Meaning, Myth and Narrative in the Identity Policy of the Twenty-First Century

Identity is regarded as one of the fundamental elements of new political, regional, and international order. Identity forms have intertwined relationships with the history, culture, and past forms of action of a society. It is noteworthy that cultural signs are reproduced gradually and reflect a new form of political behavior. Identity accounts for a major part of the causes of political disputes between Iran and several states including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Yemen, and Ukraine. Accordingly, identity can be considered as the lost goods of the contemporary era, and it has had a considerable impact on the security policies of various countries.The principal issue addressed in this study is that meaning, myth, and narratives have been ignored in the identity policymaking processes, particularly at the social, national, and regional levels. The main research questions to be answered in the present paper are as follows: 1. What were the features of the identity policy in the third decade of the twenty-first century? 2. How can they set the stage for stability and balance? In the hypothesis, the authors argue that “the identity policy is based on the knowledge of the forms of cultural, historical, and ideological conflicts of the actors, and results from the mechanisms based on the intersubjective interactions. In order to find answers to the questions, we rely on the constructivist approach and Alain Touraine’s new paradigm for the analysis of works by several prominent scholars. Using the method of conceptual analysis, we attempt to delineate the signs of meaning, myth, and narrative in the twenty-first century’s identity policy. The findings of this study are related to the paradigms of identity, media, and network society policies which can pave the way for increasing the power of some countries, but they can also be signs of security threats for others. The paper’s innovation concerns the effect of narrative and mythic signs on the identity policy.