Transplantation and Uprootedness: Dangers of the Nomadic Lifestyle

          In Up in the Air (2009), George Clooney plays the character of Ryan Bingham, who spends 320 days out of the year travelling around the country for work (IMDB, 2009). Bingham is a corporate downsizer for an American company; in simple terms, he fires people. To most people, such a career would lead them to depression, but Ryan Bingham is not like most people. The “corporate downsizer” lives out of a suitcase, spends most of his time on airplanes or hotel rooms leading a nomadic lifestyle. If it weren’t for Bingham’s devilishly good looks, his character would be the antagonist. In a sense, the audience feels pity for him. However mundane Bingham’s life may seem to the audience, the character does not look for sympathy, in fact he seems to enjoy the nomadic lifestyle.

          When looking at the example of Ryan Bingham, one could ask why so many people seem to feel pity for the corporate downsizer, and not the people he is firing. In National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity Among Scholars and Refugees (1992), Liisa Malkki notes the important link between person and place. In her article, Malkki suggests that it often isn’t until an individual is transplanted or uprooted that they discover the importance of their place within a space (Malkki, 1992). One could even go as far to say that such “places” are vital in the maintenance of the social order; in the case of the British Columbian “Safe Streets Act”, one individual accuses homeless peoples as “aggressive” beings who take part in “unlawful behaviour” (Hitchen, 2005). Similarly, refugees are viewed as “amoral, without any sense of personal or social responsibility” (Malkki, 1992). Although the homeless and the refugee have different causes for their displacement, they do possess a commonality; whether temporarily or permanent, they do not have a place within a space to call their own. As Malkki suggests, they have been “uprooted”, away from their “homeland” perhaps, or erased from their “family tree”. As one may notice above, the importance of person and place is often described by using arborescent terms, comparing an individual to a tree and his or her origins to a trees root, which is deeply rooted into the land or soil. Perhaps now we can understand the pity we feel for Bingham’s nomadic lifestyle.

          To illustrate the importance of place and people, I will dray upon the works of Keith H. Basso (1996). In his ethnography of the Western Apache Cibecue people, Basso informs the reader of the important role place plays in shaping an individual’s self concept and morality. In Stalking with Stories, a chapter in Basso’s (1996) ethnography, the author explains the Cibecue use of place names as more than geographical references, as is the case in the Western world. To the Cibecue people, place names carry both literal (Big Cottonwood Tree Stands Here And There), and metaphysical traits. Every place has an agodzaahi story, which warns the audience of a past negative occurrence (Basso, 1996). The agodzaahi is often used to criticize delinquents, where the storyteller (hunter) shoots the delinquent with an arrow (moral, warning). The significance of the agodzaahi can be found in its structure; every agodzaahi begins and ends with the place name where it first occurred. From the time the delinquent listener first hears the agodzaahi, he is unable to escape that that place, remembering that Cibecue place names are as literal as they are metaphysical. In the future, the landscape will remind him of that arrow, as one Cibecue young adult describes “I know that place. It stalks me every day” (Basso, 1996). Although the Cibecue have maintained their links to places, they are not immune to modernity; many young people travel and lead seemingly nomadic lives, often being accused of “losing the land” (Basso, 1996).

          This concept of place names and land is not unlike Malkki’s argument, where the author stresses the important link between place and person. In both cases, the individual’s self concept and morality are dependant on their “roots” or place within a space. When an individual loses the land, their sense of morality is believed to be lost (Basso, 1996., Malkki, 1992). Furthermore, when an individual is uprooted or transplanted, their familiar landscape no longer “stalks” them, leaving them without a familiar place, which Malkki notes to be “the most important and least recognized need of the human soul” (Malkki, 1992).