Learning
how to Lose: Coping with Political defeat in Honor/Shame Cultures
By Dr. Ajume H. Wingo
Abstract
Many
of the problems that grip countries in Africa and Middle East today grow out of
deep religious, ethnic and cultural conflicts. My aim is to examine their
attitudes towards conflict—not just of armed combat but more generally
dissensus or disagreement—and the way this general attitude toward conflict
affects the prospects for political reform. I argue that the premium placed on
consensus and agreement by traditional communities in these regions may
actually foster conflict by supporting “fragile” institutions and attitudes
that effectively push conflicting parties to the extremes of either armed
conflict or flight. If people in Africa and Middle East are ever going to
deal with the most serious forms of conflict, they must resist these traditions
and learn how to respond to the inevitable losses that they will have to bear
in a genuinely competitive political system. After explaining some of the
very significant forces that support these traditions, I describe how
competitive sports can be incorporated in a civic education program to impart
lessons about how to respond to losing. Citizen based politics is not like a
single trial event in which all is decided in a single moment. It is instead a
sequence of contests in which long-term success requires the persistent,
patience, and staying power to deal with the inevitable losses and setbacks
that will happen without dropping out of the system. I claim that exposure to
competitive sports is one way to help individuals develop this kind of
character.
Learning How to Lose:
Coping with Political Defeat in Honor/Shame Cultures
Dr. Ajume H. Wingo
University of Massachusetts Boston
Many of the challenges that countries in the developing world face stem from deep ethnic, cultural, and religious differences. Examples of the price that such differences exact abound in Africa, where such differences have given rise to the horrifying examples of genocide in Rwanda and Sudan. The effects of such differences are, however, hardly limited to these most intense examples, for such tensions also underlie the secessionist movements in Nigeria, Congo, Somalia, and Sudan and the numerous civil wars that have occurred across Africa since the first wave of liberation in the early 1960s. More generally still, the depth of ethnic and religious differences can be seen even in peacetime as the spoils of the state are routinely divided up and distributed by those in power to their fellow tribe or lineage members.
On the face of things, the best way to avoid the problems posed by such differences is to eliminate them. And, in that spirit, reform-minded thinkers (both from Africa and from the broader developing world) often aim to reduce the power and influence of such differences. From this perspective, the parochialism of one’s own traditions and the narrow view of one’s own religious convictions are barriers to the kind of peace and stability required for other kinds of political reform. Unfortunately, however, things are not this simple. Differences such as these are often differences between the most basic touchstones for the identity of people. One does not put on or take off a religious conviction or ethnic identity like a coat or a pair of shoes, and for that reason, traditions such as these are typically too much a part of people ever to eliminate (or even significantly reduce).
A more promising alternative to simply eliminating these
differences is that illustrated in many of the highly diverse liberal
democracies of Europe and North America. Such countries, of course, face their
own problems with ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities. (Witness, for
instance, the uproar over the headscarf ban in France, the secessionist
movements in Quebec and Spain and Belgium,
and the apparent divisions in the U.S. between the so-called “Red” and “Blue” states in the
recent Presidential election.) Still, such states can take justifiable pride in
their ability to accommodate the demands of groups harboring incompatible and
incomparable conflicting interests and deep religious beliefs.
What accounts for this difference? Why should these liberal democracies be more dexterous in dealing with these pressures and tensions than other kinds of systems have, particularly those found in Africa and the Middle East? One explanation appeals to the political institutions found in these states. That is, it is undoubtedly true that part of the reason why ethnic, cultural, and religious differences do not threaten the stability of the United States in the way they do to Nigeria or Sierra Leone is that the former has political institutions that have (at least since the American Civil War) channeled these differences into political action that in turn is shaped and constrained by a constitutional system. This suggests that the way to deal with these kinds of tensions is not to eliminate them, but to set up a system of government that will redirect them in a productive (or at least non-destructive) manner.
Institutional reform of this kind has an important and essential role to play in addressing the challenge that ethnic, cultural, and religious differences pose for the developing world. But to focus solely on formal institutions of this kind is to see only part of what is required to deal with these problems. My aim here is to highlight another equally essential component to dealing with these challenges, one that is easily overlooked if we focus too closely on the larger-scale political structures. Specifically, I want to focus your attention on the need to reshape the attitude of citizens in many developing countries toward conflict in general in order to make the most of institutional reform.
Western liberal democracies offer an enticing example of how those in the developing world may try to cope with ethnic, cultural, and religious sources of conflict. Yet it is critical that we not “over-learn” the lessons those countries may offer. In particular, it is important that we recognize how, with respect to the special problems of internal conflict and the development of tolerance in particular, the experience of Western European nations in, say, 1600 during the development of liberal political institutions is very different from that of the developing world today. There are great differences between conditions today in Africa and the Middle East and in the West as it developed its current form of liberal democracy, and these differences are bound to affect the relevance of historical lessons to current problems.
Most obvious, perhaps, is the fact that external forces—and in particular, the Western powers—are responsible for many of the conditions that generate conflict in these parts of the developing world. Modern Iraq, for instance, is a product of colonialism that circumscribed a hodgepodge of ethnic, cultural and religious groups under one state. Likewise, nearly all the modern states in Africa and Middle East were carved out by colonialist to satisfy their own desires.
This focus on the role of Western powers in creating the circumstances of conflict in the developing world suggests the following distinction. When we think about the history of religious and ethnic conflict in the West, we think of conflicts that are, in a sense, “home-grown”: in a world in which people will have different views about things to which they are deeply committed, it should be expected that certain levels of conflict will exist. In contrast, when we think about conflict in Africa or the Middle East, we cannot help but see much of it as inflicted from the outside. No one can pretend that an Africa that had been spared 400 years of slave trade and another 100 years of colonial rule would not have experienced its own home-grown conflicts. But it would also be ridiculous to assert that those injustices visited upon Africa by outsiders had no effect on either the conflicts that have arisen in the past and continue to plague the continent.
There are good reasons to put much of the responsibility for many kinds of conflict in the developing world at the doorstep of the West: at the very least this may help explain why conflict seems to be such a fixture in the developing world. Yet if our aim is (as it should be) to find a way to deal with the problem of conflict, it is also worth looking at the distinctive way that we in (or from) the developing world look at conflict in general—not just the violent conflict of combat but also the broader sense of conflict as dissensus and disagreement. Ultimately, I want to suggest that what we will see are deep reasons why simply adopting the political institutions of liberal democracy will be unlikely to be of much benefit with respect to genuine political reform.
Let us start by stepping back a bit and looking at some different ways one might respond to conflict in general. Consider a group of people sharply divided over an issue, where each side is passionately committed to its view. In such a situation, there are at least three general possibilities that might be arranged on a spectrum:
Fight ↔ Agree ↔ Flight
At one end of the spectrum is fight, in which neither side of conflict relents and the conflict escalates to the point at which violence breaks out, with the sides slugging it out until either one group is destroyed, conquered, or forced to withdraw or both collapse from exhaustion. At the other end of the spectrum is flight, in which one or the other side withdraws at the first sign of conflict. And, between the two is agreement, in which the two parties resolve their differences not by elimination (i.e., by destruction or exile) but by coming to an understanding that gives each side something.
For most people, agreement is the most attractive of these three—not just as a more acceptable alternative than the two other clearly undesirable options, but perhaps even as the ideal kind of response to conflict. For those of a liberal bent in particular, the idea of agreement suggests a tolerant community, one in which rival parties reach a consensus position to which each member of that group or community can accurately be said to have consented.
It goes without saying that there are situations in which achieving reconciliation is a highly desirable result. What I claim, however, is that this is not always true, for as with so many other things, the path we take to a destination is at least as important as the destination itself. In this case, I believe that a single-minded commitment to eliminate conflict typically ends up supporting institutions and individual attitudes that ultimately “crowd out” the coveted middle ground, effectively pushing parties to the extremes of fight or flight.
The best illustrations of the self-defeating nature of a single-minded focus on consensus are found in Africa. The structures of indigenous African communities are exemplars of communitarianism and consensus. Faced with internal dissent, the leaders of these communities will literally talk it out, sitting and talking for hours at a time until the differences are ironed out. Such a tradition of consensus and unanimity supports a sense of community unlike anything most Westerners are likely to have experienced. (It is no accident that when American liberals bemoan the lack of community in their own metropolitan centers they reach for the image of the African village.) Indeed, it is hard to look at such arrangements and not be impressed by the profound realization in such communities that the good of each individual is intimately bound up in the prospects of the group.
As with most communities, however, the character of social and political institutions reflects not just conscious human design, but also the various pressures and forces that have acted on those communities over time. In the case of Africa, these institutions were developed in harsh environments that required groups to band together for survival. The history of Africa is not that of rugged individualists—it is one in which individuals set aside differences to survive.
The long term effect of these traditions can be seen in African politics, which provide a sobering lesson on the need to develop ways to respond to conflict rather than simply avoid it. As noted above, African political traditions are deeply rooted in consensus and the avoidance of conflict. In the context of most of African history, such a strategy is highly rational, given the advantages this attitude provided in an environment where survival was for so long a precarious thing. But however rational or virtuous this commitment might be in other contexts, it has had some disastrous effects in Africa today. The commitment to consensus, after all, does not imply that all differences must be resolved—it only means that differences be eliminated, and often the easiest way to do that is for one party or the other to pick up and leave.
The unfortunate result of this is that political communities become fragile. They take on a wonderful organic unity that seems constitutionally incapable of surviving the internal differences that are a matter of course in any truly diverse state. These fragile communities are ones in which flight is preferable to engaging with opponents and secession more attractive than sitting down to create a genuinely competitive system in which conflict—permanent, passionate, and profound conflict—is the condition for a diverse society in which everyone can participate. And when flight is impossible, the only alternative is to fight—there is no middle ground left.
The fragility of the highly consensus-driven institutions and traditions of Africa can be seen in a variety of other systems as well. For instance, while there are legitimate criticism of the monarchical regimes that cover the Arabian Plate, their survival is not wholly accidental. The regime they support is intertwined with a variety of time-honored traditions and “coping strategies” that in the past had a genuine value.
Consider the Islamic traditions in the Middle East and Africa regarding women’s role (or lack thereof) in the political sphere. It is not farfetched to conjecture circumstances in the past that might have led to the exclusion of women from politics. Other things being equal, a woman is simply more valuable than a man, and so, keeping women out of battles or harm’s way (and by extension politics) might have been a survival strategy for many communities. These are diehard traditions that are likely to be resisted in the face of unraveling freedom for women or changing circumstances. Those who are for the autonomy of women and for participation in the public sphere should expect resistance from the many who may think rightly that something deep and meaningful is being lost by allowing women in politics.
From the rigid theocracies that admit no accommodation to shifting realities to the consensus-based indigenous structures, we find a range of practices and institutions that exemplify fragility. Fragile political institutions have many virtues: they often embody clear principles, untainted doctrine, impeccable structures, and perhaps even special aesthetic qualities. What they do not have is the flexibility to accommodate the kind of conflict that will inevitably arise in any political system that allows members of a diverse population to voice their honest interests and beliefs. A fragile system is incapable of tolerating political practice that is non-violent but competitive, that is built of negotiation, give-and-take, grudging concessions and compromise.
This contrast between the fragility of a politics of consensus and the divisiveness of a politics of conflict offer two very different views of the role of politics as a means of ordering our lives together. The latter is a not an easy perspective to take and indeed is not particularly attractive, if only because it does not provide the secure foundation promised by the former. But the latter is one that Westerners have in many ways internalized and made their own (despite the common complaint that there is too little community and consensus in their political systems). I believe that the appreciation and duplication of this achievement—making peace with conflict—is the key to making political reform a reality in many parts of the developing world.
Part of learning to deal with conflict of this sort is a matter of facing the fact that you will not always prevail. This is not, I hasten to point out, an endorsement of complacency or resignation, nor is it to suggest that what is at stake in politics is not important enough to make winning and losing worth worrying about. It is instead an acknowledgement that in communities sharply divided over different issues, it is not realistic (or perhaps not even possible) for them to find a middle ground on each of those issues. In such cases, the realistic alternative to the fight-or-flight option is for each side to accept defeat on some issues in exchange for victory on others: learning to deal with conflict, then, is a matter of learning to lose.
This approach to conflict admittedly leaves much to be desired. In an ideal world, people would be able to reach agreement one issue at a time, deliberating coolly over each issue and coming to an agreement on that matter that each side finds acceptable. The approach I am describing suggests a very different process, one which produces a mix of outcomes on which one or the other party prevailed—and on which the other party lost. Such a system does not create consensus on outcomes considered in their own right, but rather a grudging willingness to endure losses on one front in exchange for victories on another. Parties in such a system, that is, are not fighting nobly for a principle on which they will not compromise, and they are certainly not seeking a middle ground for the purpose of respecting the desires and objectives of all the disputing groups.
But if this model of politics offers far less than we might hope to gain, it is all too often far more than we actually find in many parts of the world today. The political violence we find in Africa and the Middle East does not imply that differences between parties there are necessarily deeper or more passionate than those found between groups in Western Europe or North America. Rather, it may indicate that these groups are not willing or able to engage in a style of politics that requires one almost as a matter of course to accept significant political defeats while remaining engaged in the system.
Such unwillingness to engage in this kind of politics does not necessarily mean one is unreasonable or an ideologue unwilling to bend on the most insignificant point of principle. Indeed, one of the reasons that violent conflict in so much of the developing world is so tragic is that while such violence extracts a terrible cost, there are often rational supports for the institutions and practices that sustain that violence. As I have already noted in the context of indigenous African communities, for instance, institutions may simply not be capable of accommodating a contentious or competitive style of politics. At the same time, they may be so firmly entrenched that undermining them may just not be an option.
At the larger, state-wide scale the problem may be that rulers have such a monopoly of power and influence that there is nothing to entice a party to engage in this style of politics. For instance, the African institution of “one-party democracy” is in part sustained by the reality that the losers in political battles lose everything—power, patronage, prestige, a voice in the government, and perhaps even their personal safety. Given the effective monopoly of power and resources enjoyed by those controlling the government, there is little motivation to mount a political opposition, for unlike the opposition in a more competitive or balanced system, such an opposition has no reason to think it will win on any issues. Faced with the prospect of getting something by joining the government and getting nothing in opposition, it is not surprising to find such a weak tradition of political opposition in Africa.
The deep challenge in these kinds of fragile political systems, then, is twofold. First, it requires that individuals adopt attitudes toward government and political leaders that are in various ways at odds with their long-established (and in many cases, quite rational) traditions. In the African context in particular it requires an attitude that combines civic engagement with a wary suspiciousness and self-interest, a mix that conflicts at once with the strong African tradition of consensus and the painful lessons that have led many Africans to disengage entirely from politics. Second, this requires adopting not just a new way of looking at politics, but one that may require individuals to pay a very high price with no assurance of success.
How can we even begin to do this? As point of departure, let us reflect on some traditional components of civic education. People generally think of civic education as a way of developing cognitive and deliberative abilities that citizens (particularly those in liberal democratic states) need to be productive citizens. These typically include basic reasoning and logical skills, the ability to assess evidence, and the capacity to engage in rational debate. Along with this attention to citizens’ analytic and critical skills there is a factual aspect to civic education. This is the stuff of civics classes, a curriculum that presents future citizens with facts about the structure of government and the basic processes used in the operation of the state. Typically, this aspect of civic education involves the memorization of names of ministries and ministers, states and provinces, and the content of the central documents and actions of the state.
There is yet another aspect to civic education that goes beyond these fairly high-level, cognitive aspects, civic education—a sentimental or emotional component that shapes the character of citizens not through logical argument but in more subtle ways. This is a part of civic education that aims not to impart knowledge of facts or analytic skills, but to form habits and attitudes that in turn affect how citizens interpret facts or apply their analytic skills. Rituals such as the pledge of allegiance, the singing of the national anthem, or exposure to a heroic or triumphal version of history all have a role in shaping the feelings of citizens for their country, whether those are feelings of affection or intimidation.
It is testimony to the power of this kind of character or habit-forming civic education that it arouses so many concerns about its possible abuse. And, unfortunately, many of these abuses are evident in what constitutes civic education in Africa today. For instance, the omnipresent images of political leaders in many African states lend them a sense of permanence to match their de facto status as “President for Life”. For many Africans, these images blur the differences between the person and the office and foster an uncritical loyalty to the reigning president and his regime.
Others react very differently to these images, but to much the same effect. For these people, the images are brutal reminders of their inability to control their political fate. There are many in the US who spent much of the last four years counting the days until President Bush would be turned out of office and now voice frustration and anger at having to live another four years with him in the Presidency. But even that luxury of counting the days is denied the people of Togo where Iyaadema has been ruling for four decades or of Cameroon where Paul Biya has been ruling for more than two dozen years with no end in sight.
Despite the real risks that this type of civic education holds, when used in the right way (and combined with more conventional approaches to civic education) it can be a powerful tool for friends of liberalization and democratization. Using familiar symbols, traditions, rituals, and practices to present and support particular attitudes and values is a way of bridging the gap between old and new political systems—of allowing unfamiliar principles to be linked to things people already care about or appreciate. Understanding the risks that this approach may hold is not a sufficient reason to reject it, but rather an incentive to think carefully about how to apply it.
Such an approach to civic education, then, is opportunistic: while the ends of civic education are defined by the virtues of a citizen, the means we use to deliver that education should not be confined within any narrowly defined range. Most importantly, we should recognize that there are familiar practices latent in even the most illiberal culture that can be appropriated and used to transmit the values and attitudes needed to turn subjects into citizens. It is a practical fact of life that people are more likely to do what they are already used to doing and are more likely to be moved by a flattery of their own images than of foreign images propelled by outsiders. Failure to recognize these facts and act on them can lead to unnecessary suffering and manipulation of people with dire consequences.
To this point I have spoken in quite general terms about both the content of civic education and the methods that should be used to deliver that content. Here I present an example that I hope will illustrate more clearly some of the implications of this approach to civic education. In particular, I want to discuss briefly how competitive sports could play a part in civic education, both as an example of how unorthodox sources can be used to impart important attitudes and to highlight some of the special values that I believe are fundamental to our conception of citizenship.
To talk of competitive sports in this setting may be a little surprising. At least for members of the ‘intellectual class’ in America, for instance, the lessons learned from competitive sports are almost all negative: the pressure to win at any cost, the ugly image of parents misbehaving on the sidelines of Little League games, and the drug and cheating scandals found at the college and professional level all have contributed to this view.
And yet when we look at the nature of competitive sports we should be aware of some of the more valuable things that they can teach us. For many people, what makes competition so unappealing is the risk of failure it implies. Games—even the simplest ones—have winners and losers, and the very act of participating carries with it the risk that you will lose.
If competition creates such anxiety and brings out so many forms of bad behavior in people, what role could it possibly play in liberal civic education? Perhaps the most obvious role it can play is as one aspect of civil society, or the network of voluntary social organizations that fill the space between the private and public spheres. As part of civil society, competitive sports provide a place for people to learn respect for rules and the importance of fair play, each of which is part of what citizens of a liberal state must have. In a similar way, team sports give people the opportunity to learn the teamwork and cooperation that are also part of citizenship, as well as giving people the experience of enacting their own rules of conduct and selecting their own leaders.
While these are important contributions to civic education, I believe there is another less obvious but more significant role for competitive sports to play. This role makes use of the conflict that is an essential part of any contested game. For many, of course, this element of conflict is the worst part of competitive sports, and it is common for people to try to excise the sources of conflict from sports (particularly when the very young are involved), leaving only the “wholesome” elements of teamwork, cooperation, or physical activity.
Nonetheless, there are excellent reasons to expose people to conflict in the relatively controlled space of sports. Life—and political life in particular—is filled with conflict over scarce resources: material goods, prestige, leadership, and decision-making authority to name only a few. One of the lessons that competitive sports can teach is how to deal with situations like these in which all sides seek what only one of them can have at any one time. These lessons are all the more effective because they are ones that people formulate themselves through their own experience, rather than learning them in a classroom or from a book.
The lessons to which I refer here are not ones that will guarantee success in competition. That is, the virtue of exposing people to competitive sports is not to teach them to win. If anything, its greatest value for civic education is its role in teaching people how to respond to losing. These lessons about losing go beyond learning to be a “good sport” about losses; experiencing the ups and downs of competition helps to support a certain kind of tenacity or resilience. Competitive sports such as soccer or baseball are not “single trial events” in which all is decided in a single moment. The fortunes of a team can change over the course of a single game, and may turn several times over a season of play; they are in their own way endurance events that reward persistence, patience, and staying power.
At their best, competitive sports such as these teach players to care about winning while staying engaged in processes in which they are often likely to come out on the losing side. A person who has learned to deal with genuine competition does not toss her hands in the air and quit after losing a game or two, but continues to train and practice with the hope of winning another day. Such a person has begun to learn how to face and respond to the setbacks that come with conflict.
This lesson, I believe, is critically important for individuals in nascent liberal states to take to heart, for it goes to some of the basic responsibilities of a citizens of any state in which the people are sovereign. Making states like that work requires more than just having the appropriate political structures and institutions. It requires citizens willing to create conflict of a sort by insisting—possibly against objections—that her demands be heard. And it requires citizens who are equipped to deal with the effects of such conflict by engaging with others who have demands that conflict with their own.
Politics come into place when we disagree about state of affairs—and we disagree about many, many things. But the realistic aim of politics is not to end these disagreements. Rather, it offers us a tool to act in the presence of disagreement and conflict, and to find ways to “go on” in ways that at best respect different parties but will usually never totally satisfy each. Politics, then, is an enterprise devoted to managing conflict: much as the realistic goal of medicine is to control disease rather than eliminate it, the practice of politics is a means of addressing the conflicts that are a natural part of social life. And in that sense, it becomes all the more important for us to find creative ways to help citizens (and future citizens) learn the skills needed to be full participants in political life.