By Tweheyo Charles
Of recent, we had a growing public demand to understand the rationale for identity in shaping society. This is not new. From early 1860s, with the discovery of Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA); a material that exists in human body cells holding genetic codes, identity became inevitable in relating people and social units like family.
Since then, people identify as members of certain units in comparison with others. In simple terms, genetically belonging to a particular family means being part of it, like others within and sharing its identical features. Consequently, accumulating family conflicts where identity is compromised, and yet posing serious existential threats to society.
As society transforms technologically, perception of different components including identity continues to metamorphose. Since the 1990s, globalization has triggered the proliferation of scientific explorations to deal with identity crises, hence high demand for DNA tests. This indicates a popular faith in science and technology on one hand, and high demand for people’s knowledge of their origins and with whom they related on the other. Hence necessary to ascertain why.
Firstly, as socio-economic and political environment becomes more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous globally, people explore motivational mechanisms to expand means of survival while minimising avenues of expenditure.
Here comes politics of genealogy that has of late engulfed democratic governance where progenies of established politicians are seen as the most suitable to inherit their parliamentary and district political offices. No wonder, cases of misplaced identities rise amidst men’s scrutiny for their biological progenies.
At the core of the increasing demand for identity lies the classification of individuals according to their roles in relation to resource allocation, utilization and maximization. Identity is about things that sustain persons. Majority of the meaningful activities within society revolves around the distribution and control of resources because this is the feature on which social structures are built. In highly structured societies, individuals are placed in different social categories. The existence of these categories is characterized by contrasting interests in terms of power, class, status… So, in realty, we are born into a society with structures which precede our interests.
It is therefore natural that once in society, people want to drive their identity largely from the social categories with which they share majority of structural interests. Thus, each person, depending on their personal history, is a member of a unique collection of social classes. Therefore, it’s only mandatory for one to belong to a group with a set of interests shaping his/her unique identities.
Identity is equally relevant during the formation of one’s role in a larger cultural space. In a culturally rich society like Africa, some of the common tools of identity are symbols. Used in the allocation of positions, symbols help in naming and recognizing one another as occupants of positions. This comes with expectations with regard to one’s roles and behaviors. Once there’s a misplaced identity, one may be subjected to a condition to perform others’ cultural roles hence leaving others with no roles while some roles remain unoccupied. For instance, we all belong to our fathers’ clans.
So, only man’s biological children can perform his clan roles. Therefore, children must have their fathers to belong to their clans. In failure, their socio-cultural status as well as that of their succeeding generations is compromised.
The rapid change in science and technology exhibited by the coincidental DNA demands and social media growth has proliferated doubts and arguments about identity. This common sense of uncertainty especially among men feeds a motivation for identification and pursuit of validation through genetic correlations. This change thus attracts necessary amounts of trust from aggrieved parties seeking to resolve uncertainty through exclusion and validation of children in/out of particular families.
In conclusion, women, our mothers remain at the center of making or breaking society. This DNA hullabaloo is also their choice’s consequence. It’s pursuant to a fact that in the person’s making and existence, woman bears the highest discretion. Therefore, to save humanity from future identity crises, mothers must help us identify with where we actually belong!
Tweheyo is a social and political commentator
tweheyocharles@gmail.com