People love to judge, mock or distrust those who live either above or below them on a map. North-south antipathies are more than a cultural curiosity
Formally, Belgium’s splits are linguistic, with its 11.5m people mostly shared between a Dutch-speaking north and a French-speaking south. In reality, language is clearly seen as a badge of tribal belonging. In both Dutch-speaking Flanders and Francophone Wallonia, it is common to hear people declare that the country’s linguistic border—which runs from east to west, dividing the capital, Brussels—is nothing less than the frontier between the Germanic and the Latin worlds.
North-south antipathies are much more than a cultural curiosity. The euro crisis of 2009-12 began as a row about European banking rules and government debt. As a Brussels-based columnist, the beat became a blur of emergency summits, as the flashing blue lights of motorcades ferried European leaders to another late-night meeting before markets opened the next day.
A similar reset may be experienced in Italy. By common consent, northern Italy is business-minded and a bit unfriendly; the south is Mafia-infested, inefficient and poor. Within Italy, regional stereotypes are matched by real-world differences: much about life is harsher in the south, from the climate to crime. Yet on a map of Europe, distinctively northern Italy is not in the north.
Elsewhere, however, wave after wave of internal migration and immigration have redrawn American maps, many times over. The far rural north of Florida votes like Alabama and Louisiana. But the rest of the state is a melting pot in miniature, from snow-haired Jewish New Yorkers in Palm Beach to Cubans and Venezuelans in Miami, or Puerto Ricans in Orlando.
Prodded during a Zoom interview to describe regional stereotypes, Mr Le at first demurs, for he is a serious academic. Then, as he is also a genial sort, he plays along. By reputation, he says, northerners are more interested in politics and jobs in government, but southerners are drawn to commerce. Northern winters are very cold, he goes on. And because that is hard on farmers, life as an official is an appealing alternative.
Food, a beloved topic, is often linked to regional character. By common consent, China’s north is shaped by wheat-growing and noodle-eating, but its south is influenced by its staple crop, rice. Some years ago American and Chinese researchers published a “rice theory”, after finding higher levels of individualism among students surveyed in north China, and more group loyalty among southern ones.
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