Throughout an individual’s whole life the question of
identity and belonging arises at some point of life. This is usually when
people are exposed to different communities and cultures. “It does so only
because there is more than one idea to conjure up and hold together the
communities welded by ideas to which one is exposed in our variegated,
polycultural world.” (Bauman, 2004, pg.26) I was born and raised in Saudi
Arabia. Originally half of my family is from Bangladesh and the other half from
India, which made me not strongly associate with a certain ethnic group or
community. Living in a family that was brought together by ideas and different
qualities I have grown up thinking liberally and being unaffiliated. Saudi
culture would come as a shock to most people; the rules are very strict however
I was fortunate to stay in Jeddah, which is one of the most liberal cities in
Saudi Arabia. Living in a compound, which was a safe haven away from the
conservative society, rules and regulations where I was able to socialize with
others from various countries around the world. Being
a female and a Muslim in Saudi did affect my perspective to a slight extent, as
a woman’s freedoms, her situation in life, including placement in society are
defined in the chapters and versus of the Koran.( Kavawal Md, 2008) Women’s rights in Islam are not equal at all to
men. The society is a very patriarchal society where the man has authority over
the women. The situation was frustrating; I always have this urge to do
something about the system of life there for women. Moving to Dubai and doing
few months of high school there was a great step I made in my life. Dubai is
where for the first time I felt the meaning of being a cosmopolitan.
“Cosmopolitan deriving from the Greek word
Kosmopolites ; literally means a citizen of the world.” (Molz, 2005, pg518) Dubai was a place where you find mobile
people from all over the world; it’s a flexible, fast moving community where
everyone feels an obligation to produce tolerance, interconnectedness and
cultural understanding while encountering a variety of differences. Like Molz
says “People increasingly find themselves ‘belonging’ to flexbile, mobile,
de-territorialized, transnational and virtual communities.” Being a
cosmopolitan and a global citizen you belong to the world rather than to a
particular country this is usually when individuals are travelling a lot,
seeing different people, cultures or images and having a global perspective on
the world. With these advantages individuals become more responsible as people
become part of the ‘universal community’ they want to start to spread world peace
and want to contribute and solve global issues. Being a cosmopolitan one has to
appreciate different cultures, be willing to interact with others, take
interest in others, have this curiosity, be able to make one’s way into different
cultures, be very open.
Cosmopolitanism is said to be “the effects
of globalization on nationalism and national citizenship.”(Molz, 2005, pg 519)
Thus being a global citizen you have to perform certain duties which is to live
in an ethical peaceful manner in the interest of the global public. In the 21st
century what is interesting is that things as well as people become
cosmopolitan and mobile. The internet has become prominent in truly making all
people a global community and influencing cosmopolitism. A variety of
information is available online, a lot of travel websites are posted up of
daily journals of people travelling around the world where it has connected cultural
differences, and when other people read it they feel they have been to all
those places without even leaving their country. Not only has the internet
allowed for people to exchange cultures but it has promoted to work towards
global community, “from sharing photographs of a school child’s smile to sharing
the broad vision of global community and technology.”( Molz, 2005, pg.525)
“Travelers perform their national
identity.” (Molz, 2005, pg.519) This simply means that when individuals travel
to different countries they do promote their country and national values, for
example when I came to Malaysia when interacting with people I would ask the
culture of Malaysia and they would be curious about my culture, I would tell
them all about our traditions, lifestyle. Travelers express their national
identity in many ways, small things like national flags, collecting stamps,
singing their national anthem. Travelers we are known as ‘cultural
representatives’, where we can spread a more positive image of own own nation,
like people always had the perception of the Middle east or Saudi Arabia being
the place of terrorist acts or very conservative but I did try to show that
that they should not be afraid and be aware that there are a large number of
people there who are liberal and open minded. I do appreciate cultural
differences, try to position my place in those differences and I have gained a
‘flexible eye’ by travelling, moving
around through various groups of people and socializing with global communities
yet I still have a lot to see and learn. Since we are living in a global
village culture is fluid always changing, and this does change my identity.
“Belonging and identity are not cut in the
rock, that they are not secured by a lifelong guarantee, that they are
eminently negotiable and revocable.” (Bauman, 2004, p.27) Meaning identity is
not fixed; people search for it, or choose from what they have encountered and
try hard to keep it. Identity is always in a process of changing and should be
discovered rather than invented. We
never knew what a nation, nationality or identity meant until people came
together and got exposed to a mixture of ethnic groups, different religions and
languages, then pressure was put into one has to have a nationality. Why is
there this huge pressure to have a nationality? Well for one reason people can assume our
personal identity and culture by knowing where one is from but this should not
be the case as people in the global village tend to move from one place to
another, and identities are shaped by the place. Once leaving my home, I felt
that I am always expected to ‘self-define’ myself and my identity and most
times I find myself associated into varies different Diaspora communities. It
is interesting because people always assume things about you when linking you
with certain diaspora groups.
It is surprising in contemporary society
the term diasporas has so many meanings “now it shares meanings with a larger
semantic domain that includes words like immigrant, expatriate, refugee,
guest-worker, exile community, overseas community, ethnic community” (Brubaker,
2005, 3). I did not think of myself as a diaspora at first but the term has
been universalized that I can call myself one now as I am part of the overseas
community. Coming to Malaysia I am always linked to different ethnic/diaspora
groups as firstly there is an increasing number of dispersion in space which is
the “segment of people living outside the homeland” (Connor, 1986, p.16) where
this segment is the minority of the population. The area where I stay in
Malaysia has opened up Arabic restaurants, shops and quite a few of the
individuals living here have this “homeland orientation” where it makes me feel
I am back at home, they are committed to keeping and telling memories of home
and where they have a desire to go back home, they are really orientated to
their roots where they feel it is the most secure prosperous place and this
desire is “an ability to recreate a culture in diverse locations.” (Brubaker,
2005, pg.6)
Living in Malaysia is where for the first time
I knew how much importance was put on ethnicity and race, it was a little shocking.
It was really interesting at first being a foreign student and having the
Indian or “chin-Indian look” (Chinese Indian) as people assumed that I was not
Muslim. I didn’t feel the racial tension between the three races in Malaysia
since our university community is very peaceful but you do see it at times in
restaurants, shops and especially among cab drivers people associate with other
people who are from the same race. During my time I have been living in
Malaysia most remembered responses when questioned where I am from and locals
would assume I am Indian or Malaysian.Looks mattered a great deal within the
colonial regimes of power. Looks mattered because of the history of the
racialisation of ‘looks’ , they mattered because discourses about the body were
crucial to the constitutions of racisms.”(Brah, 1996, p.3). I was offended that
the question about race always had to come up, that they could not just let it
go, as throughout my whole life I was saw and learned that questions about race
is not brought up unless it is in humor. What is the significance of asking
race? Does it really change anything in knowing the race of the person? After
learning the history of Malaysia why looks or race mattered I learnt to accept
and deal with it through the time.
There is always this tension of how I identify myself,
the issue of sense of belonging and home wherever I go. Living away from home
for quite a while poses a challenge in how I identify myself, as identity is
always in the process which is never complete and changes like your ideas and
direction in life. Once one has lived in place other than home country for
quite some time they tend to feel it is home, “home as the site of everyday
lived experience. It is a discourse of locality, the place where feelings of
rootedness ensue from the mundane and the unexpected of daily practice.” (Brah,
2005, p.g 4) .Although you feel connected to this new place, you do always have
this real sense of home which is wherever one is born and brought up. It may be
that certain food that always gives you that hint of home. Everyone at one
point in time will think and desire “the idea of belonging to a people” (Brah,
2005, p.g 4)
At the end of the day I would say that this whole
experience of meeting mobile people from all over the world who are liberal and
seeing culture changing to being global cultures has changed me, however I
think it is a good change since globalization has brought more people moving in
the same direction in life who are studying about gender, race, culture, global
culture, politics to bring about peaceful benefits to the world. Through this
interconnectedness of people we can see the vision of modernity, where cultural
differences are overcome, everyone will have equal rights and human beings will
be liberated “from the constraints of skin color, ethnic origin, gender, age,
nationality and social class.” ( Beck ,2006, p.49) and where individuals won’t
be made to feel like the others, religion will not be the heart of conflict ,where
history will be the past and come to an end as Fukuyama says, and where old representations
will not affect individuals cultural identity of the present. Global
citizenship has brought about peaceful benefits such as peace, understanding,
tolerance of differences although there are the negative sides such as loss of
culture and language but culture is ever changing, perhaps all the peace and
communication will allow us to save better records of cultures such as museums,
artwork, so it does have the potential to be even more positive.
Written in 2010
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