THE ROLE OF PLACE IN PRESERVING A PERSONS IDENTITY

In a globalizing world, what is the role of place in preserving a persons identity?

Yerzhan Kani

Nazarbayev University

ID: 201360920

Words count: 1396

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THE ROLE OF PLACE IN PRESERVING A PERSONS IDENTITY

In a globalizing world, what is the role of place in preserving a persons identity?

A globalization process is the one of the challenging events, which every individual on the

Earth would face. Despite the fact that a globalized world promises a new level of cooperation,

where there would not be any boundaries between cultures, where there would be a close views

from different countries, the way by which people are trying to achieve this perfect world

demolishes the sense of being individual. Development of existing technology and discovery of

new ones are changing the world and people in it. However, the way that people change depends

on the place, where a particular person lives. It means that the place, where a person lives is the

one of the key factors that affects persons identity. What exactly is meant by the term place? It

is not only a geographical term, but also a combination of events occurring there, individuals and

also groups of people that grows and works there and so on. Simply, place is an area, where a

person finds himself as an individual. Thus, how could persons identity depend on a place?

Although Lera Boroditsky claims that a language is an entity that shapes peoples minds and

identity, in this paper, it will be argued that she did not consider the connection between language

and place, and there will be considered three factors related to place that really could play a

considerable role in preserving a persons identity, namely, effect of government, effect of the

local culture and local national values.

Every country has its own government with their own rules. Significant numbers of

countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates set even a particular republic

religion Islamic in this case. It is true that not everybody believes in Allah and someone may

want to take another believe. Of course, it would breed conflicts among citizens, because of the

discrimination of people that are not same as others. Additionally, if we look back to history,

Nikita Khrushchev announced a new social ideology the goal of which was to unify a nation. It

caused a huge outcry from the rich people. Every step of the government affects each citizen in

more or less degree. Moreover, a government decides with whom to cooperate and whom to

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impose an embargo. Although government tries to improve citizens lives, it mostly changes

people in some extent. Additionally, social ideology of other country may also affect person who

lives on another place. In the article, The Fusion of Civilizations, Mahbubani and Summers

quote the words of the former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Americans should try to create a

world with rules and partnerships and habits of behavior that we would like to live in when were

no longer the military, political, economic superpower in the world. If Clintons fellow citizens

could accept such advice, the citizens of most other countries would be willing to do the same.

And this might be easier to achieve than many believe (May/June 2016 Issue). Mahbubani and

Summers point is that if one country succeeds in one direction, others would follow. What I

mean there is that one government might not be suitable for a person, thus, he tries to find

suitable rules for him or travels to another country in order to find himself. However, in another

country, a person may face another factor that can change his identity, which is a tradition of a

new local society.

The next factor, which is directly connected with the place, is the local culture. Of course,

if you change your hometown to another one, you start to feel yourself as a stranger in this

particular country. You start to talk with the manner that native people talk; you start to do daily

jobs, which native people do and so on. You start to change. Princeton philosophy professor

Kenneth Appiah, in his book, Cosmopolitanism, gives a very appropriate example of a person

who changed throughout his life, who is Sir Richard Francis Burton (2016). Sir Richard Francis

Burton was a Victorian adventurer whose life lent credence to that dubious adage about truth

being stranger than fiction. Born in 1821, he traveled, as a child, with his family in Europe, and

spent time getting to know the Romany people; his English contemporaries liked to say that he

had acquired some of the Gypsy' s wandering ways (Chapter 1, 2016). Appiah states that Burton

somehow started to behave like Romany people, so that his friends came up with a joke. The

next example is an author of a TedTalk Don't ask where I'm from, ask where I'm a local, Taiye

Selasi, who claims that a locality is what shapes a person. She prefers to use the term local
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rather than country. It is quite justified because she believes that people and events hold people

at a particular place. She even does not want to talk about nationality. I'm not a national at all.

How could I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept (1:22, 2014)?

By these words, she tries to tell that, in a globalizing world, there should not be a notion of

national identity. She believes that, in a globalizing world, personal identity is more important

than the cultural and national identity, with what I agree.

There is another point that affects the way that a person behaves at a certain place, namely,

local national values. The reason that I distinguished this aspect from the effect of the

government is that a local national value is much more individual. A national value depends on a

persons sense of being national. As was stated, in the globalized world, there would not be a

notion of being a national. If there would not be a nation, would not people start to say where

they are from? Marcelo Gleiser, Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of

physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College, in his article called Globalization: Two Visions

Of The Future Of Humanity, believes that people are still tribal and that people are not ready for

the process of globalization. He claims that in order to reach globalization people should be

ready to destroy cultural and value barriers (2011). It means that, in a globalizing world, the

place is still considerable factor.

However, an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience, and symbolic systems at

Stanford University, Lera Boroditsky denies the fact that place plays a key role in preserving

persons identity by saying that it is a language that controls persons behavior. According to her

data collected from 6 different countries, namely, China, Russia, Greece, Chile, Indonesia and

Aboriginal Australia, people who speak in several languages or speak in different languages

think differently and handle problems differently (2009). In fact, it is true that language shapes

the way we think and the way we behave. Additionally, at first sight, it is true that when you go

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to another country you stay the same and it may seem that place does not affect your identity.

However, in order to integrate into a new society, will not you change somehow?

Although the research of Boroditsky was made properly and she found that language plays

a considerable role in a preserving persons identity, she did not considered the role of place in

learning of language. Let us take as an example the different Turkish nations on the Central Asia.

It is historically true that Kazakh, Turkish, Uzbek and other Turkish languages have one ancestor

The Ancient Turkish Language. However, depending on how nations located on the Central

Asia and depending on their culture, languages in which nations talk, evolved. The point there is

that language also depends on where a person is local.

In this paper, I have stated three factors by which place affects persons identity, namely,

government, culture and economy. Different national ideologies, new rules, types of job and

types of goods, which are controlled by a particular government, are all factors that controls

citizens behavior. Our world is now at globalizing stage. Moreover, in a globalizing world,

there still exists notions of national identity and cultural identity, which somehow suspends the

process of globalization. However, I believe that in a near future, boundaries between cultures,

languages, technology will disappear and we will achieve globalized perfect world. If the

barriers between countries would be taken off, the terms identity and national identity should

be reconsidered.

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References

Appiah, K. A. (2006). The shattered mirror. In Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers

(chapter 1). Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?

storyId=5168294

Boroditsky, L. (2009). HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? Edge.

Retrieved from

https://www.edge.org/conversation/lera_boroditsky-how-does-our-language-shape-the-

way-we-think

Gleiser, M. (2011, August 03). Globalization: Two Visions Of The Future Of Humanity.

Retrieved February 24, 2017, from

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2011/08/03/138919798/globalization-two-visions-of-

the-future-of-humanity

Mahbubani, K. & Summers, L. H. (2016). The fusion of civilizations: The case for global

optimism. Foreign Affairs, May-June. Retrieved from

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-04-18/fusion-civilizations

Selasi, T. (2014, October). Dont ask me where Im from, ask where Im a local. [Video file].

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Retrieved from

https://www.ted.com/talks/taiye_selasi_don_t_ask_where_i_m_from_ask_where_i_m_a_l

ocal