Introduction|past societies. To uncritically impose these identities on past peoples and socie-
ties distorts how people identified their sexuality, if at all, at different historical
moments.
These categories of analysis must be tempered by a thorough understanding
of how research subjects understood, grouped, and identified themselves (i.e.,
categories of practice). In our example, when individuals engaged in same-gender
sexual acts, how did the participants see themselves? To assume that engaging in
a particular sexual act meant that an individual considered himself or herself
homosexual is problematic, because it imposes our societal values, biases, and
norms on the past. Scholars must be careful not to confuse the two and be keenly
aware of their own biases and assumptions. The distinction between categories
of analysis and categories of practice provides the tools both to understand the
past on its own terms and then to enter into a dialogue with it through critical
analysis and interpretation. In fact, Brubaker and Cooper go so far as to claim
that the very term “identity” is problematic and must be discarded in favor of
words that represent action, such as “identifying” or “categorizing,” to accentuate
the convoluted and contested nature of identity.
States, groups, institutions, individuals, and so forth, play an enormous
role in identity creation. In fact, they engage in what Ian Hacking calls nomi-
nalism, or “making people up.” Nominalism can be highly contentious. Those
who are identified in a particular way do not receive identities passively; they
respond to and shape the identities attributed to them. Nominalism can often
have unintended consequences, as demonstrated by the 1903 Macedonian pop-
ulation survey in which nationalists vied for adherents by attempting to have
the populations classified according to specific Eastern Orthodox classifications
that aligned with their own nationalist aspirations, such as Greek, Bulgarian, or
Serbian. Since identity is not static but is socially constructed, it must be deter-
mined historically on a case-by-case basis that takes into consideration social,
political, and cultural contexts.
In using categories of analysis, scholars must be very aware of the dangers
of reducing complex and heterogeneous identities into homogeneous groups in
which all members are assumed to share key characteristics. For example, his-
torians have sometimes identified all the Ottoman subjects who practiced or
associated themselves with Judaism as “Ottoman Jews,” without taking into
consideration the numerous differences among Jewish subjects of the Ottoman
Empire. These differences included language, sect, socioeconomic status, place
of origin, and ethnic identity. For example, Mizrahim, also known as Arab Jews,
would have had very different cultural backgrounds, language, and religious
practices from Sephardic Jews, who settled in the Ottoman Empire after being
expelled from the Iberian Peninsula and spoke Ladino.