Since the smug skilled get more esteem than the marginalized, they are keen to make clear to others that they indeed make their skill their salient identity. We can now use a key insight of Michael Spence’s Theory of Signalling to tell us how they are likely to do it. To show convincingly that I have chosen to drop nation as my salient identity, I need to do something that I would not be prepared to do otherwise. I need to denigrate the nation. This helps to explain why social elites so often actively disparage their own country – they are esteem-seeking. It decisively differentiates them from
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