TL: You don’t really seem to have very much of a strong national identity. You live in different parts of the world and you don’t seem to identify with the nation-state. In our education we hear a lot about how things like globalization are eroding the nation-state; but at the same time, I think the nation state is still a very pervasive and real factor – they’re what build the roads for people, they’re what provide schools for people. We were just wondering what you thought of that debate.
NC: I do feel quite Scottish. I mean I don’t feel particularly British, but I do have a micro-national identity, which is that Britain is made up of Scotland, and Wales, etc. But I could also say that I identify with Celtic culture which could be Scottish or Irish or it could even be north French- the Celts went all over. Or else you could say I have an elective affinity with Japanese culture, so that’s my culture of destination.
I think when you leave your country you can pick and choose the things you want to remember, but you can also selectively replace your culture with elements of someone else’s culture. So I now feel like I’ve Japan-ized myself - selectively. I’m just building a synthetic supra-national identity. But, that does depend, paradoxically, on there being fixed national identities that don’t change very much. So in a way it’s a privilege: 10%, maybe 20% of people can do that, but we do rely on the 80% of people who don’t do that to stay at home and keep an identity which is national. It’s a difficult balance you know, if it was just a huge melting pot you would lose national identity, you would lose national cuisines for instance.
