Earlier this week, I was sitting in a New York cab when I spotted a striking new ad from Walmart. For once, it was not promoting cut-price consumer goods. Instead, the retailer was noisily proclaiming that it employs “American workers” - and that it plans to hire 10,000 more at the end of this year.
To be fair, this is not an entirely new message; Walmart actually announced these plans last year. But with Donald Trump installed in the White House, the company is now banging that American drum more forcefully than before. “With a presence in thousands of communities and a vast supplier network, we know we play an important role in supporting and creating American jobs,” Dan Bartlett, a Walmart spokesman, explained in a recent press release.
And Walmart is not alone. In recent weeks a wave of other companies, such as Amazon, IBM and Ford, have also been trumpeting their enthusiasm for “American” workers while manufacturers and retailers have been slapping prominent “made in America” tags on to their goods. Indeed, the “America first” vibe is so strong that a feature on menswear in Esquire magazine this month was entitled “15 Made-in-the-States Pieces That Every American Can Appreciate; Good For the Country, Good For Your Closet!”
What should we make of this? If you listen to Trump supporters, it simply reflects a long-overdue wave of patriotism that, the new president believes, will not only create jobs but should also foster national pride and a sense of community.
If you listen to critics of Trump, however, the message smacks of protectionism and ugly nationalism. Some think that company executives are selling out by posting those “made in America” signs. “It’s craven - they’re collaborators!” muttered one former colleague of Barack Obama in Davos last week.
But there is another important way to look at this advertising trend. If nothing else, it should remind us of how artificial our concepts of identity really are. Politicians such as Trump imply that the concept of being “American” is a rigid one. During the 19th and early 20th century, ethnicity and nationality were similarly perceived by social scientists and philosophers as immutable categories, a view that was deplored by many 20th-century intellectuals, including Albert Einstein.
These days, social scientists take a more subtle stance. One reason for this is that it has become clear that the concept of nationality is quite new. It emerged only in the 19th century, as a result of factors such as mass literacy and centralised government (as scholars such as the late Ernest Gellner have argued). A second reason is that as sociologists and anthropologists have examined ethnic identity around the world, they have realised that it rarely exists in neat boxes.
Somebody might say they’re “American”, but that is not their sole identity. They probably belong to a family group, a regional, religious or linguistic group - and have a professional or class identity too. Which of these different levels of identity a person stresses at a given time will vary according to the context and what they are identifying themselves against. (Yes, it is a sad fact that an identity or allegiance is almost always defined in opposition to something else.) But here is the key point: precisely because people can shift their “level” of identity, identity does not need to be a binary thing; nor does it necessitate a sense of opposition.
Someone might feel “American” at a sports match, but “Hispanic” at family events and something else at work. Theresa May, the British prime minister, famously declared that people who describe themselves as “citizens of the world” do not know what it means to be a citizen. But feeling a national allegiance in one context does not mean that you cannot feel a global (or local or regional) one in another.
So we should not be surprised that the heads of US companies now want to drape themselves in the national flag. It might feel artificial or cynical, but all boundaries exist as human constructs and our identities are contrived. Instead, we should recognise the multi-layered and malleable nature of identity. There is nothing wrong with celebrating something being “made in America” by “American” workers - but let’s also hear about their numerous identities. Celebrating the messiness of identity is one sure way to fight against the uglier aspects of nationalism - even if this message is hard to capture in a political slogan or taxicab ad.
