Features
Anywheres and Somewheres By Nicholas Tate
I
t is not often that a single book adds new terms to political discourse and changes how people look at the world. This, however, has been the legacy among some of us of David Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere (2017), a book which gave us the terms ‘Anywheres’ and ‘Somewheres’. Goodhart’s argument is that recent social and political tensions in many societies can be explained, at least in part, by the differences between a powerful highly educated and mobile minority group which values autonomy and openness (the Anywheres) and a larger and less influential group of people who are less well educated, more rooted in their local and national communities, and socially conservative (the Somewheres). Anywheres represent 20-25% of the population and Somewheres 50%, the rest being ‘Inbetweeners’. Goodhart also has a 3-5% Anywhere sub-category of ‘Global Villagers’ familiar to those of us in international education: people at the top end of their professions and businesses, part of internationalised networks, often with homes in more than one country.
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Anywhere elites have shown an extraordinary lack of empathy with Somewheres Goodhart’s main focus is the UK, though similar divisions can be found in other countries within the Anglosphere, in continental Europe, and indeed beyond. Understanding the Anywhere–Somewhere tensions helps to explain many recent political events, not least the last two US presidential elections and conflicts within and between the states of the European Union. Goodhart is far from alone in drawing attention to this feature within contemporary societies. Furedi, in Why Borders Matter (2021), pointed to a pervasive distaste among Anywhere elites for the nation states to which Somewheres are so staunchly attached. Eatwell and Goodwin, in National Populism (2018), highlighted
