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.
