Efforts to describe
ecological history simply in terms of the transfer of individual
species between segregated ecosystems are bound to be incomplete.
The study of such relations is usually best done at the local
level, where they become most visible. But despite its strengths,
the choice of a small region has one crucial problem: how do we
locate its boundaries? Traditionally in anthropology, this has
simply involved describing the area within which people conduct
their subsistence activities using "ethno-ecological" techniques,
which analyze the way the inhabitants themselves conceive of their
territory as a homeland.
Yet the
development of a world capitalist system has brought more and more
people into trade and market relations that lie well beyond the
boundaries of their local ecosystems. Explaining environmental
changes under these circumstances becomes even more complex than
explaining changes internal to a local ecosystem. In an important
sense, a distant world and its inhabitants gradually become part of
another people's ecosystem, so that it is increasingly difficult to
know which ecosystem is interacting with which culture. The erasure
of boundaries may itself be the most important issue of all, and
this concept is behind international agreements to protect the
environment, and underpins socio- economic arrangements, such as
the 'fair trade' movement, that are designed to protect the
agrarian ecosystem of semi-subsistance
cultures.
All human groups
consciously change their homeland to some extent. One might
even argue that this, in combination with language, is the crucial
trait distinguishing people from other animals. This
instability of human relations with their immediate
environment can be used to explain both cultural and ecological
transformations. Environment may initially shape the range of
choices available to a people at a given moment, but then culture
reshapes environment in responding to those choices. The reshaped
environment presents a new set of possibilities for cultural
development, thus setting up a new cycle of mutual determination.
Changes in the way people create and re-create their livelihood
must be analyzed in terms of changes, not only in their
social relations but in their ecological ones as
well.
There is a
requirement for the co-development of culture and environment for
humans to survival, generation to generation, in a particular
place. From this perspective we would expect adaptive behaviours to
emerge to maintain equilibrium between culture and ecology. Despite
these large global economic footprints of Western consumerism, it
appears that people still imagine a pictorial view of their
homeland, not only in its broad scenic sweep, but also down to the
minute elements; to living creatures in the mind's eye that make it
special. The best measure of a culture's ecological stability may
well be how successfully it adjusts its pictorial view of
'homeland' to maintain an ability to reproduce
itself. This also applies to political
stability. The complexity of the political concept of
homeland was analysed by Dr El-Sakka of Birceit university in
a lecture entitled Concepts on Nation and Homeland in the Forming
of Contemporary Palestine". He stated:
" We try to understand the different symbolic and
material forms in which the national Palestinian identity is
constructed, and to place them within different historical
configurations. Representations such as Nation, Motherland and
State refer to extremely diverse conceptual fields. Yet the
multiplicity has been subsumed into unitary and popular concepts,
which have changed over time. Thus, the concept of
"territorialism", given prominence in current discourse, turns out
to be a complex mixture of the idea of nation- building and
territorial expropriation. We have attempted to show the role of
intellectuals in this development through their exploration of
"historic rights" and the clash between history and geography. The
nationalization of all aspects of the social spheres, the past, the
ideology, the right of return and the creation of national,
symbolic and institutional systems should allow for the integration
of disparate social groups, who live together on the same
fragmented and real, or imagined but lost territory. The
nationalization also provides the foundation for a legitimate claim
to national identity. The Palestinian territory, a powerful focus
of legal and ideological constructs, is also perceived as a social
construct. There are three dimensions to this: the motherland, the
lost Territory and the future State. "Nation builders" offer a
positive representation of the Motherland to be, which can be
summed up in a phrase used by many of our interviewees; "as long as
Palestinians maintain a link with their motherland, they make a
distinction between the Motherland and the State"; on that view,
the State refers to the desire to go back to the 1967 borders,
while the Motherland represents an attachment to the historical
Palestine".
In Homeland Mythology, Collins explores
the foundations of America’s most deeply rooted national
narratives. Taken from the Bible, these narratives form the basis
for the justification of some of the cruelest acts Americans have
committed, including the slave trade, the Indian genocide, and in
our own time, preemptive war. The central question in this book is
not why politicians create these myths to justify their ends, but
rather why we allow ourselves to believe them. Unlike any previous
work on the mythic foundations of America, Homeland
Mythology delves deep into why so many of us accept the axiom
that the end can indeed justify the means, just so long as that end
is packaged in the language of biblical religion.
Collins takes the view that the word
“homeland” has two main connotations: 'a homeland of'
and a 'homeland for'.
"That
is, we speak of the homeland of a particular human or animal
population (“the homeland of the polar bear,”
“the homeland of the Maori”). We also speak of the
homeland as a refuge set apart for a displaced people (Liberia as a
“homeland for freed American slaves,” Utah as a
“homeland for the Mormons”). After the dispersal of a
people from their ancestral region, the call for the return of this
people combines both connotations: consider the homeland of/for the
Palestinians, the homeland of/for the Jews, the homeland of/for the
Kurds. As far as Europeans are concerned, America began as a
homeland for, and only over time became a homeland of. American
nativism—the Euro-American hostility to recent immigrants and
the perceived threat of multilingualism—has always asserted
the latter identity, an assertion that the events of 9/11 served to
accentuate.
In
contemporary usage, however, this word stands for a more
complicated set of concepts. A “homeland” is a place of
residence, but it also implies a destination marked by that potent
word “home,” a word that seems to alter subtly in
accordance with the verbs attached to it. The phrase “come
home (to)” suggests a return to an earlier set of values from
which we may have strayed. In a decade of orange alerts and
not-quite-cozy-enough basement safe rooms, “coming
home” still brings to mind a simpler, more secure setting, a
little house on the prairie, a time of quilts and comfort foods.
“Going home,” on the other hand, can connote an
involuntary return—at least when, in the imperative, it is
addressed to Americans abroad. That “go home” has
appeared on placards and in angry chants on nearly every continent,
and it does not evoke the “home” intended by the phrase
“American homeland.” Americans may like to come home,
but not to go home—much less “cut and run”
(home). At any rate, they are certainly not likely to “go
home” in an era of global markets and outsourcing, of cheap
labor and materials.
As for
that key phrase, “homeland security,” there is
something paradoxical (not to say Orwellian) about it when the word
“security” has come to evoke its very opposite. No
doubt “The Department of Homeland Anxiety” would have
been more accurate but not have struck quite the right tone.
Whenever we sense a gap—in this case, a very wide
gap—between language and reality, belief and experience, we
are entitled to analyze crucial words and question the motives of
those who disseminate them".
