I was sitting in small group today for one of my classes.
This in an unremarkable statement. I sit in a lot of small groups...uh...three small groups...and pairs for international relations...and we pair for methods too...(I'm a loner for the methods project...but actually, that was unintended). It's rather amazing as my school is so small, my department even smaller, and my classes smaller still, I have the same partner in two classes. I have no idea what this says about my uni or my education, except we form lots of social capital.
Oh yes...sitting in small group. This is indeed unremarkable except we were pondering the challenges of social capital. I wondered (as I often wonder), how easy is to mobilize global nomads? We're a social group with generally shared values and norms. We have massive social networks, right? If we are a social group, then what are our natural resources, infrastructures, human and social capitals? I have no idea but yet we are a culture, a group of people holding to the common understanding that we are abnormally normal and better off for it.
I decided that we don't really have a defined identity; we know who we're not, but we don't really know what we are aside from the self-imposed term "global nomad." We self-identify with other groups with more concrete values...Aussi, footie player, uni grad, family-person, Asian/African/male/female. Global nomad?
That's just too hard to explain so we marginalize that side of ourselves. It's impossible to kill it but what are you supposed to do when so many other social groups can't relate to that part of you? And so we live our lives, form our social networks but are largely unaware of the nomadic culture we've formed and even less aware of our social capital resources.
And it all started while sitting in small group with a Kenya, a Syrian, and an Indiana Mennonite...
