What's In A Nation?

Potato Store: A Bavarian staple

For better or for worse, America has always had some difficulty defining itself. Let no one argue that we don’t try: John Steinbeck, an American icon, dedicated a year-long trip—and the resulting novel—to the search for an American identity. But despite such intellectual quests (which may, themselves, be part of the American way!), it’s easy to grow up in the US with the impression that nations just don’t have identities. For me, growing older and seeing more and more the range of nationalities, religions, races, and regional attitudes that our country holds, I came to think of people pertaining to much smaller spheres than a nation. I see myself as resembling and sharing common ideals with my immediate community— my family and friends, New York City, Gallatin, etc.—but there are regions of my country that I’m no more connected to than I am to mainland China.

My fractured concept of national identities was shaken up by my recent trips to London, Liverpool, and Munich. Though travel was a big part of my upbringing, the place in which I had spent the most time was South Africa, my father’s home country. Talk about a struggle for national cohesion… besides its colonial past, South Africa’s notion of self was stretched to the absolute limits by the years of apartheid rule. Far more so than the United States, South Africa is a mix of seemingly irreconcilable differences of belief, race, culture, and language. For me, raised in a sense in these two environments, a salient national identity seemed truly impossible.

Perhaps it is because I am already in keen observation mode, being abroad this semester, but the particular cultures of England and Munich positively jumped out at me when I traveled there. While I could write a 20-page paper exploring the nuances and contradictions inherent to the American or South African identity, I felt I could capture the British spirit or the Bavarian spirit in a sentence or two. The Brits were strikingly diverse (compared to Parisians, that is) and appeared comfortable with themselves, edgy at times but also playful, somewhat plump and/or out of shape, and were often colorfully dressed. The Bavarians all seemed to have the same glowy, almost ruddy complexion, sparkly eyes, somewhat bland style, and spoke OUTSTOUNDINGLY good English. Knowing people in both cities gave me access to more personal social interaction, and even in these settings my overall observations held true. Needless to say, I was amazed. And what a peculiar sense of satisfaction, that such definable cultures exist somewhere, after all!

Of course, the cynic in me wonders, particularly as I put all of this into words, whether the apparently tidy definitions were really so. It may well be that the window of a 3-4 day trip creates a neat frame around the local culture that would quickly fall apart with more time spent there. I do think, however, that the longer a national culture has existed without great interruption, the more possible it is for a shared identity to form and solidify. In France, England, and Germany, major world powers and—more importantly—colonial ones, there have been centuries in which certain values, traits, even gene pools, could perpetuate themselves. In former colonies, by contrast (like South Africa or the US), the flux of immigrants, emigrants, external conflict, and internal conflict mean that identity is always reconstructing itself. The hodge-podge of backgrounds and perspectives, in fact, may be the most enduring American trait—and it is thanks to that fact that so many people have adopted the United States as their home. But I have to admit: illusion or not, there was something refreshing to the more obvious national personas I witnessed in my travels.

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