# Identity

> Identity is mapped as the field: it changes the capacity to command, coordinate, persuade, refuse, remember, or endure.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:deep-forces:identity` |
| Family | Deep Political Forces |
| Domain | Power |
| Kind | force |
| Archetypal function | The Field |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Identity belongs to the **Deep Political Forces** family. It is treated as a specific political object, role, institution, tactic, event, ideology, or mechanism before any symbolic transfer is made.

## What it does

Identity changes the capacity to command, coordinate, persuade, refuse, remember, or endure, changing who can act, what becomes visible, and which costs are distributed to others.

## Who gains and who loses power

The mechanism can increase the capacity of actors able to use Identity, while shifting cost, delay, risk, exclusion, or dependence toward actors with less authority, information, organization, money, or safe access. The distribution is conditional, not an essence of the node.

## Archetypal function

**The Field.** Identity is mapped as the field: it changes the capacity to command, coordinate, persuade, refuse, remember, or endure.

## Gift

makes a hidden source of political motion visible; through Identity, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

becomes an abstraction that conceals who bears costs; Identity can then reproduce the very arrangement it claims to change.

## Conditions

- scale and jurisdiction are explicit
- affected people and absent stakeholders are named
- time horizon and countermoves are considered

## Strategic meaning

Use Identity to identify the operative target, resource, dependency, decision forum, and likely countermove. Ask what would make the mechanism stronger, weaker, more legitimate, or less necessary.

## Divinatory meaning

The Field enters through Identity. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Identity becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**constraint.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Identity; another player names a countermove. Initiative 2.

## Relationships

- **translates into — Loyalty:** Loyalty translates into Identity by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **enables — Interest:** Identity enables Interest by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **counteracts — Fusionism:** Identity counteracts Fusionism by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **institutionalizes — Democratic Transition:** Democratic Transition institutionalizes Identity by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Identity from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Identity is an effect of the system it appears to drive?
- Change the clock: what looks different over a day, an election cycle, a generation, and a century?
- Ask when the Gift becomes the Wound through scale, secrecy, intensity, latency, or unequal reciprocity.

## Epistemic and Sentinel note

Claim layers: synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory. Scope, jurisdiction, period, and source perspective may change the claim.
No node-specific Sentinel factors were recorded; ordinary source, audience, and context checks still apply.

## Visual direction

A text-free enamel expression of Identity: one dominant mechanism, one counterforce, raised warm-metal linework, midnight field, restrained civic red, teal, ivory, and amber. No party logo, national flag, sacred symbol, or recognizable person.

## Research / provenance

- [Introduction to Political Science](https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-political-science) — OpenStax, 2022. Comparative institutions, political behavior, and public policy foundations.
- [V-Dem Dataset and Codebook](https://www.v-dem.net/data/the-v-dem-dataset/) — V-Dem Institute, 2026. Comparative measurement of democratic institutions; indicators remain model-based measures.

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Engine Output version 1.0.0; generated 2026-08-24T00:00:00Z. Sentinel annotations are stored separately in `sentinel/handoffs.json`.
