Thursday, February 09, 2006
what are the effects of place?
I was just on the phone with an old friend in which I opined from my experiences that location is secondary to nationalism. that in america, whether in San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago, atlanta, dallas, or even winnipeg, that bankers will always be bankers. they will wear boldly striped shirts and be nice guys with a touch of arrogance and no free time. teachers will be teachers, they will be sweet and a little self-righteous, outdoor sportspersons will be outdoor sportspersons and will be superwelcoming superficially with a tinge of clannishness. And you can find this sorts and lots o other sorts of people anywhere you go. I contend that it doesn't matter where you live, but rather with whom you associate. or in statistical terms, the intracity variation for any given city is greater than the intercity population differences. it is possible that this is a by-product of post-modern globalization, or at the very least innexpensive air travel and computers. I am open to the fact that there are small cities where more extreme identities might not find comfortable homes do exists, but among the big urban areas, is there really such thing as a personality that could only feel at home in a certain place? and please, if you are going to chide my about stereotyping, consider what I am saying first.
I was just on the phone with an old friend in which I opined from my experiences that location is secondary to nationalism. that in america, whether in San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago, atlanta, dallas, or even winnipeg, that bankers will always be bankers. they will wear boldly striped shirts and be nice guys with a touch of arrogance and no free time. teachers will be teachers, they will be sweet and a little self-righteous, outdoor sportspersons will be outdoor sportspersons and will be superwelcoming superficially with a tinge of clannishness. And you can find this sorts and lots o other sorts of people anywhere you go. I contend that it doesn't matter where you live, but rather with whom you associate. or in statistical terms, the intracity variation for any given city is greater than the intercity population differences. it is possible that this is a by-product of post-modern globalization, or at the very least innexpensive air travel and computers. I am open to the fact that there are small cities where more extreme identities might not find comfortable homes do exists, but among the big urban areas, is there really such thing as a personality that could only feel at home in a certain place? and please, if you are going to chide my about stereotyping, consider what I am saying first.
# posted by 8yearoldsdude @ 12:16 AM 
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I think you're right to an extent. location is secondary to nationalism holds true in certain contexts but once you add an international presence to the mix (I will, for purposes of this discussion, exclude Canada), I think Americans cling to their American identities. See e.g. the anti-Muslim cartoons and America's response. I'd like to hear an American lawyer say "those fires could not have been set by Islamic attorneys. They would never do such a thing!" And sorry, I totally went there...
Upon further reflection, I would like to exclude everyone from the state of Texas from your theory. Maybe also New Yorkers who experienced September 11th.
Do you mean location is secondary to nationalism or to career-identity? Lauren seemed to be understanding the latter, and that's the one I agree with, too. You could make the argument for the former, but you'd have to discount self-identification---unless you're saying that national self-identification trumps regional self-identification? Dude, you saw the signs that said "Get the U.S. out of the U.N." That's not nationalism, that's regionalism so powerful it ate nationalism for breakfast. Even restricted to large urban areas, identical lawyers from San Francisco and New York (really from there, not bogus transplants) will probably self-identify as New Yorker/San Franciscan before they self-identify as lawyers.
Just to clarify: what you meant is that geographical location is secondary to social and professional location, and that people feel at home or out of place depending on their social surround more than their geographical location. Yes. It would be interesting to think about 1) the difference between professional conformity and social conformity in terms of how voluntary they are 2) regardless of volition, the degree to which social and professional conformity prompts the development of strong regional identity. Hence my interest in self-identification in my first comment. Then again, perhaps we should be impressed at the degree to which after-hours lawyers differ from place to place, the degree to which regional character manages to counteract the general push toward corporate and pop cultural globalization.
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