This UNESCO programme encourages research on the interconnection of identity problems with the development of democracy (1). The decline of the two main systems of thought which have dominated contemporary history – liberal universalism and Marxist universalism – in fact the end of the great empires, has coincided with an increase in nationalism, religious fundamentalism and a whole range of xenophobic and racist attitudes. These phenomena seem to us to be exerting a decisive pressure on social development and have in the past given rise to events with tragic consequences for humanity, ranging from wars between nations in the nineteenth century to totalitarian regimes, Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism. It is distressing to find this return to identity ” values ” taking place within a context of acute economic crisis world-wide today as in the 1930s. ” Identities ” which set themselves up as standards and have no place for otherness and difference belong to the logic of totalitarianism. The social context, like the intellectual environment in which this explosion of ” identities ” is taking place, gives us good reason to dread developments similar to those that resulted in totalitarian systems and the Second World War.
