DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY, FACULTY OF ARTS, CONSTANTINE THE PHILOSOPHER UNIVERSITY IN NITRA

Identity has become one of the unifying subjects of social sciences since the 1990’s. It does not seem be losing popularity. Everyone has something to say: from anthropologists, geographers, historians, philosophers, politicians, psychologists and sociologists to those spending effort to restructuring postmodern interest and gendered social traditions and to understanding the reviving of ethnic politics again, this interest is quite high. Identity is about everything from political defection to credit card theft. “It is a familiar tool in the sociological tool box.” Identity has entered the area of interest of sociology with modernity and has become one the main subjects’ sociology is interested in with post-modernity. The subject of this study is to determine how the meaning of identity changes in line with the historical contexts of societies and the collective commitments which individuals are a part of. Identity transforms according to historical and social conditions and involves unique characteristics in each period. We are aiming at presenting the primary characteristics of identity from traditional society to post-modern society in general terms and comparing these. In fact, this is a comparative study. Actually, while the subject of identity is almost never a part of solution of classic sociology related to traditional societies and identity’s transformation from modern society to post-modern society is discussed today, it has become a necessity to look back and consider how identity was in traditional societies. Identity is recreated and produced in the phases it goes through from traditional society to postmodern society. Today, the background of the concept of identity and the construction processes of identities are firstly based on culture. While identities are determined in traditional societies as being extra personal and society centered and almost never change, they are based on social structures which transcend locality in parallel to intellectual and social structures in modern societies. In the postmodern condition, the temporariness of identity is striking as well besides its extreme fragmentation and diversity.Traditional Identity, Modern Identity, Postmodern Identity

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