Why do societies change? How, through countless transformations, do they manage to maintain their own identity? For example, what has enabled China to remain intrinsically itself, be it under the Hans or Mao, in spite of many deep and radical transformations? With the help of the many resources provided by the social sciences, history, sociology, social psychology, anthropology and economics, Anne Marcovich has tried to identify the principle of change within a framework of continuity. Using eighteenth and nineteenth century European societies as a guide, she has scrutinised, in the manner of an anatomist, how societies constitute themselves by closing themselves off behind frontiers and by creating a hierarchy around an authority. This is how a society forms an image of itself - a sort of “ideal” identity, which then urges it to evolve constantly in order to realise it.

Anne Marcovich is a researcher in the social sciences.