Outcomes Advanced Audio script

Page 31 Unit 3 Track 10

As you’re no doubt all aware, we live in troubled times, and one reaction to global
uncertainty has always been to cling onto this idea of a unified national culture, a culture that
everyone living in a particular land shares and participates in. It’s an idea that many find very
comforting. Sadly, though, I’m afraid it’s also something of a myth.

The reality is that identity is a very personal thing, and the individual cultural identities of
people living in pretty much any society that you care to name vary so much that it’s
basically impossible to define common features. And of course, our identities aren’t fixed or
static. They change over time as a result of our interactions. And in an increasingly globalised
world, a world that’s driven by commerce, our interactions are becoming more and more
complex and multi-layered.

We can easily find ourselves eating a breakfast that’s been manufactured by a Swiss company
while watching a French TV show we recorded last night on our Korean-made TV. We might
then put on a Chinese-produced T-shirt, some American-made jeans and some Italian shoes
before getting into a German-made car to drive to work. I should know – that’s exactly what I
did this morning! If our habits as consumers complicate our ideas about what it means to
belong to a national culture, then so too do our relationships with others. As we get older, we
often grow into the many distinct roles we play in life. These different roles often exist
independently of each other and when playing a particular role, we sometimes end up only
interacting with those directly affected by whatever the role is. This is why it’s quite possible
for one person to be, for instance, a mother, a wife, a ballet lover, Welsh, British, Jamaican,
black, and a marketing manager – without any contradiction.

At the same time, though, we also need to realise that for some people these different roles
can cause terrible tensions and can result in individuals abandoning certain roles as they feel
they’re no longer compatible with the main ways in which they have come to see themselves.
I’m sure you can all think of examples of this kind of thing from your own experience of the
world. So where does all of this leave national identity? The historian Eric Hobsbawm has
argued that many of the ideas about national cultures that are spread through the education
system, through the media, and through public ceremonies and monuments are basically a
form of myth-making – and it’s the ruling elite who encourage these stories and, of course,
who benefit.