockney requires you to have being born within the sound of Bow Bells being an Arsenal fan requires you to do no more than root for the team but I think it's fair to say that exclusive identities become more attractive when people feel threatened the hunkering down the Putnam told me about we flocked together to feel safer to circle the wagons perhaps to defend ourselves inclusive identities tend to be more associated with confidence and optimism in who we are and our ability to to deal and prosper from change and they can act as a form of resilience in the late 19th and early 20th century with the social and economic tensions of economic of industrialization and globalization threatening to tear apart the fabric of of British life in the same way that people had watched it happen in other parts of Europe there was a concerted drive to manufacture some inclusive identities we did a lot of manufacturing in those days and there was there was frankly an almost a production line in an in new identities in Britain clubs and societies sprang up all over the place beekeepers pigeon fanciers bell ringers dog lovers all got their own membership associations many with badges coats of arms identities for all then there were sports tennis clubs rugby clubs boxing clubs football clubs an explosion of new bodies promoting healthy competition and affiliation across social divides Arsenal was founded in 1886 and I couldn't stop myself noticing there that I given it the biggest patch to have apologies so today we are experiencing the tensions from globalization and new ways of working again a sense of powerlessness and disaffection that may increase as technology and shifts in labor markets feeds a sense of threat my answer would be that we need to nurture and build inclusive identities for the 21st century just as our Victorian ancestors did in the 19th century we need social capital factories not the exclusive bubbles of so much social media but creating opportunities for people to realize that that well we have characteristics that make us special we have as the MP Joe Cox so memorably put it more in common than that which divides us or to put it another way look they may be deluded they may be wrong but some of my best friends are Tottenham supporters thank you very much indeed he's so much mark now I'd like to invite me Maria Saba leska to join us on stage Maria is professor of political science at the University of Manchester and is focused in her work on identity and integration including being the lead investigator on the ESRC UK Miss changing Europe project on political identity Maria please join us up here thank you for having me and thank you Mark for a great presentation and I particularly enjoyed the vivid presentation that accompanied it thanks so much it is very hard to follow especially that I don't have any exciting budgets or anything else to show you I also feel a sense of great responsibility having heard this talk because Mark said and I jotted it down here that social science can help us understand the reasons why people voted a certain way and therefore help us identify the healing and what form that healing might take in our society I think this is an extremely grave responsibility for social sciences and I think as we try to look into such a polarizing and such a politically loaded area as identity politics as identities in society identity divisions there are huge risks for social sciences for social scientists as individuals who have their own opinions who have their own identities but also as we try to engage with a moving target we lean into perhaps too much into the social media narratives maybe we lean too much into the very fast-moving media main media narratives that speed our work beyond what we think differentiate differentiates our work as careful slow scholarly research versus very quick responses to topics of today and so with that in mind I am hesitantly going to try and offer three insights that I think Social Sciences offer that relate to this area of identities and I think do help us understand and maybe identify those ways of healing that mark referred to I also remember from very many years ago I did as a graduate student some teaching training and I have been told that the audience can only remember three things so this is why only three insights there are more so the first one I guess is coming back to Marx fantastic point about apes this is a very appealing metaphor and I think a lot of people would kind of immediately say yes this makes sense but actually when you look at social science research into identities what you learn is that there is more to it we have been studying this tendency for humans the great apes but slightly different than chimpanzees to segregate themselves into groups into us and into them the out groups for almost 150 years and the first person to give it a name was an American sociologist William Graham Sumner and he called it ethnocentrism which is quite a mouthful but it is actually a very simple concept he describes this as the view of things which one's own group is the center of everything and he used it to explain everything from traditions from having that sense of self I am an Arsenal supporter I am a British person I am a Londoner or a monk union in my case and he did say just like that nature article and just like mark just said he said it's a universal tendency however research since has proven it wrong it is a universal characteristics of societies that that tendency is present in every society studied thus far however not all individuals have that tendency and I think this distinction gives us a huge pointer towards those ways of healing because when you think about it that not all individuals have the tendency to think in terms of in-group and out-group and moreover my in-group is better and there out group is worse and even a step further thinking that out group therefore needs killing or you know colonizing or whatever if we move towards that thinking that not everybody in society has that tendency then it is a massive ray of sunshine and hope that we can offer and for example most research and of course this varies but most research agrees that actually only about a third of us have that tendency and then when you think about what does it mean for societies it means this this is the loud minority and I think this is a story that we have seen with a lot of recent political developments certainly one of the reasons why we have seen a new referendum and the way that it has developed the way that the campaign has been run one of the reasons why this is a minority one-third of a population but it is the louder minority is because they do feel that sense of threat they feel threatened by people who do not belong to their group and another excellent American researcher called Carens tena has brought this vision of a red button these people live their lives being entirely friendly with Tottenham supporters and going happily along their you know daily lives and routines but there is a red button if a Tottenham supporter rubbishes Arsenal the red button is pressed in a way that somebody who doesn't have a red button can probably still continue having pints after the game which Tottenham won with the opposition so that route the red button is there and sadly our politicians know it and they do like to press that button and I think it is a great responsibility of social sciences to try to criticise it call it out and try to create a spirit of opposition as a result of that red button as a result of that threat it is in fact I think the other way round to what Mark just said about exclusive nature of certain identities I don't actually believe that there are identities that are more exclusive than others they are just identities that the people who have just been threatened are flocking to and so English identity nowadays is one of those identities I think the rising immigration has pressed that red button the politicians have lent into it and kept the button and the for the English identity has become temporarily hopefully quite an exclusive identity but even thinking about our past and not so long ago the British identity wasn't in fact seen as very inclusive after the Second World War when a lot of the ethnic minorities who now feel very British were coming into this country many were saying that the British identity is very colonial and it is in fact exclusive it is a white colonial dominant identity and in fact there was a big project to reinvent Britishness as this more civic more inclusive identity so I think we need to engage in a similar exercise with English identities and possibly other identities as well I think a great example maybe would be the Scottish identity currently which has the reputation of being much more inclusive but actually when you look at the kinds of people who support Scottish identity they are often very similar to the people who say they feel very strongly English it is a political project creating that identity for us the second I guess slightly related insight is the role of Education so we all know the statistic I think that people who are highly educated we're less likely to vote to leave the EU and much more likely to vote remain we also know that these people have different values in opinions - people don't have formal education past school leaving age and I'm not going to get into the why or how this might might might have happened but into what happens when people get their higher education and I think this is very important these people who have higher education are not different just because they don't have the red button or are less likely to have it they actually have a motivation to try to control the button they have a motivation to try to be more inclusive these are the people who self-consciously examine the prejudices and want to do it and they often get criticized for being self-conscious about this but I think this is how our societies become more liberal and I think social science may be paying slightly more attention to these people amplifying their views as well as a counterbalance to focusing on those less tolerant more exclusive and more threatened part of society would offer a very good idea how to improve a society day how to foster that healing and then finally one of the big things that we are all guilty of I think both as social scientists and media possibly also politicians is the fact that we do ignore people in the middle so they are there's this one third of a population in all societies or most societies that are easily threatened they have the tendency of grouping people thinking us and them type thoughts and yet we have on the other side an increasing number of people who have the motivation to fight those biases openly and self-consciously but in the middle the vast majority of our society is in the middle sorry I need water now if you will allow me to shamelessly plug my forthcoming book called brexit land that I've written with Rob Ford and one of the big points that we make in that book is that one of the reasons why we have ended up in this apparent identity crisis today is because the politicians have been leaning into paying much more attention into that one third of our population who was very angry and very threatened and not giving enough voice both the silent middle but also to the liberal unless threatened a more inclusive end of the society and I think as social scientists it is now upon us to try to amplify those views as well and try to stop the small minority leading the way forward forever you well thank you for some interesting points it's certainly Northern Ireland look I absolutely share the the people of Northern Ireland's frustration at times that the way we kind of talk about Britain when we really mean the United Kingdom however III think my father feeling about the Britain United Kingdom thing is that Britain is shorthand for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that that is a word we use to cover the UK and I know that there'll be people who disagree and that we should always use the phrase UK but we I work for the British Broadcasting Corporation and we cover Northern Ireland as well so I think you could they can probably feel included but undoubtedly the you know identity policies in Northern Ireland are well above my pay grade so I'm not going to go there we have to remember arson bingo got forced out of our snore and and and that's in the end because he could not keep as it were sort of both traditions together in in a way he couldn't keep the support of the supporters across across the piece and I think what we really need is is not just one arson Venga but you know tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of individuals who are all working away to try and you know improve social cohesion community relations whatever you want so I I don't think that we're going to find our our new Venga however much I might like to have him back think in today's word it's fair to say that we have fairly diffused leadership structures and I think some people criticize us all for living in some kind of bubble but actually being a leader in your own bubble is a way forward and I think especially a social scientists we should try to expand the bubble rather than completely set ourselves impossible standards but also shrink and look inward only so trying to communicate and I think this was something that Mike was actually introduced as this great translator and I think this is why these kind of events are so important that we talk to people who have that immediate connection with the public the journalists about our research but in an engaging and open fashion without you know over complicating things both with arcane language statistics and you know new anthing everything into into death and dissolution so yes so these kind of opportunities I think we should do more of that you really not expert enough to talk about relative deprivation theory and but it does sound to me like a a really interesting piece of work and if someone can demonstrate to me that actually we can understand that the pessimism the sense of disconnectedness and powerless that I've encountered on numerous trips around England and other parts of the United Kingdom then you know I'd be really keen to give that give that coverage so thank you very much for that you brilliant observation actually on the play and this idea of being a citizen of the world as I said tweezer makeup got criticized for suggesting that there was no such thing and of course there was a banknote actually I suspect that this idea of a sort of a planetary identity when I when I was probably thinking of myself aged sort of six or seven so probably mid 60s mid 1960s probably after Apollo 11 really after that sense of being able to see the planet from outside I think that was a massive moment for for humankind and our kind of identity with the planet but of course you're absolutely right the sense of a planet under threat now a sense of a planet generationally as well needing to pull together to to protect itself clearly that's going to have a powerful impact on that particular identity it's probably something that we you know maybe some social scientists somewhere might want to want to take a look at but a really good point actually this is another I think helpful insight from social science that could do with more kind of amplification out there because actually apart from that one-third that does have the red button at the ready most people's immediate response is not to panic and so we have quite a lot of research now emerging from sadly a you know quite a series of terrorists very serious terrorist attacks in America and Europe and kind of luckily in a horrible sense there were various surveys in the field during before and right after those attacks and what we have learned from this analyzing those surveys is that actually most people do not have exclusionary responses and most people do not start looking at Muslim people in any other way than they were before and in fact some people on the spectrum or liberal spectrum who have the strong motivation to control prejudice they actually temporarily have a more positive view of Muslims and obviously we're talking about kind of Islamic attacks and it is only later on after the elite narratives go on and on that people then go into the name of all negative views of those ad groups but actually most people do not have an impulse to panic and I think this is such a huge finding that we should really all know and a great ray of hope I just think I mean it's not as you might really say it's not really my area but I suppose this might be my kind of final thought too and you know we've talked about divisions and and I've talked you know produced data this evening which I think demonstrates that there is a sort of fundamental worldview core value core belief divide in this country which if we don't recognize it and think about use and work to heal it could become very damaging but I I do think that there is also there's a risk that we over state things actually and not realize that you know Britain is not America that's one of the important things our society is not as divided in in that way there are many things on which there is pretty much unanimity broadly NHS I'd save the welfare state broadly taxation - I mean we always find people who disagree but I think I think there is an opportunity there and I think the key the key to healing in this is respectful disagreement it is how we don't try and convince other people that they're wrong and that they're foolish for having the views that they do we don't have to agree with them but we do have to accept that they are entitled to have a different view to us and we need to listen properly we need there's a thing some of you may know called deep listening it's a way of actually trying to to really understand what somebody is saying to you we're not very good at deep listening certainly I think sometimes journalists are not very good if deep listening but but I do think that you know a thought to go away with tonight is that when it comes to identities and the things that that make us different in terms of of ideas and our backgrounds and our worldview our core beliefs it is really important that we don't is why I think it's so so important that we don't divide the country up in to leave and remain in the way that we have discussed it we must do everything we can to recognize that there's a bit of all this in all of us and that allows much easier route into what I would respectful disagreement and if our politicians can do that then really things can be much more optimistic great well excellent note to end on a bit of optimism there at the end what I think which I think is it deserved actually in the situation that we are we have to hold on to that sense of optimism because it does reflect a reality in how people think and identify so that's it for the session all I wanted to do to round up was to thank you first of all for coming this evening really appreciate your input and questions thank you to the team at the Academy and the campaign for putting on the event tonight thanks of course again to Sage publishing for their excellent support of this event and finally thank you to Maria and Mark are excellent contributors tonight thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Sage

Views: 879

Keywords: SAGE Publications, SAGE, academic publishing video, academic publishing, Britain, Identity, Social Science, Journalism, UK, immigration, nationalism

Id: 7xW_uX5_4OI

Length: 70min 22sec (4222 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 21 2020