The Wendish Research Exchange - Mitzscherlich, Beate: Lusatia as the Homeland in a Globalised World?

Lětopis Abstract 2015 1: Mitzscherlich, Beate: Lusatia as the Homeland in a Globalised World?

A reconstruction of the history of the term ‘homeland’ reveals the change in meaning that this term has undergone in German. It is interesting how people, under the conditions of globalised modernity, present the term ‘homeland’ as a separate comprehensible and socially integrated alternative world to a society characterised by mobility, information and the dissolution of traditional social relationships. Empirical research shows that three dimensions are central to a psychological construction of ‘homeland:’ a sense of community, control and coherence. The combination of spatial, temporal and social dimensions in the concept of ‘homeland’ establishes people firmly in their community, their region and their culture; it enables them to base their current actions in society on the past and to use it to look to a utopian vision of a ‘better world.’ Backward looking ideas of ethnic and religious purity not only ignore the reality of ‘homeland,’ but also the necessary recognition in it of difference and complex identity structures.