Identity is a catch-all term of our times. It is an empty vessel which can be filled with almost any content. As a quick perusal of recent volumes on European communities shows, astute anthropologists can use identity as a general framing device for a surprising variety of ethnographic data. In these books discussion can span from the individual to the regional to the supranational, from styles of dress or dance to religious faith. The range of possible topics seems to be limited only by the imaginative power of the compiler. The worry, of course, is that we anthropologists may well impose a notion of identity upon unmarked aspects of others' cultures. The danger is that we may extol or assiduously analyse a part of others' lives which they themselves regard as of little importance or as not just restricted to themselves but as common to many. We start to find symbols where none at present exists. The resulting ethnography may tell us more about the classificatory ingenuity of its author than about the way the people studied regard themselves. In these conditions identity begins to seem primarily an anthropologists' category; it appears to be an unjustifiably arbitrary manner of delineating others' lives in academic terms.

In his Scots ethnography Whalsay, Anthony Cohen worries about the implications of anthropologists inferring symbolism in other people's behaviour. He argues that in the analysis of other's social identity the interpretations anthropologists make are the ways that they, rather than the locals, make sense of what the natives do.