The Third Culture

I woke at 4.30am, my nose in full flood and so I came here to webwander a while.

I started with Alison's blog and I came to an interesting article she had linked to.

I had posted a little about the 'third culture concept' recently but this article, titled Defining Expat Culture Today took the concept further and made the theory more personal to me.

Sarah Steegar wrote: While the subject is certainly too rich for just one study, or one article, this much was obvious: even though expats come from a million different directions (both figuratively and literally), our lives are remarkably similar in the most personal of ways.

Along with obvious answer patterns over 27 subjective questions, the results even went so far as to profile an expat 'life cycle' that seemed to emerge from their stories.

It intrigued me to read that 'Most significantly, the concept of 'home' blurs; it and identity are perhaps even realised as somewhat of a choice. This is a very special kind of freedom.

I could relate to it, knowing how Istanbul became a 'home' that I miss and how 'at home' I felt in Rome, knowing I could have lived there ... the more recently being tempted by Spain, a culture I wanted to slip into immediately, enjoying the taste of all I experienced there ... the people, the food, the architecture and landscapes.

There is no doubt that my roots go deep into the New Zealand landscape - my love for my first home is unquestionable but something made me fly, and sometimes I wonder if it was an unconscious desire to find like-minded souls, the people I had named 'internationals', with my personal definition being those who could live anywhere in the world and who were open.

Sarah wrote: Toss me in a room full of expats and I am just as sure, if not more so, to find things in common with them than if I were in a room full of random people from my home country.

For example, choosing an international life requires not only an active tolerance of human difference, but a certain affinity for it. A majority of us also hold similar political leanings - to a greater extent perhaps than we can say for our home cultures.

In the past, it has occured to me that if people like politicians came from this so-called third culture grouping then nationalism and small world views might disappear, countries could be 'guided' by people who have an international awareness and a tolerance for difference, who share an excitement about the evolution of human development and the possibilities of change.

My recent exposure to European politics, my observations of American, Iranian and Israeli/Palestinian politics and of the developing fear and hatred for the 'immigrant' has only confirmed that things need to change in the world.

It was a good article that took me further down this path I began to explore way back when I picked up and devoured my first really good travel book and recognised a 'type' that I could relate to and wanted to be.

I'll leave you with a song Alison posted. I liked her explanation of why she likes it.