The Hindu Business Line : Cultural geography

INQUISITIVE scholars will find it profitable to embark on a brand new field of investigation into why and how certain cultural traits cling to certain geographically specific areas, defying the impact of forces such as information technology, communications revolution, transcontinental mobility of people, homogenisation of workplace practices and intermingling of castes and communities.

There are places and countries which for centuries have been associated with distinct ways of life and which, even today, are taken to signify them in people's estimation.

France conjures up romantic visions of l'amour, Britain a phlegmatic character with a stiff upper lip and penchant for understatement, Germany Teutonic sense punctiliousness and conformity, Australia the bonhomous spirit of wide open spaces, Italy the sunny take-it-easy Latin temperament, the US the exuberant, if irrational, idealism getting it into a mess, China the repository of the wisdom of Confucius, Japan the ingenuity to reinvent itself to suit the times and India the torch-bearer of tenets and traditions going back to millennia.

Even within the same country, geography and particular kind of behaviour are interlinked. The Scots are pictured as standing for stinginess, the Texans for bravura, the Californians for being laid-back, Punjab for valour, Bengal for culture, Gujarat for business acumen, Rajasthan for entrepreneurialism and Tamil Nadu for intellectual luminescence.

People from particular geographical entities settling down in other far away countries seem to carry the cultural fixations with them.

Indians from different parts of the country living in the UK or the US are seen recreating the same ambience as in the places from which they may be hailing.

Indeed, some of the angularities of the places of their origin are accentuated in foreign soil.

Hitherto, these associations of ideas were accepted as a harmless exercise in stereotyping, which, for aught anyone knows, it may well be.

Nobody bothered to ask how they came about and whether they are true or false.

It is high time someone thought of opening up a new line of research to inquire into the genesis and validity of these notions and the reasons for their persistence.

B. S. Raghavan

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