Recent decades are often characterised as witnessing the rise of identity politics and consequent and increasing animosities and conflicts, even as the world apparently “shrinks” and homogenises. In this work, philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah effectively chronicles historical and contemporary human geographies, examining the ways in which identity labels are relationally constructed over time and place. Appiah's chapter structure—focused on creed, country, colour, class, and culture—means the work would make an important accompaniment to any human geography course that both traditionally covers geographies of populations, religion, language, politics, economics, rurality, urbanity, and so forth, and that stresses the complex spatial, temporal, and scalar patterns and changes of our world.

Appiah initially acquaints the reader, and later concludes the book, with reflections on gender and sexuality, noting their recent acceptance as fluid identity labels. To some readers, this rejection of binaries and essentialisms might seem commonplace in the light of geographical scholarship—such as that by Kobayashi and Peake (1994)—which deconstructs hegemonic notions of gender and race (in particular). Many human geographers are familiar with Benedict Anderson's (1991) thesis of the modern nation as an imagined community and have extrapolated that idea to incorporate other social identities founded on shared faith, or age, or sexuality, or impairment, or politics. Unsettling these bounded category labels illuminates the contested and mobile nature of identities and their intersectionalities (Valentine, 2007).

Appiah reminds us that conflicts between those we see as “us” or “ourselves” and those we regard as irrevocably “different” and “Other” have been endemic for millennia. More significantly, he argues that those identities we cherish and defend are forged and defined through those conflicts and are not their causes. Appiah, however, does more than just argue for a constructionist approach. He bookends his argument with riveting biographical narratives that problematise the typically essentialised representations of identity, highlighting both their more usual hybridity and the profound impact of context or situation on what aspects or versions of ourselves come to the fore for that “self” and for those around us. Such “situatedness” of identity includes powerful spatial, place‐based, and temporal influences along with the shifting pressures of life stages and their embodied manifestations.

Appiah also reminds us that others, including the state, powerfully shape our identities and their possibilities. Following Charles Taylor (1994), Appiah (2018, p. 97) underscores the essentialising consequences of state recognition:

When the state gazes at us—with its identity cards, educational stipulations, and other instruments of recognition—it invariably fixes and rigidifies a phenomenon that is neither fixed not rigid. I have called this the Medusa Syndrome: what the state gazes upon, it tends to turn to stone. It sculpts what it purports to acknowledge.

The chapter on creed argues that a religion is not so much a matter of shared belief or scriptural tradition as a community of practice that evolves and is reinterpreted over time and space. This lens rebuts all forms of fundamentalism without ignoring the potent sense of security offered by communal religiosity. That perspective aligns with ongoing debates within geography about the significance of religion, and spirituality in particular, within our hybrid identities (Yorgason & Della Dora, 2009).

The chapter on country reminds us how relatively recent are most of today's nations. The territorialisation of modern nation‐states is a scalar process where small, independent towns and provinces aggregate to form larger states while, in some situations, empires and aggregates are split to form smaller independent states. All these processes are determined by political, military, and economic contests that ensure the bounded populations within a single state very rarely, if ever, reflect an homogenous population—culturally, linguistically, or religiously: ‘there are no natural boundaries to the peoplehood you might come to care about’ (Appiah, 2018, p.76). Equally self‐consciously united “peoples” may be stateless or located across several territories as, for example, with the Celts and the Kurds. These political geographies, then, are intersected by identity labels that are both relationally constructed by insiders and outsiders and reframed if they do not suit. The recency and fluidity of our taken‐for‐granted social constructions are reiterated across the text with respect to all the major identity categories and that is achieved by use of fascinating examples and footnotes that are among the exquisite features of Appiah's scholarship. Yet again we find both that who “we” are depends on what or who we are not and that these allegedly primordial or foundational values and practices are highly unstable and subject to appropriation, loss, and reinterpretation in line with geopolitical and ideological struggles.

The chapter on colour summarises well‐known aspects of the rise of Social Darwinism and (pseudo)scientific racism in Europe and the United States. The account is not especially original but is brought to life by fascinating stories of historical figures whose lives bear witness to the falsity of racism along with its devastating consequences. Earlier research by Appiah on neglected American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois adds further insights into the complexity of these issues, as well as the persistence and mutability of racist ideology in what some refer to as a post‐racial society.

Appiah then dedicates a chapter to reflecting on culture as both the process of transmitting knowledge and the lived “ways of being” among a contemporary people. So‐called Western knowledge is frequently derived from knowledges of Islamic and Asian scholars. His work is focused on “breaking down” certain cultural realms and hemispheric divides, including “the West” or “the East”, as well as on noting internal diversities within and between places that change with the scale of view. This deconstruction of cultural blocs reminds us of the tensions between fixed, bounded regions that are useful to explore spatial connections in a given territory, and regions networked by material and immaterial flows between locations.

Thus, mapping physical and conceptual boundaries is both useful as a heuristic but can be exclusionary and imply an essence/essentiality that has never existed. Appiah urges us to abandon the very concept of Western culture or “civilization”. His position seems partly due to the problematically hierarchical ideas about the West as sometimes geographical, sometimes cultural, sometimes anti‐communist, and, in settler societies such as Australia, as “white” and currently Islamophobic. Appiah documents the transition from “Christendom” to “Europe” to “the West” and illuminates the cultural and political baggage that still adheres to such labels. The recent controversy over the Ramsay Centre's (ABC, 2018) move to offer a bachelor's degree in Western Civilisation in Australian universities is illuminated by his exposition. As Appiah writes, the best (and worst) of any culture dissects time and place and becomes shared because objects and beliefs are mobile and are themselves hybrid creations of previous cultural formations well prior to the advent of intellectual property laws and other protections of that which is “cultural”. Yet an inability to own and control an object or belief of a particular culture does not imply that it is ethical to appropriate such objects of culture.

There is no “essence” to any identity label or subject formation—religions are not unchanging and nor are national boundaries or class consciousness. No identity transcends time and space, but each exists because of rules, narratives, and connections. Each generation inherits and changes just as human mobility transfers categories and subjectivities while adapting to new places. Attributing a formal essence to any group can lead to essentialisms that are unrepresentative of a complex pluralistic world (Carter & Hollinsworth, 2017). But Appiah reminds us that while fixed identity categories can be divisive, they also help us do things together—for example, organise politically against oppressions. Thus, we must also remember our “lies that bind”.

The book concludes with a humanist call to shed or at least refashion our identity labels.

If you do not care for the shapes your identities have taken, you cannot simply refuse them; they are not yours alone. You have to work with others inside and outside the labelled group in order to reframe them so they fit you better; and you can do that collective work only if you recognize that the results must serve others as well. ( Appiah, 2018, p.218)

Some will see Appiah's call as hopelessly idealistic or antithetical to the urgent struggle for the rights of their identity of choice, preferring what Spivak (1994) termed ‘strategic essentialism’. Yet as we write this review just weeks after the slaughter of 50 Muslim New Zealanders by an Australian fascist and white supremacist, we think idealism important given the need for hopeful united actions is more pressing than ever.

最近几十年通常被视为见证了身份政治的兴起以及随之而来的和日益增加的仇恨与冲突，即使世界显然在“收缩”和同质化。在这项工作中，哲学家夸梅·安东尼·阿皮亚（Kwame Anthony Appiah）有效地记载了历史和当代人类地理学，研究了随着时间和地点而建立关系标签的方式。阿皮亚的章节结构着重于信条，国家，肤色，阶级和文化，这意味着该作品将与任何传统上涵盖人口，宗教，语言，政治，经济，农村，城市，等等，这强调了世界的复杂的空间，时间和标量模式以及变化。

Appiah最初是让读者认识的，后来以对性别和性的思考结束了这本书，并指出他们最近被接受为流动的身份标签。对于某些读者来说，从地理学的角度来看，拒绝二进制和本质主义似乎是司空见惯的事情，例如Kobayashi和Peake（1994）的观点，它解构了性别和种族霸权概念（尤其是）。许多人类地理学家对本尼迪克特·安德森（Benedict Anderson）（1991年）作为一个想象中的社区的现代民族的论断，并已将该思想推断为包含基于共同的信仰，年龄，性取向，残障或政治的其他社会身份。这些有界类别标签的不安阐明了身份及其交叉性的竞争性和移动性（Valentine，2007）。

阿皮亚提醒我们，几千年来，我们视为“我们”或“我们自己”的人与我们视为不可撤销的“不同”和“其他”人之间的冲突是普遍的。更重要的是，他认为，我们珍视和捍卫的那些身份是通过这些冲突伪造和定义的，而不是其根源。然而，阿皮亚（Appiah）并不仅仅是为建构主义方法辩护。他以引人入胜的传记叙事来结束自己的论点，这些叙事对身份的典型本质化表示形式造成了问题，强调了两者之间更常见的混合性以及背景或情况对自我的哪些方面或形式对“自我”和那些方面脱颖而出的深远影响。在我们周围。这种身份的“状况”包括强大的空间，基于地点的，

阿皮亚还提醒我们，包括国家在内的其他国家也强有力地影响着我们的身份及其可能性。继查尔斯·泰勒（Charles Taylor，1994）之后，阿皮亚（Appiah，2018，p.97）强调了国家承认的重要后果：

当国家以身份证，教育规定和其他承认手段盯着我们时，它总是会修复和强化一种既不是固定也不是僵化的现象。我称其为美杜莎综合症：国家注视的是，它倾向于变成石头。它雕刻了它要承认的东西。

关于信条的一章认为，宗教不是一个共同的信仰或圣经传统的问题，而是随着时间和空间而发展并重新诠释的实践社区。这种观点反驳了所有形式的原教旨主义，而没有忽略公共宗教信仰所提供的强有力的安全感。这种观点与地理学领域内有关宗教的重要性，特别是我们的混合身份中的灵性尤其是辩论的持续辩论相吻合（Yorgason和Della Dora，2009年）。

关于国家的章节提醒我们当今大多数国家相对较新。现代民族国家的地域化是一个标量过程，其中小而独立的城镇和省聚集起来形成较大的州，而在某些情况下，帝国和聚集区分裂成较小的独立国家。所有这些过程都是由政治，军事和经济竞赛决定的，这些竞赛确保了单个州内有限的人口很少（如果有的话）在文化，语言或宗教上都能反映同质的人口：可能会在意''（Appiah，2018，p.76）。同样，具有自我意识的团结的“人民”可能是无国籍的，或者分布在多个地区，例如凯尔特人和库尔德人。这些政治地域，由身份标签相交，身份标签由内部人员和外部人员相关地构造，如果不合适，则重新构造。关于所有主要的身份类别，我们在文本中重申了我们理所当然的社会结构的新近性和流动性，这是通过使用阿皮亚奖学金的精妙特征中的引人入胜的例子和脚注来实现的。再一次，我们发现，“我们”是谁，取决于什么，而不是谁，以及这些所谓的原始或基础的价值观和实践高度不稳定，并根据地缘政治和意识形态的斗争而遭受侵占，损失和重新解释。关于所有主要的身份类别，我们在文本中重申了我们理所当然的社会结构的新近性和流动性，这是通过使用阿皮亚奖学金的精妙特征中的引人入胜的例子和脚注来实现的。再一次，我们发现谁是“我们”取决于什么人，而不是我们不是谁，这些所谓的原始或基础的价值观和实践高度不稳定，并根据地缘政治和意识形态的斗争而遭受侵占，损失和重新解释。关于所有主要的身份类别，我们在文本中重申了我们理所当然的社会结构的新近性和流动性，这是通过使用阿皮亚奖学金的精妙特征中的引人入胜的例子和脚注来实现的。再一次，我们发现谁是“我们”取决于什么人，而不是我们不是谁，这些所谓的原始或基础的价值观和实践高度不稳定，并根据地缘政治和意识形态的斗争而遭受侵占，损失和重新解释。

关于颜色的章节概述了欧洲和美国社会达尔文主义和（伪）科学种族主义兴起的著名方面。该叙述并不是特别原始，而是通过吸引历史人物的故事而生动起来的，这些人物的生活见证了种族主义的虚假性及其破坏性后果。阿皮亚（Appiah）早期对被忽视的美国社会学家WEB杜波依斯（WEB Du Bois）的研究为这些问题的复杂性以及种族主义意识形态在某些人称为后种族社会中的持久性和变异性提供了进一步的见解。

然后，阿皮亚（Appiah）专门撰写了一章，对文化进行反思，这既是知识传播的过程，也是当代人之间存在的“生存方式”。所谓的西方知识通常来自伊斯兰和亚洲学者的知识。他的工作重点是“打破”某些文化领域和半球鸿沟，包括“西方”或“东方”，以及注意随着视角变化而变化的地方内部和地方之间的内部多样性。文化集团的这种解构使我们想起了固定的，有界的区域之间的紧张关系，这些区域对于探索给定领土内的空间联系是有用的，而区域之间则由物质和非物质流动所组成。

因此，绘制物理和概念边界既可以用作启发式方法，又可以是排他性的，暗示着一种根本不存在的本质/必要性。阿皮亚敦促我们放弃西方文化或“文明”这个概念。他的位置似乎在一定程度上是由于关于西方的有问题的等级观念，这些观念有时是地理上的，有时是文化的，有时是反共的，在澳大利亚这样的移民社会中，是“白人”的，现在是伊斯兰的。Appiah记录了从“基督教世界”到“欧洲”再到“西方”的转变，并阐明了仍然坚持这种标签的文化和政治包bag。最近关于拉姆齐中心（ABC，2018）的争议）通过他的演讲阐明了在澳大利亚大学中提供西方文明学士学位的举动。正如阿皮亚（Appiah）所写，任何文化中最好的（和最坏的）都会剖析时间和地点并被共享，因为对象和信念是可移动的，并且它们本身就是早在知识产权法和其他法律保护之前的先前文化形态的混合创造。是“文化的”。然而，无法拥有和控制特定文化的客体或信念并不意味着适当地使用这种文化客体是道德的。

任何身份标签或主体形成都没有“本质”，宗教并非不变，国界或阶级意识也不会改变。没有任何身份能够超越时间和空间，但是每个身份都存在于规则，叙述和联系之中。每一代人都在继承和变化，就像人类的机动性在适应新环境的同时转移类别和主观性一样。将正式的本质归于任何群体，可能会导致本质主义无法代表复杂的多元世界（Carter＆Hollinsworth，2017年）。但是，阿皮亚（Appiah）提醒我们，虽然固定身份类别可能会造成分歧，但它们也可以帮助我们一起做事情-例如，在政治上组织反对压迫。因此，我们还必须记住“束缚的谎言”。

这本书以人道主义主义者的呼吁作为结尾，以摆脱或至少重新塑造我们的身份标签。

如果您不关心身份所采用的形状，则不能简单地拒绝它们。他们并不孤单。您必须与带有标签的小组内部和外部的其他人一起工作，以重新设计他们，使他们更适合您；并且只有在您意识到结果也必须服务于他人的情况下，您才能进行集体工作。（阿皮亚，2018，第218页）

有些人会认为，阿皮亚的呼吁对于为自己的选择身份权进行的紧急斗争是无望的理想主义或与之相反，他们更喜欢斯皮瓦克（1994）所说的“战略本质主义”。然而，当我们在澳大利亚法西斯主义者和白人至上主义者屠杀50名穆斯林新西兰人几周后撰写这篇评论时，我们认为理想主义非常重要，因为需要采取有希望的统一行动比以往任何时候都更为紧迫。