Question

Somewheres vs Anywheres. Idea from The Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart (2017):

For several years now more than half of British people have agreed with this statement: ‘Britain has changed in recent years beyond recognition, it sometimes feels like a foreign country...’ Older people, the least well educated and the least affluent are most likely to assent, but there is quite widespread support from other groups too.

The old distinctions of class and economic interest have not disappeared but are increasingly over-laid by a larger and looser one- between the people who see the world from Anywhere and the people who see it from Somewhere.

Anywheres dominate our culture and society… Such people have portable ‘achieved’ identities, based on educational and career success which makes them generally comfortable and confident with new places and people.

Somewheres are more rooted and usually have ‘ascribed’ identities- Scottish farmer, working class Geordie, Cornish housewife- based on group belonging and particular places, which is why they often find rapid change unsettling.

I have assembled a loose Anywhere ideology that I call ‘progressive individualism’… It places a high value on autonomy, mobility, and novelty and a much lower on group identity, tradition and national contracts (faith, flag, and family)… Anywheres are comfortable with the achievement society; meritocracy and most forms of equality (though not necessarily economic) are second nature to them. Where the interests of Anywheres are at stake… things happen. Where they are not, the wheels grind more slowly, if at all.

By contrast, the Somewheres are more socially conservative and communitarian by instinct. They are not on the whole highly religious, unlike their counterparts in the US… They are moderately nationalistic… They feel uncomfortable about many aspects about cultural and economic change- such as mass immigration, an achievement society in which they struggle to achieve, the reduced status of non-graduate employment and more fluid gender roles. They do not choose ‘closed’ over ‘open’ but want a form of openness that does not disadvantage them. Their worldview… is best described by a phrase that many would regard as a contradiction in terms: ‘decent populism’.

Most Somewheres are not bigots and xenophobes. Indeed much of what I call the ‘great liberalization’ of the past forty years in attitudes to race, gender, and sexuality… has been absorbed and accepted by the majority of Somewheres. But compared with Anywheres the acceptance has been more selective and tentative… Somewheres are seldom anti-immigrant but invariably anti-mass immigration.

#conservative #religious #economic #Identity #society #culture #faith #world

Cecil_J_Twillie 7

Answer 1

Multiculturalism and mass migration has harmed the British society.


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