Identity and place co-construct each other. If we think of places in terms of national boundaries, our identities become more nationalistic. If we think of our identities as primarily national or religious, or even as human, we construct places based on those ideas. The history of colonialism is rife with ways in which bodies get ordered based on gendered and raced notions of religion and nation. Globalization and climate change have removed the thin veneer of stability around places and identities to reveal that in fact our identities are always and already mixed up with those of “others,” historically and in the present, and that our places are always intersected by global flows of energy, materials, and information. There is no isolation, and there are no discreet identities or places. This chapter explores what this shift in thinking might mean for the development of planetary identities where we are all hybrids, and human beings are just one type of creature among many others within a planetary community.
