THE ISSUE OF THE IDENTITY OF THE MACEDONIAN PEOPLE - The symbolic code for a personal and collective identity -

Abstract

A fact is that, the syntagmas personal (individual) and collective (group) identity: national, religious, gender, political, cultural, social, professional, are more and more present both in the scientific discourse as well as in the political arena and the everyday life. The studying of ethnic identities, especially when dealing with the Balkans, in the last two decades has become an important segment of ethnological and anthropological studies of scientists from this field as well as other disciplines. However, usually, in spite of the clear framework for defining them, their basic meaning is modified more and more in order to ascribe a bigger meaning to one individual or collective identity than another. To achieve this purpose people use tools not usually used to define the components of identity: oldest people, Aryan blood, pure community, identification with solar and astrologic symbols and ascribing ethnic characteristics to such symbols, etc. In that context, in the following text we will try to provide the basic framework in defining the components when forming personal and collective identities (ethnic, national) through the example of the Macedonian people on one hand, and the Greek propaganda aimed at preventing the Macedonian identification on the world arena, on the other hand.