Once-Dominant Populations and the Paradoxes of Identity Change

There has been much analysis of identity change amongst once-dominated populations, in the process of mobilisation, and later in a newly egalitarian society. There has been less analysis of identity change or the lack thereof amongst once-dominant populations, for whom geopolitical or revolutionary or enforced peace stands to remove their position of dominance. Yet such populations are at the heart of peace processes and central to the stability of power-sharing regimes. Unionists in Northern Ireland, ethnic Macedonians in North Macedonia, together with Afrikaaners in South Africa, are amongst the populations who have experienced such change; Israelis are amongst those who may stand to experience it in the future . This paper focusses on the asymmetric modes of identity construction and change amongst the once-dominant and the once-dominated, and in particular on the specific relation of identity to the state amongst the once-dominant. It argues that this demands a particular mode of change away from groupness in the process of settlement and peace-building.