Identities: How Governed, Who Pays?

by Hasan Bülent Paksoy

This ebook delves into the principles behind governance and identity. In the past, the governing strata could force a change of identity upon a polity. Today, such efforts continue under a new set of rules, while some avant-garde members of certain polities are attempting a voluntary change of identity. What cannot be changed, however, is the composite nature of identity: a person is an offspring, a sibling, a member of a subunit of the greater polity; and there are many additional layers.

Any attempt to change identity, be it by force or voluntarily, cannot change fundamentals. What it can do is untie some of an individual’s social and cultural connections, thereby loosening his or her obligations; but the polity, collectively, pays the cost.

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About the Author

Hasan Bülent Paksoy

Hasan Bülent Paksoy is a Turkish historian (b. 1948 in Ödemiş) who earned his doctoral degree at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford. He was a Faculty Associate at Harvard University and taught at the Ohio State University, Franklin University, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Central Connecticut State University, Texas Tech University, and Baker College. He is now happily retired.

In addition to authoring numerous original and historical works, Paksoy is the translator of such historical fiction as The Sun is Also Fire, a short story about the struggle of the Turks of Transoxiana to remain independent of the expanding Caliphate in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D.