Belonging and place in the age of globalisation: the case of Swiss ‘Heimat’

Abstract

One of the most important and least understood cultural effects of globalisation might well be the weakening of the relationship between place and identity. This article draws on recent cultural theories of globalisation and explores the impact of globalisation on the specific traditon of Heimat in the German speaking world; a concept which posits, since the late 19th century, a particularly strong link between personal biography and cultural memory of place and between rootedness in place and identity. The article examines how increased mobility and global connectivity impact on our sense of place and what consequences that might have on notions such as belonging, citizenship or agency. The lecture draws on examples of cultural and literary narratives of rootedness, migration, displacement and reembedding in German speaking Switzerland. It contrasts the work of Thomas Hürlimann, a Swiss writer who analysis critically the fundamental changes the forces of globalisation have brought upon his homeplace in the centre of Switzerland in the Alps with that of transcultural writer Melinda Nadj Abonji, who reflects in her semi‑autobiographical writing her experience of migration from the Vojvodina in Serbia to Switzerland as a living between cultures and as the painful, but also enriching experience of loss of Heimat and the attempt to find or create a new homeplace.