3. Sometimes these claims are based on nature; for example, "race" and kinship in some versions of ethnicity. but often the claims are based on an essentialist version of history and of the past, where history is constructed or represented as an unchanging truth.
4. In fact, identity is relational, and difference is established by symbolic marking in relation to others ( in the assertion of national identities, for example, the representational systems which mark difference could include a uniform, a national flag or even the cigarettes which are smoked ).
5. Identity is also maintained through social and material conditions. If a group is symbolically marked as the enemy or as taboo, that will have real effects because the group will be socially excluded and materially disadvantaged. For example, the cigarette marks distinctions which are also present in the social relations between serbs and croats.
6. The social and the symbolic refer to two different processes but each is necessary for the marking and maintaining of identities. Symbolic marking is how we make sense of social relations and practices; for example, regarding who is excluded and who is included. Social differentiation is how these classifications of difference are " lived out" in social relations.
7. The conceptualization of identity involves looking at classificatory systems which show how social relations are organized and divided; for example, into at least two opposing groups -'us and them' served and croats.
8. Some differences are marked, but in the process some differences may be obscured; for example, the assertion of national identity may omit class and gender differences.
9. Identities are not unified. There may be contradictions within them which have to be negotiated; for example, the serb militiaman seems to be involved in a difficult negotiation in saying that serbs and croats are both the same and fundamentally different. There may be mismatches between the collective and the individual level, such as those that can arise between the collective demands of serbian national identity and the individual day-to-day experiences of shared culture.
10. We still,also, have to explain why people take up their positions and identify with them. Why do people invest in the positions which discourses of identity offer? The psychic level must also form part of the explanation; this is a dimension, along with the social and the symbolic, which is needed for a complex conceptualization of identity.