Friends and Foes Volume II

Friends and Foes Volume II

Friendship and Conflict
from Social and Political Perspectives

Edited by

Graeme Watson, Barbara Gabriella Renzi,

Elisabetta Viggiani and Máiréad Collins
 Friends and Foes Volume II: Friendship and Conflict from Social and Political Perspectives,
Edited by Graeme Watson, Barbara Gabriella Renzi, Elisabetta Viggiani and Máiréad Collins

This book first published 2009

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Watson, Barbara Gabriella Renzi, Elisabetta Viggiani

and Máiréad Collins and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-0333-2, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-0333-5

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ....................................................................................................... vii

Introduction ................................................................................................ ix

Chapter One
Male Bonding: The Difference between Friendship and Camaraderie.
Can Men Love Each Other?
Malachi O’Doherty ..................................................................................... 1

Chapter Two
The Songs of Yours and Mine: The Power of Performance
and Techniques of Persuasion in Political Song
Jaime Rollins McColgan ............................................................................. 9

Chapter Three
Conflict, Memory and Solidarity: The Campaign for Unity
in Post-Genocide Rwanda
Laura Eramian .......................................................................................... 21

Chapter Four
Transforming Conflict into Friendship: The Case of Nordic
Co-operation
Lasse Sonne ............................................................................................... 29

Chapter Five
Nietzsche’s Friendship Theory and its Contribution to Peace-Building
Olive Wardell............................................................................................. 41

Chapter Six
Cosmopolitan Friendship Online
Adam Briggle and Edward Spence ............................................................ 53
vi Table of Contents

Chapter Seven
“They are French, we are Marseillais”: Imagining Community
in French Football
Cathal Kilcline........................................................................................... 65

Chapter Eight
Elements of Supportive Friendship at Work: A Study on the Relationship
Quality of Informal Career Support
Peter Yang and Jennifer M. Kidd .............................................................. 77

Chapter Nine
Empathy and Socialization: Present in Our Friends, Absent
in Our Enemies
Edmund O’Toole ....................................................................................... 91

Chapter Ten
Alberto Manzi and E Venne Il Sabato: Conflict and Friendship
Barbara Gabriella Renzi ......................................................................... 101

Friends and Foes: An Interview with Roberto Belloni ............................ 111

Contributors and Editors.......................................................................... 115

Index........................................................................................................ 119
 PREFACE

As doctoral graduates in the arts, humanities and social sciences

everywhere will know, life as a research student can be lonely and
isolating, and if things go really badly it could turn into a soul-destroying
nightmare of alienation. There is always a risk, as one seeks to become an
expert in a particular topic, of losing one’s bearings and becoming
dislocated from the wider research context, unable to articulate the ways in
which the key ideas that are driving the research are connected to the
concerns of a wider academic audience and with cultural communities
beyond. The struggle to situate our own expertise in a broader context is
typical of, if not essential to, the quest for the recognition and research
standing that comes with a doctoral study.
Academic supervisors and funding bodies alike are far more attuned
than they used to be to need to offer support to students who are engaged
in this struggle. Students are encouraged to attend seminars and
conferences, to present papers, to engage in interdisciplinary research
networks, even to organise research events. We may even provide
resources to facilitate these efforts, all with the intention of helping
students to find their own different ways of contextualising their research
and connecting it to that of others, within and beyond their own
disciplines. It is our responsibility to nurture an active community of
emerging scholars, capable of working across traditional disciplinary
boundaries on themes of contemporary social and political importance.
But supervisors can do little if the students are not willing to engage
themselves in this struggle for research connections. For this reason, it is
most encouraging for me as Head of an interdisciplinary University School
when a group of research students comes along, without prompting from
staff, and offers to organise a major, interdisciplinary, international
research event. It is wonderful when that same group of students goes on
to organise an incredibly successful conference on an extremely well-
chosen theme, while making minimal demands on staff time and financial
resources. It is better still when they go on to produce some highly
significant publications based on contributions made at the conference.
It has been my pleasure as Head of the School of Politics, International
Studies and Philosophy (PISP) at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) to
witness the production of this second volume of essays in the Friends and
viii Preface

Foes series. It is edited by four members of our School’s research

community – Barbara Gabriella Renzi, Graeme Watson, Elisabetta
Viggiani, and Mairead Collins – and it emerges from a very successful
international conference of the same name hosted here at Queen’s in
November 2007, supported by the School in conjunction with the
University’s Institute of Irish Studies. The theme of ‘Friends and Foes’
provided numerous lines of inquiry to connect research in a wide range of
disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. While the first
volume examined the topic of friendship and conflict from philosophical,
literary and artistic perspectives, this volume investigates the theme from
sociological, political and anthropological points of view. With essays
included from both emerging and established scholars, each of the
contributions collected here stimulate our thinking on the ways in which
conflict and friendship interact as inescapable features of social and
political life, in a range of contexts from the interpersonal to the national
and global.
The social and political significance of friendship is easily overlooked,
in much the same way that topics such as love and happiness have been
overlooked for too long in social research, as if they were matters of little
public interest. What society could possibly flourish, or even survive, if it
failed to provide opportunities for the realisation of strong friendships,
enduring love or the hope of happiness? Friendship is the glue of any well-
ordered society. In an era marked by a rapid transformation of the nature
of friendship through the development of social networking technologies
and the ease of global travel – to name only two of many relevant factors –
it is timely to examine the conditions under which friendships may
flourish or flounder. The Friends and Foes series provides an excellent
introduction to these fundamental issues that are at the heart of any such
examination.

Shane O’Neill
Belfast, 21 October 2008
 INTRODUCTION

The first volume of this series, Friends and Foes: Friendship and
Conflict in Philosophy and the Arts, focussed on philosophical and cultural
representations of the topic, found in literature, film and theatre. This
second volume explores friendship and conflict from social and political
perspectives. Together, the chapters provide a diverse and insightful
examination of the issue, with contributions from political theorists, social
anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and educationalists.
Beginning with an essay by Malachi O’Doherty, it is hoped that the
papers in this volume will appeal to sociologists and political scientists
concerned with themes of conflict resolution, identity, social capital,
community and well-being. The following is an outline of this volume’s
contents, as described by its contributors.

1. Malachi O’Doherty
Male Bonding: The Difference between Friendship and Camaraderie. Can
Men Love Each Other?

The history of the troubles tells us of heroic bonding and self sacrifice
among men, in the prisons in particular. It also tells us that comrades are
bound by loyalties that are militarily underwritten; disloyalty is
punishable, often by execution, and with the endorsement of the other
comrades. How does this compare with friendship, which should be
forgiving and allow for the sharing of secret feelings and fears? Yet other
arenas of male bonding, from the schoolyard to the football terraces seem
to follow the camaraderie model, which imposes uniformity and
discipline. And if honest friendship is difficult within a camaraderie
model, how much is it possible across the boundaries of a conflict? Is it
feasible that people from enemy camps might form deeper friendships?
What strengthens such friendships? The need to explain positions, to help
the other comprehend one's own 'side'. What erodes such friendships? Ties
of kinship, and the division of fear. Each is afraid of something different.
I, as your Protestant friend, may be much more frightened of your
neighbours than you are. This chapter essentially provides a contrast
between two models of friendship; one comradely, within a 'camp', the
x Introduction

other across a boundary between factions. It argues that the conditions of

division may impose a greater need for openness and understanding and
actually produce deeper friendship. And that's what you would expect: i.e.,
that those who transgress the limits of factional living learn more about
others and about themselves and become better people, more capable of
understanding others and, therefore, of befriending them.

2. Jaime Rollins McColgan

The Songs of Yours and Mine: The Power of Performance and Techniques
of Persuasion in Political Song

In Belfast, the image of Che Guevara adorns t-shirts, jackets, bags,

patches, flags, and his slogans are even graffiti-ed on walls and street
corners. Parades commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the
Hunger Strikes incorporated Basque and Catalan cultures as fellow
comrades in a fight for equality and recognition, and in Derry the
Palestinian flag flies alongside the Tricolour. Why have these symbols
been chosen as a link between the communities, and what is gained
through linking the struggle? To answer these questions, at least in part,
this chapter examines political music in Northern Ireland and its changing
dynamic within the Republican community. Using theories drawn from the
work of James Scott, Cynthia Irvin, and Mark Mattern, it analyses the ties
made between the Northern Irish Republican community and other groups
who have struggled for social reform. With the recent rise of
communication technology around the world, and with music a readily
available and easily transmitted source of expression, it is not
extraordinary that global connections can (and will) be made. The chapter
focuses on Irish Republican political song, but the techniques of
persuasion used in this type of music – to reconfirm commitment,
influence the unsure, and educate the young – might readily be heard in
any type of music endeavouring for a ‘rebel’ or political aim. At this point
in Northern Ireland’s history, the songs serve to give a voice to the
people’s emotions and remind them that past struggles are not new, nor are
they alone. In Northern Ireland’s republican community, in the
commemorations of events marking social change, composers and
musicians facilitating the movement with music draw from outside sources
to inspire and renew the motivation of the community. From Joan Baez to
Victor Jara, Woodie Guthrie to Christy Moore and Cruncher O’Neill, the
captivation of political song is difficult to ignore. Eyerman and Jamison
assert that the artists’ ‘engagement was objectified in their art, and the
 Friends and Foes Volume II xi

movement thus came to be embodied in them. When the movements in

which they had been involved were no longer active, the ideas and ideals
of the movements lived on in their art. And in many cases, they served to
inspire new movements by helping to keep the older movements alive in
the collective memory’ (Eyerman and Jamison 1998: 12). As the world
grows progressively more towards the global community it is today,
songwriters and musicians incorporated tunes or events from other
countries and communities to invigorate the movement, and to draw
attention to atrocities happening elsewhere. The intimation that groups
struggling for collective action have a bond strengthens the group’s sense
of justification, and creates a connection of friendship between
communities through the music.

3. Laura Eramian
Conflict, Memory and Solidarity: The Campaign for Unity in Post-
Genocide Rwanda

In 1998, the government of Rwanda established the National Unity

and Reconciliation Commission in order to address the fundamentally
ruptured social relations left behind by the 1994 genocide. Strategies for
forging solidarity include judicial processes to prosecute alleged
/génocidaires/, and the eradication of the identity cards which denoted
each citizen either a Muhutu or Mututsi, and were instrumental in
distinguishing enemy from comrade during the genocide. Now, so the
discourse goes, everyone is simply Rwandan. The unity and reconciliation
effort uses the language of “mending the tissues of society,” which
suggests that the state has implemented these strategies under the pretext
that there is an idealized, harmonious pre-colonial past to which social
relationships can and should return. This chapter examines the Rwandan
unity and reconciliation effort as a project of social engineering
implemented to overcome the genocide ideology. It questions the ability of
the state's campaign to foster stability by concentrating on public spaces
and institutions while private memory and relationships between friends,
neighbours, and community members are mostly overlooked. On one
hand, the state encourages all Rwandans to remember the genocide
together at public commemorations intended to smooth relations between
formerly antagonistic groups. Testimony, witnessing, and commemoration
of victims are key strategies for forging unity both locally and nationally.
On the other hand, state priorities suggest that groups and individuals
ought to 'forget' and move beyond the memory of violence and the loss of
xii Introduction

family, friends, and neighbours, the unity and reconciliation project paving
a more peaceful way forward. There are thus conflicting messages
emanating from the state: is remembering or forgetting the basis on which
to build social solidarity for the future? How are unplanned outcomes
emanating from these tensions undermining state expectations as to how
the 'reconciliation' process will unfold in Rwanda?

4. Lasse Sonne
Transforming Conflict into Friendship: The Case of Nordic Co-operation

The Nordic countries’ cultural, economic, political and social co-

operation is known as one of the most successful co-operation and
integration systems in the world that has created peace among a group of
previous enemies. The Nordic region was before the 19th Century a region
characterised by civil wars and wars between the countries. From the
beginning of the 19th Century this changed completely. The idea of
Scandinavism (the idea of the Nordic countries belonging together)
evolved and one co-operation and integration project after another was
initiated. The Nordic countries are today probably a more integrated unit
than any other group of independent nation-states in the world. How did
this happen and are the relationship between the Nordic states really not
characterised by any conflicts at all? This chapter will discuss the
abovementioned question on the basis of different examples in the Nordic
co-operation history but in particular compare a Nordic co-operation
model with the model of European integration, that is, what today is called
the EU. A dominating argument in previous research literature has until
now been that dynamics in Nordic integration is different from dynamics
in European integration. The chapter argues against the myth however of
ideological Scandinavism and of a particular so-called informality in the
Nordic societies as most important for the transformation of conflict into
friendship. It is argued instead that Nordic co-operation was more a
consequence of a long term socioeconomic and socio-political path
dependent process. The Nordic case is thus very reminiscent of the case of
the EU. The sources used are previous research literature combined with
new research carried through in the governments’ archives in Denmark,
Finland, Norway and Sweden.
 Friends and Foes Volume II xiii

5. Olive Wardell
Nietzsche’s Friendship Theory and its Contribution to Peace-building

Friendship matters. It is an indispensable part of human existence.

Friendship and its interrelation with conflict are central themes in the
philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. His friendship theory is especially
relevant today because it incorporates a healthy independence of spirit as
well as inspiration to strive for perfection for the sake of humanity. This
chapter argues that Nietzsche’s philosophy of friendship makes an
important contribution to peacebuilding because it encourages self-
criticism and self-mastery and the arguments are supported by piercing
psychological insights into everyday situations and events. For Nietzsche
friendship is not for the sake of mutual advantage or enjoyment – it is for
mutual inspiration and creativity. Each inspires the other ‘to perfect
himself and be the best that he or she can be’.
Well-acquainted with the pain of loneliness after the break-up of a
friendship, Nietzsche held that we should still value it as a ‘sacred
institution’ even though external circumstances sometimes cause the
cessation of a friendship. We see the difficulties of getting on with those
whom we actively dislike – it takes a lot of practice and patience to learn
to live with others: ‘How hard it is to digest one’s fellowmen!’ Nietzsche
condemns Kant’s notion of universal friendship, for it cannot be sustained
without particular friendships and for friendship.

6. Adam Briggle and Edward Spence

Cosmopolitan Friendship Online

Briggle and Spence develop a normative ideal of cosmopolitan

friendship online. They first provide theoretical and historical background.
Next, they articulate and defend cosmopolitanism as an important aspect
of moral identity in a networked world. They then argue that developing a
cosmopolitan character requires friendships that cross barriers, thereby
forcing reconsideration of prejudices. The Internet provides ample
opportunity to cultivate such friendships, but their development will most
often require more than mere opportunity. Structured and self-conscious
uses of the Internet, however, can foster cosmopolitan friendship. The
authors conclude by placing the ideal of cosmopolitan friendship online in
the context of stoicism.
xiv Introduction

7. Cathal Kilcline
“They are French, we are Marseillais”: Imagining Community in French
Football

“They are French, we are Marseillais” chant the supporters of

Olympique Marseille, the football club commonly perceived as
embodying many of the essential characteristics associated with
Marseille’s distinct civic identity. France’s victory in the 1998 football
World Cup provided a contemporary and spectacular insight into the
phenomenon of sport as a privileged site for the study of mass ritual and
construction of national unity across an ethnically and racially diverse
population. With reference to Benedict Anderson’s concept of Imagined
Communities, this chapter further examines the role of football in the
construction of collective identities, specifically at a regional and local
level in France. Particular emphasis is given to the unique example of
Olympique Marseille as one of the foremost representatives of this
Mediterranean port-city. The chapter examines how the friendship
between supporters and players and thus the bond between the club and
the city’s population, is forged by means of a number of attributes
perceived as being common to both. Furthermore, the rivalry between OM
and the main club from the French capital, Paris Saint-Germain, which has
in recent years descended into heated and sometimes violent conflict
between the two sets of supporters, transcends sporting boundaries to
reveal some of the tensions, both traditional and contemporary, in French
society. The chapter thus examines the role of the Other in the
construction of identity and hence elucidates the interrelationship between
conflict and friendship.

8. Peter Yang and Jennifer M. Kidd

Elements of Supportive Friendship at Work: a Study on the Relationship
Quality of Informal Career Support

This chapter discusses the results of a qualitative study of informal

career support established between employees, focusing on the formation
of friendship at work. Friendship at work was studied in terms of the
evolutionary characteristics of strong support ties, analysed using grid
technique. The elements of the grid comprise the phases of participants’
informal career support relationship with network members, and with
important others within and outside the organisation. Features of informal
 Friends and Foes Volume II xv

career support at work that changed across different phases (initiation,

maturation and separation) were described in terms of the elements of
relationship quality elicited from the data (thirty-six grids). Friendship was
defined as informal career support relationships developed into the
maturation phase. Several constructs were generated to characterise the
relationship quality of this phase. Frequent contact, easy to communicate
with, unlimited topics of conversation, in-depth conversations, consistent
thoughts, similar thinking styles and knowledge about each other
represented the quality of supportive relationships between network
members. In addition, empathetic understanding, positive regards, equal
interactions and a high degree of free and relaxed feelings characterised
network members’ impressions of each other. Trustworthiness, positive
affective reactions, intimacy and involvement in the other party’s personal
lives were highly related, and network members were seen as partners who
were willing to provide support at work. A partnership and relationship
commitment was formed between both parties, and network members
strongly and positively evaluated the usefulness of the support
relationship. Similarity and compatibility were frequently reported. This
basis of commonality was mentioned by about one tenth of constructs.
These results help to illuminate what constitutes the individual’s sense of
being supported from network members at work. Implications of such
friendship at work for career management and career counselling are
discussed.

9. Edmund O’Toole
Empathy & Socialization: Present in our Friends, Absent in ourEnemies

Empathy is a necessary condition for understanding others and for our

other orientated emotions. Without empathy we could not feel for others or
value them beyond utility. The first principled embrace of empathy in
moral reasoning had been offered by philosophers of the Scottish
Enlightenment. Hume, Smith and Hutchenson, had focused on emotional
aspect of morality and on sympathy in particular. Sympathy had been
considered as an emotion of active engagement through the faculty of
imagination. It has not been a topic of concern for many philosophers and
even for those dealing with emotions it has generally been neglected. Yet
it has been dealt with in great detail by many psychologists.
The cooperative and reciprocal interaction of individuals within
society is underpinned by empathic processes; empathy and conscience
tempers self-directed self-interested nature and allows the development of
xvi Introduction

friendship. There are many levels upon which empathy may be structured,
dependent on innate dispositions and developmental processes.
Many factors seriously limit empathy, including the extent to which it
extends. A person may show clear compassion for family, friends or any
other constellation, which may even extend to other forms of life, and yet
act in a ruthless and exploitative fashion to those who fall outside the
empathic circle. This is even the case for dyssocial or subcultural
delinquents. This and other distinctions make the task of understanding
moral behaviour in relation to Other clearer. Also of interest are those
individuals who pose a more serious threat to intersubjectivity and
socialization. Psychopaths have been defined as lacking empathy and
psychopathy, in many ways, represent the diametric opposition to the
concept of friendship.
This chapter seeks to address these issues and challenges the
limitations of dispositional theories of empathy, which should offer some
insight into how the Other is perceived as friend or foe.

10. Barbara Gabriella Renzi

Alberto Manzi and “E Venne il Sabato”: Conflict and Friendship

This chapter explores Alberto Manzi’s life by paying particular

attention to the conflicts and the friendships present in it. It also focuses on
his last book E venne il Sabato. This novel, published in 1986 after his
death, was set in South America, in an imaginary city called Pura (“Pure”).
It tells us a sad but hopeful story, the story of the violation of human rights
and of populations reduced to slavery. The hope for a better future is made
possible only by the bond of friendship between individuals. This
relationship can be born and nurtured only when protagonists start
respecting themselves as persons and start valuing their dignity. The
chapter includes an interview with Stefano Renzi, his friend, nephew and
collaborator.
 CHAPTER ONE

MALE BONDING:
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FRIENDSHIP
AND CAMARADERIE.
CAN MEN LOVE EACH OTHER?

MALACHI O’DOHERTY

Comradeship and friendship are not the same. Friendship is superior.

The bonding of men for war always diminishes the sexual side of
nature. You can see something of this in the footage of soldiers coming off
the boat to meet their wives and children. A clearly defined moment
signals their permission to disperse to the wives. And the uniform and kit
they wear for the first reunion kiss signals that the man is on loan to the
family and that the serious grounding of his being is the army, where he is
among comrades. The family's claim to him is a secondary claim.
There are many sentimental songs about men bonding at war, and like
other sentimental songs, they probably overstate the natural condition. A
local celebration of it is the Irish National Anthem which starts with the
line: Soldiers are we, whose lives are pledged to Ireland.
Where songs get sentimental about the loss of the comrade, it is always
because he has been a true soldier, killed in action. There are no plaintive
refrains bemoaning the soldier who fell out of love with war and his mates
and went home to be a carpenter and a dad. We know what becomes of the
broken hearted lover. The slighted comrade, likewise, disowns you.
Not all men bond easily or there would be no need for the harsh
penalties of betrayal. And it is a recurring theme in war fiction that men
have to be bonded under pressure and discipline. That was the theme of
the film An Officer and a Gentleman, starring Richard Gere, the making of
a good soldier out of an ordinary feckless bloke.
Soldiering and comradeship are not prompts to adventurous radical
thinking. Soldiers tend to preserve chauvinistic ideas like reverence for
2 Chapter One

Monarchy and the regiment without reservation of cynicism or irony. This

can be a surprising thing to encounter in modern professional people who
are often humane and have a sense of humour. The Royal Irish Regiment
preserves a war cry once roared out to put steel in the men. The cry has
gone into the record and onto the flags as the Irish for Clear the Way,
Faugh an Ballagh. It's perfectly clear to anyone with an ear that the
original was - fucking bollocks! - but you daren't suggest that in the
officer's mess.
Soldiering can never be like another job. Some British army regiments
are so wedded to ritual and custom that it can cost more money to pay
mess fees than a soldier actually earns.
The soldier must be imbued with a respect for something more
important than life itself. And such conditioning comes naturally, almost.
If ordinary men could not be taught to value an ideal more than they value
their own lives then they could not be sent to fight for that ideal in
circumstances in which it made more practical good sense to turn and run
away.
Another thing that bonds men in the services, to the exclusion of
others, is their acquaintance with horror, which they cannot hope, or even
want, to share with those who love them.
A soldier who had served in Bosnia says that on a posting to Cyprus,
he saw bottle of slivovitz over a bar. He had only ever tasted that in the
company of Serb fighters. When he tasted it in Cyprus, he immediately
vomited.
Soldiers, policemen - I don't know about police women - others in
services, say that they cope with horror by laughing. At the scene of an
explosion, one turns to a co-worker and says, 'do you want a hand?' then
tosses a hand to him and laughs. People who work in emergency services
attest that such behaviour is common.
This is the side of their work that they wouldn't even try to explain to
others who don't cope in the same way. And it casts light on the instances
in which paramilitaries have been seen to run laughing from a murder. We
read that as showing how savage they are - an ordinary soldier would
know that many laugh in the face of death and danger because the
alternative is to cry and be helpless.
Such men have said that they never laugh at the sight of dead children.
But perhaps that just means there are limits to what they can confess to.
But in bonding men together through experience, the military culture
produces an insensitivity to human diversity. It falls easily into superficial
judgements of others. You hear this when soldiers talk of foreign postings.
 Male Bonding: The Difference Between Friendship and Camaraderie 3

They frequently make the kind of racist generalisations that embarrass the
politically sensitive.
Who but the army would have been so insensitive on Remembrance
Sunday to order a band, in front of the assembled representatives of the
devolved regions and the Commonwealth, to play, There'll Always Be An
England.
Soldiers seem gauche and ignorant at times to the rest of us yet live
with a sense of superior insight. One of the clichés of the post-war years
was the complaint of fathers who had survived the Second World War that
their sons, who had not known it, needed to be licked into shape, knew
nothing of the real world.
A variant of that was the paramilitary pressure on young people on
housing estates in Belfast and Derry, who morally outraged the generation
of men who had lived through more clear-cut times.
Armies are hierarchical institutions which demand obedience and
young men, prone to doubt and angst, feel safe in obedience, so long as
their peers agree with them on who is to be obeyed. This value of
obedience has been celebrated in literature and tradition.
“Into the valley of death rode the 600”. Why? Because orders are
orders. And are the 600 remembered as pliant fools? No, but as disciplined
soldiers. The 'just obeying orders' defence took a battering in the 20th
century. In truth it was only ever denied to those who lost wars.
The hierarchical system within an army is one that rejects the upward
movement of ideas. A British army general last year lectured young
officers on the need for the Judeo Christian ethic to maintain the quality of
British soldiering. He said that it was because the British army was Judeo
Christian that it was honourable and its soldiers didn't run prostitution
rackets like those Kosovans.
When the officers present were asked afterwards why none of them
had questioned this, when it is plainly obvious that most soldiers are not
practising Jews or Christians, they said simply, 'because the sooner it's
over, the sooner you get your tea'. When men get to be generals they live
in a world in which no one contradicts them and they can bask in a sense
that they are wise and revered.
The IRA in the prisons organised a tightly bonded organisation for
which individuals members were prepared to sacrifice their lives. The
priority of the cause over the family was acknowledged by the families
themselves when they agreed not to intervene to save men on hunger
strike. Once a man refusing food had slid into a coma, the authority to
request food and medical aid passed to the next of kin, and for ten of the
men, the next of kin acceded to the wish of the prisoner that he should die.
4 Chapter One

That strike was broken by families finally being persuaded to tell the
hunger strikers that they would act against their wishes. The prisoners
bonded closely. They lived with the absence of all privacy, even for
defecation, masturbation and prayer. This was comparable to the filth and
closeness of the First World War trenches and the Nazi prison camps.
Those who had endured this appear to have been bonded for life,
remember each other with unabashed love and even reverence.
But when camaraderie is bound by loyalties that are militarily
underwritten; disloyalty is punishable by military means, often by
execution, and with the endorsement of the other comrades.
But how conducive can a military comradeship be to the expression of
emotion and honest vulnerability? You would have to be in the foxhole
with a man to know. The men who shared cells in the H Blocks and
smeared the walls around them with their own excrement appear to have
stayed loyal to each other since. Those who have fallen out of the political
structures appear also to have retained some friendships among former
comrades but clearly have had problems retaining the respect of others.
Some indeed made strong friendships among Loyalist ex prisoners,
former enemies, on the ground of shared experience of prison.
Comradeship demands loyalty to a shared narrative of experience.
This narrative binds the past and the future. It is a narrative which
defines the enemy and endorses the steps taken against the enemy.
Former IRA prisons press officer, Richard O'Rawe, was torn between
loyalties to the cause and to his comrades, when he saw a conflict between
them. He said that he would not have broken from the strategy of the
republican movement for managing the hunger strike, but felt later that he
owed a loyalty of friendship to the men who lived through it to give a
fuller account of how the negotiations with the British had been managed
and to express his own doubts about decisions taken by the IRA
leadership. In a sense, his book Blanketmen, ends where it starts, with
O'Rawe reflecting on whether he was really a good soldier at all.
Friendship, as distinct from comradeship, should be forgiving and allow
for the sharing of private feelings and fears? In an army you express your
doubts only to seek support in overcoming them.
In friendship, doubt is aired to open the possibility of change. You
don't expect a best friend to urge you to stay in a job or a marriage you are
unhappy in; you expect him – we are talking about men here – to help you
explore imaginatively the prospect of getting out
However, ordinary friendship may never, or at least only rarely, reach
this intensity of belonging to each other that soldiers at war feel. Friends
 Male Bonding: The Difference Between Friendship and Camaraderie 5

go to each other's family funerals, perhaps even weep together, but not in a
sustained rapture of connectedness lasting weeks and months and years.
And other arenas of male bonding, from the schoolyard to the football
terraces seem to follow the camaraderie model, which imposes uniformity
and discipline. Men weep for their team, speak to each other of the love
and concern for the team in a way which those who don't share those
emotions feel excluded from.
Football fandom draws from the intensity of the charge of emotion that
comes from being part of a huge crowd held in suspense through a game.
It includes the same separation of men from women, the same attachment
to territory, the same respect for manly physical endurance as does war.
If we are to think of an image of non-sexual intimacy between men, we
will probably visualise the antics of footballers round one who has just
scored a goal. They will hug and jump on each other, tousle the hair of the
scorer, pile on top of him, run wild in circles, arms in the air, leaping with
glee. And it will come easy to tens of thousands watching, to spiritually
join in.
This may be closer to Durkheim's description of religious conduct than
most of what happens in church these days, but it is not friendship because
it allows of no doubt. A Celtic supporter doesn't ever say: ‘och maybe
Rangers deserve to win this year’.
Honesty brings in contention but friendship is about the management
of that contention. Camaraderie is about denying it. Camaraderie focuses
on goals, literal and metaphorical goals, shared victories. It says there is a
place for fretting about your marriage and this isn't it.
And if honest friendship is difficult within a camaraderie model, how
much is it possible across the boundaries of a conflict? Strangely, there is
much militaristic literature celebrating the respect of the soldier for the
enemy. British evaluations of the IRA often remarked on the higher
professional standards of the IRA than of other similar paramilitary
groups, almost to the point of suggesting that greater competence in an
army suggests a greater merit in the cause it is fighting for.
Soldiering is ostensibly done to protect our people from an enemy, but
the ideals of soldiering represent a higher value than the family values we
are defending, or believe we are defending, when we go to war. There are
indications of this throughout the mythology of war, say, in the narrative
poetry that British and Irish schoolboys were taught to learn by heart.
Rudyard Kipling is a fine example of a chauvinistic writer celebrating
militaristic values. In his poem The Ballad of East and West, an English
soldier and an Indian recognise heroism in each other and defer to it. War
will divide them, they know, but they will part from this encounter holding
6 Chapter One

each other in the highest esteem. Indeed Kamal and the Colonel's son,
once they have decided not to kill each other, seek to outdo each other in
gifts.

They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they have found
no fault.
They have taken the oath of brother in blood on leavened bread and salt:
They have taken the oath of Brother in Blood on fire and fresh cut sod,
On the hilt and the haft of the Khyber knife and the Wondrous names of
God.

This camaraderie that crosses enemy lines is a recurring theme in

British narrative heroic poetry.
It is in Thomas Babington Macaulay's “Horatius”. This poem, like
Kipling's is written to a march beat, presumably in the hope that men
would march to war with the words of it in their heads. Lars Porsena of
Clusium has sworn by the nine gods that the great house of Tarquin will
suffer no further insult from Rome and has gathered a great army, but it
has been stopped at a bridge over the river Tiber, defended only by three
men, Horatius and two others.
Horatius - his two sidekicks defeated now - commits his body to the
Tiber and plunges into the water rather than surrender,

No sound of joy or sorrow

Was heard from either bank:
But friends and foes in dumb surprise,
With parted lips and straining eyes,
Stood gazing where he sank;
And when above the surges
They saw his crest appear,
All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry,
And even the ranks of Tuscany
Could scarce forebear to cheer.

Walt Whitman, who nursed injured soldiers during the American civil
war, idealised comradeship as the highest love between men.

Only I will establish in Manhattan and in every city of these states inland
and seaboard,
And in fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents the
water,
Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades.
 Male Bonding: The Difference Between Friendship and Camaraderie 7

This is comradeship presented as the wholesome natural life. It is

something beyond the military life, a vision of swarthy young men in the
outdoors, finding support and consolation in each other and unrestrained
and unlimited love. The suggestion here is of comradeship as homosexual
love, stated about as plainly as was possible in the nineteenth century.
While this is perhaps a quite beautiful image of human bonding, it has
the shared characteristic of comradeship in other contexts, it is between
men; it has nothing to do with family and women, it even elevates the love
between men to being the foundation of domestic life.
Certainly, military comradeship produces a far more intense bonding
than is normally found between friends, probably more intense even than
is found between lovers. But friendship is something else. It is, or aspires
to being, a relationship in which honest vulnerability and concern are
expressed and supported. A friend is someone who can accept your need
to know yourself, someone who, in sharing experiences with you grows
wiser too.
Comrades share a world to the exclusion of the demands on the wider
affective personality. It is the exclusion of the concerns of others,
particularly of women, that makes their work together possible, but it is
primarily a working relationship, an engagement with a task rather than a
meeting of minds that are free to open fully to each other.
Those who give themselves to a martial culture may turn out to be so
much like those they face in battle that they have a very short distance to
cross to understand them. What of those who are not inducted into martial
culture? Can people in tribes in conflict, but not bound to martial values,
or the unconditional defence of the tribe, ever be friends?
Friendships across boundaries, if they can be attempted, are potentially
strong and valuable friendships if they do more of what all friendships do;
make you safe to doubt how you habitually think and react. The danger is
that they become restrained and limited by civilities and preferred
ignorance.
Real friendship rests on the things that soldiers don't share - as soldiers
- but share only as people, and those things often conflict with soldiering
and its bonding forces. The real conversation between foes must take place
between civilians, people with civic and familial human concerns around
which trusting and understanding relationships can deepen.
What strengthens such friendships? The need to explain positions, to
help the other comprehend one's own 'side'.
And that's what you would expect: i.e., that those who transgress the
limits of factional living learn more about others and about themselves and
8 Chapter One

become better people, more capable of understanding others and,

therefore, of befriending them.
 CHAPTER TWO

THE SONGS OF YOURS AND MINE:1

THE POWER OF PERFORMANCE
AND TECHNIQUES OF PERSUASION
IN POLITICAL SONG

JAIME ROLLINS MCCOLGAN

The Irish revolutionary James Connolly once wrote that “until the
[social] movement is marked by the joyous, defiant singing of
revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinctive marks of a popular
revolutionary movement; it is the dogma of the few and not the faith of the
multitude” (1907). Mary King, an activist in the student wing of the
American civil rights protest, remarked that the freedom songs sung at
demonstrations “had an unparalleled ability to evoke the moral power of
the movement’s goals, to arouse the spirit, comfort the afflicted, instil
courage and commitment, and to unite disparate strangers into a ‘band of
brothers and sisters’ and a ‘circle of trust’”.2
What these two quotes have at their heart is the recognition of the
power of music to move, influence, educate, inspire and, above all, to
unite people, especially in times of social upheaval. Music’s ability to
communicate across barriers and gloss over subtle differences makes it
ideal as a device to gain or sustain support for social movements.

1
From the Irish rebel song “Let the People Sing”, composer unknown: “Let the
people sing the stories and their songs/ the music of their native land/ the lullabies
and battle cries and songs of hope and joy/ join us hand in hand/ all across this
ancient land, throughout the test of time/ it was music that kept the spirit free/ the
songs of yours and of mine.”
2
Quoted in Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Music and social movements:
Mobilizing traditions in the twentieth century (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press 1998), 45.
10 Chapter Two

Ethnomusicologist Christopher Small writes that in playing music, we

establish

a set of relationships, and it is in those relationships that the meaning of the

act lies. They are to be found not only between those organised
sounds[…]but also between the people who are taking part, in whatever
capacity, in the performance; and they model, or stand as a metaphor for,
ideal relationships as the participants in the performance imagine them to
be; relationships between person and person, between individual and
society, between humanity and the natural world and even perhaps the
supernatural world.3

Music is an important part of our everyday life. It can forge bonds or

erect boundaries. It is not remarkable that music and the politics of social
change should engage with one another, or that one might be used to
promote, manipulate, or influence the other. In this paper I will explore the
power of music, and the role it performs in motivating, unifying, and
driving social movements and political reform. In Northern Ireland, the
music of the republican movement both reinforces belonging and alienates
those who do not belong, or those who oppose. The songs give expression
to the people’s emotions and remind them that past struggles are not new,
nor are they alone, and in some cases, that the struggle has not yet been
won.

Social Movements and Music

The definition of a social movement is a complicated one, for its
interpretation is not bound how many people participate, its successes or
failures, or its popularity. The definition I prefer interprets social
movements as “central moments in the reconstitution of culture. In the
creative turmoil that is unleashed within social movements, modes of
cultural action are redefined and given new meaning as sources of
collective identity”.4 I have chosen to apply the concept of a social
movement to republicanism in Northern Ireland because in the face of
Northern Ireland’s changing politics, this constant, though not always
unified, campaign has remained a driving force. What began as an uprising
and turned into a civil war then calmed after the inauguration of the Irish
Free State, but the ardour for a thirty-two county state did not fade away

3
Christopher Small, Musicking: The meaning of performing and listening.
Middletown (CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1998), 13.
4
Eyerman and Jamison, Music and social movements, 6.
 The Power of Performance and Techniques of Persuasion in Political Song 11

completely. It stayed simmering below the surface and eventually came to

a head at the outbreak of the Troubles. It now resides in the hearts and
minds–and the songs–of Irish republicans.
Zimmerman, a theorist on the songs of Irish rebellion, postulates that
Irish political songs were originally a form of street ballad and were
composed and sung mainly to convey popular opinion and news,
especially to illiterate audiences. The songs, written to be sung out in the
streets, contained basic and sometimes crude lyrics, but they tapped into
fundamental emotions that were easily understood by the population. The
songs were–and still are–“effective in shaping a common memory of
events and binding the Irish together”.5 This accounts for the popularity of
the music with the community generations later. Eyerman and Jamison
have written that “[…]in social movements, musical and other kinds of
cultural traditions are made and remade, and after the movements fade
away as political forces, the music remains as a memory and as a potential
way to inspire new waves of mobilization”.6 And this is the case in
Ireland: music about the 1798, 1803, 1848, 1867, and 1916 revolts
continue to be sung with passion and affection. As one musician told me,
“If you can instil a thought in someone’s head with the song that will
change their opinion or make them read something, that will maybe
change their [mind] to participate in where we’re trying to go politically”.7
In Denisoff’s study of protest and revolutionary music, he divides the
songs into two categories based on their role in conveying dissent.8 The
first category is “magnetic” songs, which use repeating chords that are
straightforward and catchy to encourage audience participation. The use of
recurring melodies makes them easier to remember and maximises
comprehension of the message. The lyrics are central to the songs, and, in
Irish ballads, McCann postulates that the chorus is a relatively recent
invention to promote audience interaction.9 Denisoff’s second category of
protest song is the “rhetorical”. These songs concentrate on individual
sufferings, or they place the protest in the abstract. The technical
competency of the music and the musician come before the lyrics, and the
songs may vent frustration and anger but offer no real solution to the

5
Georges Denis Zimmerman, 2nd ed., Songs of Irish rebellion: Irish political street
ballads and rebel songs, 1780 – 1900 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002), 10.
6
Eyerman and Jamison, Music and social movements, 1-2.
7
C., in interview, 07/06.
8
Quoted in Eyerman and Jamison, Music and social movements, 37-40.
9
May McCann, “The past in the present: A study of some aspects of the politics of
music in Belfast” (PhD thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, 1985), 217.
12 Chapter Two

problem. While these categories are useful for separating the “rally” songs
from those that merely relate stories or events, these groupings are based
primarily on the music’s function.
Mattern has also analysed forms of music stemming from community-
based political action. His division of the songs into three categories
(confrontational, deliberative, and pragmatic) takes into account broader
aspects of musicality. The confrontational form contains protest music and
is used to voice ideals and concerns of a group whose politics are in
opposition to another group or groups. It may offer a solution or it may
simply proclaim the virtues of the desired way of life. Mattern writes:

Community members use this confrontational form of acting in concert to

enlist sympathy and support for the claims of their community, to draw
attention to their concerns, and to assure that the interests of their
community takes precedence over the interests of other communities. 10

In my own research, most of the Irish political ballads commending

“hero-martyrs” would fall into this category,11 for while they list the
sufferings of the community, they praise those who sacrificed their lives in
order to improve the future for younger generations. In many songs, the
blame is placed firmly on the opposition: in this case, the British, and by
extension, those who identify as British (namely the majority of the
loyalist/unionist Protestant community).
Mattern’s second category is described as deliberative, and it “occurs
when members of a community use musical practices to debate their
identity and commitments or when members of different communities
negotiate mutual relations”.12 While both confrontational and deliberative
forms of music stem from a base of divergent ideas, ideals, and identities
within communities, this form is more actively involved in negotiation and
exploration. The music creates a forum for debate to determine who we
are and who we are not, what is accepted and what will not be tolerated. In
Northern Ireland, cross-community groups have on occasion used music to
bridge community interaction: workshops on the Lambeg drum and the
bodhrán ensure that both traditions are learned and respected for the

10
Mark Mattern, Acting in concert: Music, community and political action (New
Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press: 1998), 25.
11
McCann, “The past in the present”; Jaime Rollins, “Tiocfiadh ar lá! Sing up the
RA!’: Rebel songs of Northern Irish republicanism” (MA thesis, Queen’s
University Belfast, Belfast, 2006).
12
Mattern, Acting in concert, 28.
 The Power of Performance and Techniques of Persuasion in Political Song 13

differences in texture and sound that they bring to the music.13 Engaging
in the music of another group offers a window of insight into the group’s
values and beliefs and could eventually lead to understanding.
The pragmatic form moves towards acceptance and music is used to
promote similar interests and cooperation within the community. It allows
and even encourages diversity and an element of respect for individuals’
differences. An example might be the surge in fusion bands springing up
in cities where there has been an increase in diversity. The music
acknowledges influences in the community by incorporating elements of
musical diversity. Ironically, Irish folk music is saturated with this kind of
integration in almost every respect but from what is popularly seen as
deriving from the Protestant traditions, like fifes and the Lambeg drum.
Many Irish musicians record traditional music with mandolins and
mandolas, banjos, bazoukis, djembes and mountain dulcimers, or bring
exotic instruments along to sessions.14 The pragmatic form does not just
encompass fusion music, but can also be used to express particular facets
of identities or to highlight certain elements of culture. A festival
celebration of Native American identity might mean several bands play
songs unique to their tastes and styles; pop musicians might appeal for
greater environmental awareness; country-and-western singers might
accentuate a lonely and difficult lifestyle within a greater community. It is
possible that it will be this category in which Irish political ballads
eventually settle, that they might cease to be seen as confrontational or
sectarian and simply become a testament to the feelings and sentiments
felt by the nationalist community during a particular period of their
history.

Techniques of Persuasion
When I began the research for my Masters dissertation two years ago,
one of the questions at the forefront of my mind was how Irish rebel music
came to hold so much power in a community, especially for younger
generations who grew up in times of relative peace. Attending as many
concerts as I did, it was apparent that these songs held immense significance

13
Roy Arbuckle, “Different Drums: A study of a cultural animation project in
Northern Ireland” (M.Sc Thesis, University of Ulster, Magee College,
2003).
14
Martin Stokes, "Place, exchange, and meaning: Black Sea musicians in the west
of Ireland,” in Ethnicity, identity, and music: The musical construction of place, ed.
Martin Stokes (Oxford: Berg, 1997), 97-116.
14 Chapter Two

for not only the nationalist/republican population, but Scottish, American,

Latin American, Native American, Catalan and Basque aficionados were
also often present, and many of them were familiar with the music. On the
Internet, websites abound with Irish rebel music’s ‘top-ten’ rated ballads.
To answer my question of how these songs capture the passions, values
and beliefs of republicanism, I looked at the techniques of persuasion–
outlined briefly below–used in the songs to reconfirm commitment,
influence the unsure, and educate the young.15 I established four categories
in which most, if not all, of the songs could fall under. These techniques
are intended to maximise the impact these songs have on potential
listeners, and although I am using the example of Irish rebel music with
themes that are best recognised by Irish nationalists and republicans, the
techniques themselves are not exclusive to Irish rebel music. Taken out of
context, many of the songs used in political struggles all over the world
could fall into one or more of these categories. These techniques are used
by songwriters to reaffirm commitment to the cause and to uphold the
validity of historical truths perceived by the community.
The first technique uses historical perspective to preserve continuity
and provide background for the struggle. Ireland as a whole has been
marked by periods of struggle that have given rise to a large body of music
casting the events, heroes and villains into the minds of the people via
song. Historical memory plays a big part in how the past is recalled,
especially when it comes to British mistakes and the Irish tragedies that
came about because of those mistakes. It matters not so much that what is
remembered is accurate or inaccurate with accordance of the facts; what
matters is that the people remember the event (or the person) in a
particular light, and it is this perception they will relate in the retelling of
the story. Kammen has put it thusly: “what people believe to be true about
their past is usually more important in determining their behaviour and
responses than the truth itself”.16 Although this comment was not made
with Northern Ireland in mind, it is an apt description of how perceived
injustice can still thrive among the generations who have actually
witnessed very little in the large scope of the Troubles. And, to follow on
with a point Connerton has made, we “preserve versions of the past by
representing it to ourselves in words and images”, and, I must certainly
add, in music.17

15
For a full explanation and analysis, see Rollins, “Tiocfiadh ar lá!”.
16
Quoted in Caroline Bithell, “Introduction: The past in music,” Ethnomusicology
Forum 15, no. 1 (2006): 5.
17
Paul Connerton, How societies remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University
 The Power of Performance and Techniques of Persuasion in Political Song 15

The second technique venerates those who have died in the fight for
freedom, or as McCann called them, the “hero-martyrs”.18 Most Irish rebel
ballads fall into this group. The key elements in the songs of hero-martyrs
are great courage, a readiness to sacrifice one’s life for one’s country and a
willingness to leave behind loved ones for the sake of the cause – in short,
their only real crime is patriotism19. James Connolly, the revolutionary
quoted in the introduction, has two ballads written in his honour. One
reveres him as a hero of the working man, while the other casts him as a
patriot:

A great crowd had gathered outside of Kilmainham

With their heads all uncovered, they knelt on the ground
For inside that grim prison lay a true Irish soldier
His life for his country about to lay down.

He went to his death like a true son of Ireland

The firing party he bravely did face
Then the order rang out: ‘Present arms, fire!’
James Connolly fell into a ready-made grave.20

This song portrays the people revering their leader by removing their
hats and kneeling, it calls Connolly “a true son” of Ireland and it points out
his bravery in facing the firing squad, hence the accuracy of the term
“hero-martyr”. Some musicians I interviewed pointed out that occasionally
the “heroes” of certain songs were not actually “heroes” at all, but victims
of circumstance. In this respect, songs in this category overlap with songs
that fall into the next category.
Another technique involves listing the injustices and tragedies that
have occurred as a result of political or social strife. In the North, these
songs depict tragic circumstances that have come about because of the
Troubles, and can include events or the deaths of people who were not
involved in paramilitary activity. These songs are important because they
crystallise events that have taken place at the expense of the oppressed.
They might point out the irony of the situation, as in the chorus of the
ballad “Joe McDonnell”: “And you dare to call me a terrorist while you
look down your gun?”21 Or the song might highlight the victimisation of
people by police or oppressors–like the Irish ballad written for Aidan

Press: 1989), 72.

18
McCann, “The past in the present”.
19
For more on this see Zimmerman, Songs of Irish rebellion, 67.
20
‘The Ballad of James Connolly’, composer unknown.
21
‘The Ballad of Joe McDonnell’, composed by Brian Warfield.
16 Chapter Two

McAnespie, a fan shot by police on his way to a Gaelic football match.22 It

may also voice the anger of the people and direct it towards the opposition,
and in doing so, openly legitimise the resentment felt by the community.
The fourth technique uses global solidarity to connect with other
political struggles in an effort to promote awareness, forge bonds, and
sustain legitimacy. The music gives a voice to the people’s emotions and
reminds them that they are not alone in their cause. Most of these songs
spring from the 1960s and 1970s, when the American civil rights
movement was in full swing and quite vocal, and therefore political
songwriters like Baez, Dylan, Guthrie, etc., came to stand for social
movement itself in America. Eyerman and Jamison explain that the artists’

engagement was objectified in their art, and the movement thus came to be
embodied in them. When the movements in which they had been involved
were no longer active, the ideas and ideals of the movements lived on in
their art. And in many cases, they served to inspire new movements by
helping to keep the older movements alive in the collective memory.23

Today it is common to hear songs about all manner of struggle and

social change, from Christy Moore to Damien Dempsey to the
internationally popular Dave Matthews Band.

The Power of Performance

Whether it is an opera, a Kaluli song by the river, a Mouse Ceremony
in Suyán Brazil or protesters singing at a civil rights march, the
exhilaration of a musical performance can be catching. Blacking suggested
a ‘oneness’ felt with others in specifically framed situations, in climactic
moments of love, achievement, or heady excitement. He calls this
interaction “fellow feeling”.24 This is an apt description of what I have

22
‘The Ballad of Aidan McAnespie’, composer unknown, first verse and chorus:
“It was on a Sunday evening when the sun shone in the sky/ As he walked his way
to the Gaelic pitch never thinking he was going to die/ But as he crossed the
checkpoint, the sound of gunfire came/ The news spread through the border town,
Aidan McAnespie’s dead.
CHORUS:
Oh why did you do it, have you not the guts to say?/ You say it was an accident, or
even a richochet/ Just like Loughgall and Gibraltar, your lies are well renowned/
You murdered Aidan McAnespie on his way to the Gaelic grounds.”
23
Eyerman and Jamison, Music and social movements, 12.
24
Quoted in Simon Frith, Performing Rites: Evaluating Popular Music (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996), 216; see also Fiona Magowan, “Drums of
 The Power of Performance and Techniques of Persuasion in Political Song 17

experienced in the communities of music makers in Belfast, Northern

Ireland, and beyond. Put into the context of unifying a movement, one can
see the power of music going to work, creating a sense of ‘fellowness’
among groups for a common goal. As well as acting as a symbolic
expression of community sentiment, music can be used as a dialectic
between groups struggling for power within a nation-state, as Askew
illustrates of Tanzanian taarab music in Performing the Nation.25 In the
formation of a nation-state, “reflections of patterns of human relations” are
expressed in class systems, and the value of the expression of human
experience is no less significant; this can be seen in what a society allows
or disallows, the rules it imposes upon itself and has imposed on it by its
government26. In terms of a social movement or a drive for political
reform, music is used as an expressive device that channels the
experiences of the people into a publicly accessible form of
communication. Contained within the music is the power to persuade
opinion and rally potential support, and it is made all the more powerful
for the energy it gives (and receives from) audience members.
The expression of human experience is often used to connect people
for a common and united goal. Stokes writes that “[music and dance] do
encourage people to feel that they are in touch with an essential part of
themselves, their emotions, and their ‘community’”.27 This feeling of
having ‘tapped into’ an essential part of humanness strikes at the core of
human need for belonging and community. On the ground, groups
struggling for attention in the aim of securing certain political allowances
or government recognition look to struggles happening elsewhere in the
world for inspiration, motivation, and to reinforce legitimacy in their
cause. The relatively recent innovations of technology have made this
‘friendship formation’ easier. Media can be used to censor or manipulate
information and propel certain values, as well as for less sinister uses, such
as the introduction of new ideologies and the spreading of knowledge.

suffering in Belfast’s European Capital of Culture bid: John Blacking on music,

conflict and healing,” in The Legacy of John Blacking: Essays on music, culture
and society, ed. Victoria Rogers and David Symons (Crawley, Western Australia:
University of Western Australia Press, 2005).
25
Kelly Askew, Performing the nation: Swahili music and cultural politic in
Tanzania (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002).
26
This is akin to Gramsci’s theories of ‘consented domination’ [Antonio Gramsci,
Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), 12].
27
Martin Stokes, “Introduction,” in Ethnicity, identity and music: The musical
construction of place, ed. Martin Stokes (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 13.
18 Chapter Two

In Northern Ireland’s nationalist community, composers and musicians

have facilitated the movement with music drawn from outside sources to
inspire and renew the motivation of the community. From Joan Baez to
Victor Jara, Woodie Guthrie to Christy Moore and “Cruncher” O’Neill,
the captivation of political song is difficult to ignore. As the world grows
progressively more towards the global community it is today, songwriters
and musicians incorporate tunes or events from other countries and
communities to instil solidarity and to draw attention to atrocities
happening elsewhere. The intimation that groups struggling for collective
action have a bond strengthens the group’s sense of justification, and
creates a connection of friendship between communities through the
music.

Conclusion
The techniques of persuasion used in music are effective in convincing
the hesitant as well as endorsing the authenticity of the ideals of the group.
The influence of music is utilised to inform public opinion. It articulates
emotion on a different level–perhaps a more immediate level–than images
or the written word, and provides an undercurrent of subliminal meaning
understandable to those who are tuned into the music’s undertones.
Through the power of performance, music can capture the imagination of
the masses more so than speeches or murals.
While Anderson wrote of “print-communities” which “portrayed the
imagined political community in sociologically vivid and easily
identifiable ways”28 as well as crediting it as the primary medium of
national expression, he has overlooked its complement in sound-
communities. Perhaps it is time we focus on moments captured in the
auditory process, as Feld has suggested by coining the term
“acoustemology”.29 He advocates a greater understanding for how humans
perceive their aural worlds, and what effect sound has on our culture and
our means of expressing that culture. Brecht once wrote, “Art is not a
mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it”.30 The
hammer with which spaces and identities, musical, national, or otherwise,
are pounded out negotiates the margins of the self, the community, and the

28
Quoted in Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism: Theology, ideology, history
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 79.
29
Steven Feld, “Waterfalls of song: An acoustemology of place resounding in
Bosavi, Papua New Guinea,” in Senses of place, ed. Steven Feld and Keith H.
Basso (Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press, 1996), 96-97.
30
Quoted in Kelly Askew, Performing the nation, 1.
 The Power of Performance and Techniques of Persuasion in Political Song 19

nation, within a dynamic framework of power. It is in this sounding of

negotiation we discover our commonalities, and create the elementary
structures of harmony.

References
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined communities: Reflections on the
origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.
Arbuckle, Roy. 2003. Different Drums: A study of a cultural animation
project in Northern Ireland. M.Sc Dissertation, University of Ulster
(Magee College).
Askew, Kelly. 2002. Performing the nation: Swahili music and cultural
politics in Tanzania. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Bithell, Caroline. 2006. Introduction: The past in music. Ethnomusicology
Forum 15/1: 3-16.
Blacking, John. 1995. Music, Culture and Experience. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Connerton, Paul. 1989. How societies remember. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Edwards, Owen Dudley and Bernard Ransom. 1974. James Connolly:
Selected political writings. New York. A republishing of James
Connolly’s
Songs of Freedom by Irish Authors, Dublin, 1907.
Eyerman, Ron & Andrew Jamison. 1998. Music and social movements:
Mobilizing traditions in the twentieth century. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Feld, Steven. 1996. Waterfalls of song: An acoustemology of place
resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea. In Senses of place, edited by
Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of
American Research Press, 91-136.
Frith, Simon. 1996. Performing Rites: Evaluating Popular Music. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London:
Lawrence and Wishart.
Magowan, Fiona. 2005. Drums of suffering in Belfast’s European Capital
of Culture bid: John Blacking on music, conflict and healing. In The
Legacy of John Blacking: Essays on music, culture and society, edited
by Victoria Rogers and David Symons. Crawley, Western Australia:
University of Western Australia Press, 56-78.
Mattern, Mark. 1998. Acting in concert: Music, community and political
action. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
20 Chapter Two

McCann, May. 1985. The past in the present: A study of some aspects of
the politics of music in Belfast. PhD diss., Queen’s University Belfast.
Rollins, J. 2006. ‘Tiocfiadh ar lá! Sing up the RA!’: Rebel songs of
Northern Irish republicanism. MA diss., Queen’s University Belfast.
Small, Christopher. 1998. Musicking: The meaning of performing and
listening. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Smith, Anthony D. 2001. Nationalism: Theology, ideology, history.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Stokes, Martin. 1994. Introduction. In Ethnicity, identity and music: The
musical construction of place, edited by Martin Stokes. Oxford: Berg,
1-28.
Stokes, Martin. 1997. Place, exchange, and meaning: Black Sea musicians
in the west of Ireland. In Ethnicity, identity, and music: The musical
construction of place, edited by Martin Stokes. Oxford: Berg, 97-116.
Zimmerman, Georges Denis. 1966, 2002. Songs of Irish rebellion: Irish
political street ballads and rebel songs, 1780 – 1900 (2nd edition).
Dublin: Four Courts Press.
 CHAPTER THREE

CONFLICT, MEMORY AND SOLIDARITY:

THE CAMPAIGN FOR UNITY
IN POST-GENOCIDE RWANDA

LAURA ERAMIAN

Since the 1994 genocide, the Rwandan government has been embracing
a discourse of civil peace, unity, and reconciliation. In 1998, the state
established the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, whose aim
is to overcome past schisms that have divided Rwandan society. The
commission focuses on building solidarity among Rwandans, and features
strategies such as student reconciliation clubs, community art festivals,
and conferences at which people gather to discuss the problems faced by
their communities. In addition to the campaign for unity's focus on
community and nation-building initiatives, the state has enacted political
and legal transformations for engaging with the past. Influenced by both
international law and Rwandan "customary law," the state has established
judicial processes for trying accused genocide criminals. Both post-
genocide judicial processes and elements of the campaign for unity occupy
an ambivalent position when it comes to questions of how to approach
both the past and the future in post-genocide Rwanda. I argue this is
because non-state practices of memory are largely overlooked in state
considerations of how to engage with Rwanda's past and future. Before
turning to these tensions around state strategies for engaging with past
violence, I will briefly outline what these legal processes look like.

Rwanda's Judicial Processes

First, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) deals
with those genocide crimes deemed most severe including inciting hatred,
orchestrating the genocide, rape, and torture. The ICTR has an explicitly
punitive mandate in that its goal is to convict high-ranking genocide
22 Chapter Three

criminals. So-called “common” genocide criminals, meaning those who

participated in the genocide or destroyed property but did not have a role
in its planning, are being tried at what are called gacaca courts. Gacaca
courts are semi-traditional Rwandan courts that have been revived in
response to a state prison system overwhelmed by the number of genocide
suspects in custody. Unlike the ICTR, the function of gacaca is not entirely
punitive. While these courts are vested with state authority to punish the
guilty, their other main function is reconstructing what happened during
the genocide. In the past, these courts were venues at which disputes could
be settled on a local, community basis. They are thus associated with
idealized, precolonial conditions. The fact that the state chose to revive
them as opposed to implement another kind judicial process for trying
genocide criminals says a great deal about the ideology they are working
to implement. The idea is that there is some harmonious, precolonial past
to which social relations can and should return. In other words, the revival
of gacaca courts signals a state effort to invoke an idealized, precolonial
period during which disputes could be resolved with the help of the whole
community.

Liminal Periods and Solidarity

Victor Turner famously theorized that the liminal period of a ritual
process, the classic example being the rite of passage, forges a sense of
solidarity between those who go through it together. In liminal periods,
this solidarity can emerge even between people of disparate status or life
experiences. This is because everyone in that liminal situation is
simultaneously no longer classified and not yet classified according to
regular socio-cultural rules and designations.1
While there are clear differences between initiation rituals and post-
conflict periods, what is interesting is that post-conflict periods are always
conceptualized both in scholarly commentaries and in state discourses as
liminal in nature. The language of transitional justice and transitional
governments, or even the term post-conflict itself, suggest that there is a
bridge-like temporal interval between a period of conflict and one of stasis
and stability, or structure as Turner would say. The social system is no
longer engaged in open violence, not yet in a ‘normal’ state of ‘business as
usual’. While most scholars now take for granted that no such normality or
equilibrium exists in social relations, both state officials and some

1
Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago:
Aldine Publishing, 1969), 95.
 The Campaign for Unity in Post-Genocide Rwanda 23

academics continue to use the language of “reclaiming everyday life,”2 or

"re-establishing unity"3 following conflict. This demonstrates that
understandings of transitional, post-conflict processes which eventually
end in stability are still prevalent in a number of discursive arenas. As
Feldman notes, there is a tendency in post-conflict situations to erase the
prehistory of trauma, and posit retrospective stability where none existed,
or will ever exist, in human experience.4
The notion of a transitional period following political violence also
raises the question of who decides, and on what basis, when the liminal
period is over and normality is restored. In the case of rites of passage, the
liminal period ends with the conclusion of the ritual and the re-
categorization of the participants in their new social roles. However, the
end of the transitional period that follows political conflict is ambiguous at
best. It does not necessarily coincide with the end of post-conflict trials, or
the establishment of democratic election processes, for example, as private
memories of violence persist beyond the ‘official’ transitional period and
continue to shape social relationships well into the future. Moreover, when
the liminal post-conflict period is declared over, can victims and
perpetrators be neatly re-categorized in ‘normal’ social roles which no
longer evoke the divisions of the past? Unlike ritual processes, post-
genocide periods are characterized by widespread fear, mistrust and effects
of violence at both the individual and collective levels. Thus it is no
wonder that solidarity has not yet emerged as the state hoped it would
during Rwanda's so-called transitional, post-conflict period.
In addition to the problem of mistrust following the genocide, two
additional sets of complicating factors at the state level pose obstacles to
fostering solidarity among Rwandans. First is the state production of a
national historical narrative which fails to articulate with first-hand
memories and experiences of the genocide. Second are conflicting
messages from the state as to the importance of remembering the past on
the one hand and forgetting it on the other. Thus it unclear whether the
state is encouraging practices of memory or forgetting in order to create

2
Veena Das and Arthur Kleinman, “Introduction,” in Remaking A World: Violence,
Social Suffering and Recovery, ed. Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Margaret Lock,
Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2001), 4.
3
Republic of Rwanda, Office of the President of the Republic, The Unity of
Rwandans: Before the Colonial Period and Under Colonial Rule and Under the
First Republic (Kigali: Republic of Rwanda, 1999), 63.
4
Allen Feldman, “Memory Theaters, Virtual Witnessing and the Trauma
Aesthetic,” Biography 27 (2004): 186.
24 Chapter Three

common ground for the future. What is the relationship between individual
and collective memory and the state in the effort to cultivate post-conflict
solidarity?

State Narratives of the Past

In order to create an official historical narrative in Rwanda that does
not perpetuate schisms or lay blame on some citizens for the country's
violent past, the state has manipulated definitions of victimhood. The
historical circumstances surrounding the genocide are complicated, and
inextricably tied to conflicts in neighbouring Burundi, the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, and Uganda. A victim group in one conflict was a
perpetrating group in another, so definitions of victimhood are murky as
best. The state is using this ambiguity to construct a past in which all
Rwandans are understood to be victims of the colonial period's divisive
indirect rule and its legacy. But this narrative has been known to create
further divisions among the populace. During my fieldwork in southern
Rwanda, genocide survivors expressed that when the state groups
genocide criminals along with their victims in a broadly defined category
of victimhood, their suffering is being appropriated by the state to further
its own goals. Moreover, by blaming the former colonial presence for the
country's ills, the narrative fails to articulate with what everyone knows
from first hand experience: that Rwandans have for decades been directly
involved in inciting and inflicting violence on one another. Even for
perpetrators, that the state represents them as a certain category of victim
conflicts directly with the punitive judicial mechanisms they are also
expected to face. The result is that state narratives of the past lack
legitimacy, and therefore are not taken very seriously as a basis on which
to build a common, overarching Rwandan identity.

To Remember, or to Forget?
In addition, a clear tension emerged during my interviews with
genocide survivors between the desire to remember and the desire to
forget the past. This tension is exacerbated by conflicting messages from
the state. Survivors keep photographs of those whom they lost in their
homes, or they would point out to me sites where massacres took place. At
the same time, they discuss the importance of re-engaging in the public
sphere and not thinking too much about who and what were lost. Thus it is
clear that even the most attentive of government policy makers cannot be
expected to overcome this tension. But that does not absolve them from
 The Campaign for Unity in Post-Genocide Rwanda 25

engaging with it, and letting it matter, rather than suppressing it. How is
the relationship between remembering and forgetting affecting and
informing state efforts to foster national solidarity during the liminal post-
conflict period?

Remembering
First, what strategies of remembering does the state use to create a base
of social solidarity? The most prominent way is in state-sponsored
commemorative ceremonies for the genocide which take place during the
annual week of mourning each April. All Rwandans are expected to gather
to remember the events of the early 1990s together, as the idea is that they
are all collectively the victims of decades of divisive indirect colonial rule.
During the annual week of mourning, normal activities like school and
work are suspended such that people can gather at ceremonies and
conferences. The state reasons that this collective recognition of, and
engagement with the country's violent past will create commonality where
conflict previously existed.
The judicial processes I outlined earlier are a second way that the state
encourages remembering the past. At the ICTR, an official record of the
genocide is being created, and blame for the violence of the past is being
assigned to particular individuals. As for the gacaca courts, attendance
there is billed as a national duty. Both victims and accused are expected to
gather together at the courts to participate in the process of discerning the
guilty from the falsely accused. Thus testimony, truth-telling, and
witnessing are elements of gacaca which work to ingrain events of the past
in both individual and public memory. Despite the complexity of
Rwanda's post-genocide situation and the ambivalent feelings around the
effort to punish genocide criminals, the state reasons that participatory
judicial processes and collective truth-telling will prevent old divisions
from persisting among Rwandans. The collective effort to set the record
straight about the past is meant to create a basis on which Rwandans can
build trust in one another.

Forgetting
But there is another side to post-conflict trials. Trials may also be part
of a state effort to foster forgetfulness about the genocide. As I noted
earlier, the conclusion of trials can be used to signal the end of a liminal
period of transitional justice, and a return to 'stability' or 'business as
usual.' But, as Agamben notes in the context of the Nazi genocide, trials
26 Chapter Three

helped "to spread the idea that the problem of Auschwitz had been
overcome" when it had not. The artificial endpoint to a transitional period
impeded people's ability and opportunity to think through the violence.5 It
remains to be seen whether the Rwandan state will treat the end of trials
like the end of a liminal period, as their mandate is ongoing at this time.
Still, the ambiguous relationship of judicial processes to practices of
memory and forgetting emerges as a source of conflicting messages from
the state as to the basis of solidarity in Rwanda.
A further way that the state encourages forgetting of the past is in its
practice of occasionally granting amnesty to high-ranking genocide
criminals. According to the state discourse, these are pardons in the name
of peace. In April 2007, to begin the annual week of mourning, the state
pardoned the former president who was charged with inciting hatred and
organizing militias during the genocide. The state makes a demonstration
of forgetting past conflicts among the leadership, in the hope that its
citizens will follow its example by forgetting the violence inflicted on
them by their neighbours. Paul Ricoeur has criticized the granting of
amnesty as "commanded forgetting." For him, these appeals to amnesty, or
amnesia, are abuses of memory and forgetting aimed at "urgent social
therapy".6 They fail to engage with pressing problems and debates
following political conflict, and impede a serious consideration of how the
dynamics of remembering and forgetting bear on approaches to the past
and the future.

Conclusion
To conclude, the effort in Rwanda to engineer solidarity at the popular
level using the liminal period of transitional justice seems misguided
because it lacks engagement with three key issues: first, people's lack of
basic trust in the state and each other due to past and ongoing regional
conflicts, second, narratives of the past that lack legitimacy and therefore
cannot form a strong basis for building common ground, and third,
conflicting messages from the state as to how and where to build solidarity
-- in remembering or forgetting? The common characteristic of these three
obstacles is that they all indicate that the state has not taken sufficient

5
G. Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (New York:
Zone Books, 1999), 19.
6
Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2004), 452-3; 456.
 The Campaign for Unity in Post-Genocide Rwanda 27

account of non-state memory practices in its movement for national unity

and reconciliation.
In Rwanda's post-genocide context, the state has created a liminal
period of transitional justice to suggest that the current suffering people
are experiencing is temporary, and that judicial processes and the unity
and reconciliation movement will bring an end to it. But such predictions
about the future overlook the roles of non-state memory, both individual
and collective. Rwandans remember all too well what happened in the
past; it is immanent in their neighborhoods and nearby sites of massacres.
Thus memory disrupts the artificial temporal divisions of history that the
state espouses.7 The notion of the genocide, followed by a transitional
period of solidarity building, and finally ‘business as usual’ does not make
sense when memories of violence are always already present in survivors'
minds, relationships, and surroundings. During my fieldwork, survivors
expressed that both the transitional justice and unity and reconciliation
efforts feel forced, and that their suffering has been sacrificed to the
movement. Private memory of the genocide and ruptured social bonds thus
present a significant challenge to the government's efforts to re-educate the
population about both the country's past and what is sayable and thinkable
in the public sphere. Dissenting views on Rwanda's past, present, and
future will persist despite, and perhaps even because of the government's
official historical narrative and its discourse of an inclusive, national
Rwandan identity. In other words, non-state memory practices and
questions about who imagines they share a common past with whom, may
shed more light on the shape of social relationships (both cooperative and
antagonistic) in contemporary Rwanda than government proclamations of
peace, unity, and reconciliation.

References
Agamben, G. 1999. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive.
New York: Zone Books.
Das, Veena and Arthur Kleinman. 2001. “Introduction” In Remaking a
World: Violence, Social Suffering and Recovery, ed. Veena Das,
Arthur Kleinman, Margaret Lock, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela
Reynolds, 1-30 Berkeley: University of California Press.
Feldman, Allen. 2004. Memory Theaters, Virtual Witnessing and the
Trauma Aesthetic. Biography 27(1):163-202.

7
Lessie Jo Frazier, Salt in the Sand: Memory, Violence and the Nation State in
Chile, 1890 to the Present (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 29.
28 Chapter Three

Frazier, Lessie Jo. 2007. Salt in the Sand: Memory, Violence and the
Nation-State in Chile, 1890 to the Present. Durham: Duke University
Press.Republic of Rwanda, Office of the President of the Republic. 1999.
The Unity of Rwandans: Before the Colonial Period and Under
Colonial Rule and Under the First Republic. Kigali: Republic of
Rwanda.
Ricœur, Paul. 2004. Memory, history, forgetting. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Turner, Victor W. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure.
Chicago: Aldine Publishing
 CHAPTER FOUR

TRANSFORMING CONFLICT INTO FRIENDSHIP:

THE CASE OF NORDIC CO-OPERATION

LASSE SONNE

The Nordic countries’ cultural, economic, political and social co-

operation is known as one of the most successful co-operation and
integration systems in the world that has created peace among a group of
previous enemies. The Nordic region was before the 19th century a region
characterised by civil wars and wars between the countries for more than
one thousand years. This conflict is also called the battle between East and
West in the Nordic area, that is, between Sweden (with Finland) and
Denmark (with Iceland and Norway). The battle was about leadership in
the Nordic area but had the superior purpose of achieving hegemony in the
Baltic Sea area. Put another way, the Nordic area was a mean while the
Baltic Sea area was the superior object of the Nordic power struggle.1
The extension and the numbers of the wars in these years were
comprehensive and many. Comprehensive was also the infringements
against people living in this area. Ethnic cleansing was not an unknown
phenomenon but a common way the two powers tried to keep control and
achieve control over new conquered land. The most exposed area was the
Scanian provinces in today’s South Sweden because of its important
strategic position. The power that controlled the Scanian provinces was
able to control an important part of the Baltic Sea to the North and thus act
as an important counterbalance to the powers on the Baltic Sea’s south
cost where Germany and Poland are situated today. As a result of being
exposed to the power struggle between Denmark and Sweden the strongest
movement in the Nordic countries striving for regional independence even
today is to be found in Scania. Some groups in Scania even strive for a
reunion with Denmark.

1
Frantz Wendt, Nordisk Råd 1952-1978 (København: Almqvist & Wiksell
International, 1979), 5.
30 Chapter Four

From the beginning of the 19th century the situation however changed.
Denmark-Norway had been involved in the Napoleonic Wars (1804-15) –
a continuation of the Revolution Wars (1792-1802) - on Napoleon’s side.
Sweden was on the winners’ side with Prussia, Russia and the United
Kingdom but at the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) it was decided that
Russia should take over Finland that was conquered from the Swedes in
1809. In return it was decided that Sweden from 1814 should take over
Norway at the expense of Denmark. The result of the Congress of Vienna
in principle dictated the frame of the 19th century Europe. However, the
agreements were not entirely kept. For example, national unifications in
Italy and Germany ignored many of the agreements from Vienna.
Therefore, the conflict between Denmark-Norway and Sweden could also
have continued but it did not even though Norway’s independence from
Sweden in 1905 was an outcome of this conflict. An important reason was
that the system of bipolarity in the Nordic area was crushed. The new
rising superpowers in the Baltic Sea area were not Denmark and Sweden
but Prussia and Russia.2 This was however not and entirely new situation
in northern Europe. Already during the Great Nordic War (1700-21)
Russia had her breakthrough as an important power in the Baltic Sea area
while Prussia had also been capable of increasing her power position in the
region at the expense of Poland-Saxony. However, had there been doubts
before the Napoleonic Wars there were no doubts after that the two states
of Denmark and Sweden had been reduced to small states. If they wanted
to survive as independent nation-states, they were now forced, in
economic, political and military terms, to manoeuvre as the small states
they were among much bigger powers in northern Europe such as France,
Prussia, Russia and the United Kingdom.
It is from this background the development of the idea of
Scandinavism (the idea of the Nordic countries belonging together) should
be seen. An important part of Scandinavism was, for example, the
development of relations in the civil society between organisations and
associations representing practically every kind of human activity in the
Nordic area. Scandinavism was a way the two former enemies of Denmark
and Sweden put a focus on becoming stronger internally in order to deal
with Russia and Prussia and the influence of these two states in the Baltic
Sea area. As a result of the Scandinavian movement was many new co-
operation and integration initiatives taken between the former enemies of
Denmark and Sweden and a development into what today is simply known

2
Max Engman and Åke Sandström, “Det nya Norden,” in Det nya Norden efter
Napoleon (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2004), 9-18.
 Transforming Conflict into Friendship: The Case of Nordic Co-operation 31

as Nordic co-operation began. For example, a Nordic monetary union was

established in the late 19th century. The Nordic countries even had plans to
create a Nordic customs union.3 Despite the fact that many of the plans
failed the Nordic countries are today probably a more integrated unit
compared with any other group of independent nation-states in the world.
The transformation of conflict into friendship can in the Nordic case,
like in most other cases, be studied from many different angles and levels
of society. We shall begin with developing a theoretical frame for
understanding what Nordic co-operation actually is and how this can be
understood using the concept of reconciliation.
As for conflict and friendship, it can be approached on an individual
and societal level. This article focus on the societal level, on reconciliation
in post-conflict societies, and on exploring the efficacy and implications of
transforming a conflict society into, if not friendship, a society
characterised by co-operation. In contemporary history the most known
example of transforming conflict into co-operation is the creation of the
European Community (EC) and what today is known as the European
Union (EU). Many other more or less successful examples can also be
mentioned such as Northern Ireland, South Africa, Rwanda, the Balkan
area, Iraq and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Nordic co-
operation has never, however, been studied in the context of reconciliation
in a post-conflict society. This is a paradox in philosophical, sociological,
psychological, political, economic and historical research because the
Nordic countries’ cultural, economic, political and social co-operation as
mentioned should be acknowledged as a successful co-operation and
integration system that has created peace among previous enemies.
The concept of reconciliation has its roots in Latin and means “to make
friendly” or to re-establish peace or friendship. In other words, to go back
to a state that existed before a conflict developed and bonds were broken.4
Studies show that societies that have experienced war tend to develop a
war-spiral or a vicious circle of repeating war. The societies can be caught
in what might be called a conflict trap. On the other hand, countries that
are used to resolve conflicts peacefully seem inclined to continue living in
peace. Reconciliation is an effort to prevent further conflict in war-torn
societies and can thus be defined as a societal process that involves mutual
acknowledgement of past suffering and the changing of destructive

3
See Viggo Rothe, Danmarks industrielle forhold betragtet nærmest med hensyn
til Spørgsmaalet om afslutningen af told- og handelsforeninger med nabostaterne,
vol. 1.2 (København: 1843 and 1845).
4
Karen Bronéus, Reconciliation – Theory and Practice for Development
Cooperation, Report from Sida, September 2003, 13.
32 Chapter Four

attitudes and behaviour into constructive relationships toward sustainable

peace.
Reconciliation should of course be studied as an evolution, that is, a
consequence of the unique context in which it was developed.
Reconciliation is, however, typically divided into six different aspects
(religious, socio-cultural, psychological, economic, political and juridical)
and into different levels in society, most typical a top-level, a middle-
range level and a grassroots level.5 Reconciliation at a top-level can for
example be made by political and/or religious leaders but international and
domestic criminal tribunals can also be seen as a top-level method for
reconciliation. On a middle-range level, reconciliation is typically made by
leading representatives of different organisations, civil society groups,
religious groups, leading representatives of medical and psychological
staff working with victims and survivors. The media is also seen as an
actor on the middle-range level. On the grassroots level we find a massive
number of people like a community or a village. These people are however
typically represented by a leader. The strengthening and empowering of
local actors for peace is also known as the bottom-up approach to
reconciliation.
It is not possible to say exactly how long time a reconciliation process
takes but both theoreticians and practitioners emphasise the importance of
having a long-term commitment even spanning generations.6 The reason is
that most conflicts have long histories and are often complex meaning that
many different interests such as economical, political and ideological are
involved at the same time. On top of this can be a need of psychological
change of attitude after a conflict.7 However, a reconciliation process is
typically estimated to take more than 20 years. After a crisis, a
reconciliation process typically begins with a 1-2 years process of
preparing and training to a desired future. After 5-10 years might a design
of social change be successful. After 20 years or more might a desired
future be reality. But this time schedule is of course very dependent on the
uniqueness of a reconciliation process. In principle, a reconciliation
process can be infinite meaning there is no time limit. However, today’s
Nordic co-operation should probably more be seen as a result of a
successful reconciliation and not a continuation of a reconciliation process

5
John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided
Societies (Washington D. C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997), 37-61.
6
Daniel Bar-Tal, “Societal Beliefs in Times of Interactable Conflict: The Israeli
Case,” in The International Journal of Conflict and Management 9, no. 1, 1998.
7
Bronéus, Reconciliation, 50.
 Transforming Conflict into Friendship: The Case of Nordic Co-operation 33

despite it might be argued that this process is actually continuing even

today.
Reconciliation is not the same as conflict resolution even though many
aspects of conflict resolution are also important for a process of
reconciliation. As for conflict resolution, it is first and foremost focussed
on the time-period around a peace agreement. By comparison,
reconciliation focuses on dealing with past suffering and how to influence
and change destructive attitudes and behaviours between former antagonists.
Reconciliation thus also includes self-reflection and acknowledgement of
responsibility.8 In addition is reconciliation not the same as reconstruction.
As for reconciliation being a question of changing destructive attitudes and
behaviour into constructive ones, the concept of reconstruction is mostly
used with regard to economic reconstruction after a war. The purpose of
reconstruction is thus to pick up the scattered threads of economic life and
knit them together in some viable whole. A reconstruction will however
also usually contain political and social reconstruction.9 The concept of
reconstruction has historically been used as a description of the attempt by
the deferral government of the United States to resolve the issues of the
American Civil War (1861-65) by addressing how secessionist southern
states would return to the Union. The concept is also much used to
describe the first years in Europe after World War II and in particular
regarding the purpose of the Marshall plan.
The theories of reconciliation can be criticised for focussing on internal
factors but turning down the importance of external factors’ influence. It is
not uncommon that friendships on an individual level or co-operation
between independent nation-states develop as a consequence of external
pressure. Furthermore are the different aspects of reconciliation probably
not equally important. Socioeconomic and socio-political aspects of a
reconciliation process should probably be emphasised as very important
aspects of reconciliation as well as the removal of socioeconomic and
socio-political structures and the construction of new ones in post-conflict
societies. Aspects of a reconstruction process are thus also important for a
successful reconciliation process and should not be underestimated
because they are important for that economic, political and ideological
antagonism can be removed as a breeding ground for conflicts in the long
term. The construction of what today is called the EU is a good example of
this kind of thinking.

8
Bronéus, Reconciliation, 49-50.
9
See Derek W. Urwin, Western Europe since 1945: a Political History (New York:
Longman, 1989), 25-42.
34 Chapter Four

Is it at all possible to perceive Nordic co-operation to be a result of a

reconciliation process? If we depart from the most common definition of
what reconciliation means, it says that

Reconciliation is a societal process that involves mutual acknowledgement

of past suffering and the changing of destructive attitudes and behaviour
into constructive relationships toward sustainable peace.10

If we look at the history of the relations between the Nordic nation-

states around the turn of the century from the 18th to the 19th century, there
must have been some kind of a Nordic reconciliation process developing
when the wars stopped between the Nordic countries and was replaced by
co-operation despite the fact that there also were relapses like in the
relationship between Norway and Sweden in the case of Norway’s
independence 1905.11 Transformation of conflict into friendship can in the
Nordic case, like in other cases, however, be studied from many different
angles and levels of society. It is therefore important to begin a study
about transforming conflict into co-operation in the Nordic area by
developing a theoretical frame for understanding what Nordic co-operation
actually is.
A problem with theorising Nordic reconciliation is that a theoretical
approach was not developed when reconciliation began in the late 18th
century and in the early 19th century. A theoretical debate about the
processes leading to Nordic economic and political co-operation and
integration only began to develop in the same period after the Second
World War as the Neofunctionalists and an institutional approach
dominated the European integration theories. As a consequence of the
lacking supranational institutions in the Nordic case compared with the
case of the European Community, the theorists were forced to develop
another theory for understanding the Nordic process. The result became a
so-called pragmatic Nordic model of co-operation and integration
combined with ideological Nordism (Scandinavism became Nordism from
1917 when Finland became an independent nation-state) on one hand and
the Nordic societies’ similarities on the other considered as the most
important components.12 Even so the concept of integration is universal

10
Bronéus, Reconciliation, 51.
11
See Ruth Hemstad, “Nordisk samklang med politiske dissonanser.
Skandinavisme og skandinavisk samarbeid på 1800-tallet,” in Det nya Norden efter
Napoleon, ed. Max Engman and Åke Sandström, 25:e Nordiska historikermötet,
(Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2004), 187-227.
12
See Karl W. Deutch, “Towards Western European Integration, An Interim
 Transforming Conflict into Friendship: The Case of Nordic Co-operation 35

and the reasons for starting an integration process in Europe and in the
Nordic area could be the same, this seems not to be the case when one
studies the Nordic research literature.
The Nordic system is for example seen as a “Nordic Associational
Web”. The main element in this point of view is that the Nordic societies
have big similarities in most areas of society why preconditions for
creating integration are good. Besides, they share a common ideology of
co-operation.13 A dominating argument in the discussion is that Nordic co-
operation and integration should be understood as a combination of
ideological Nordism and pragmatism and that Nordic economic and
political integration has been pushed forward by an ideological base
working for Nordic co-operation and integration. This dynamic force
might meet limitations when it had to deal with conflicting interests
between the Nordic states for example in connection with security and
trade policy. Therefore Nordic co-operation became dominated by labour
market and social policy. The limitations combined with an ideological
wish to increase integration developed a so-called pragmatic nature of
Nordic economic co-operation. Unlike the continental European
experiment, the Nordic have not a bigger political ambition that
continuously pushes the integration process forward.14
But why should the mechanism in the Nordic process differ thoroughly
from the mechanism in the European process despite the geopolitical
argument is strong among European integration scholars? Should it, after
all, not be possible to analyse Nordic economic and political co-operation
and integration using some of the theoretical principles from European
integration.15

Assessment,” in The Journal of International Affairs, no. 16 (1962); Amitai

Etzioni, Political Unification. A Comparative Study of Leaders and Forces (New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), 228; Nils Andrén, Nordisk Statskundskab
(Stockholm: 1968).
13
Etzioni, Political Unification, 228.
14
Nils Andrén, “Nordisk integration, synpunkter och problemställningar,” in
Internasjonal Politikk (1966), 370-387; Andrén, Nordisk Statskundskab; Nils
Andrén, “Nordic Integration and Cooperation – Illusion and Reality,” in
Cooperation and Conflict, no. 19 (1984) 251-262.
15
See Alan S. Milward, The Reconstruction of Europe 1945-51 (London: Methuen,
1984); Alan S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State (London:
University of California Press, 1992) 437; Alan S. Milward and Sørensen Vibeke,
“Interdependence or Integration? A National Choice,” in The Frontier of National
Sovereignty. History and Theory 1945-1992, ed. Alan S. Milward et al. (London:
Routledge, 1993), 21; Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose
and State Power from Messina to Maastricht (New York: Cornell University Press,
36 Chapter Four

Despite there is still a long way to go in order to develop a theoretical

approach for understanding transformation of conflict into friendship in
the Nordic case, the previous contributions give a starting point in order to
understand the nature of Nordic economic and political co-operation. If the
perception is right that the Nordic case is not decisively different from the
European case, for example, then Nordic co-operation and integration
might also mainly have been a question about achieving better
opportunities to create economic growth, realise welfare goals and secure
peace between previous enemies.
If we look at Nordic economic co-operation and integration after the
Second World War new research results actually shows that economic co-
operation and integration between the Nordic countries was an important
dimension in the Nordic states’ efforts to promote economic progress and
develop their welfare societies after World War II.16 This was thought to
happen by modernising the manufacturing industries and establish a
Nordic customs union. The goal was to prepare the Nordic economies for
competition on an enlarged western European market but also for
competition outside Europe. During the Second World War, the Nordic
states, as was the case in the Benelux states and in other European
countries, developed ideas about economic co-operation and integration
after the war.17 The main aim was to develop a Nordic customs union.18
This idea was not new but can be traced back to the mid 1800s, a time
marked by similar endeavours in Germany, Italy and Scandinavia.
One reason for that the Nordic case did not become particular different
from the European one was that the Nordic governments looked to Europe
in order to find inspiration for their own economic co-operation and
integration. This was for example the case when representatives of the
governments of Denmark, Norway and Sweden visited Brussels,
Luxembourg and the Hague in 1955. The purpose was to study the
decision to establish the economic union between Belgium, Luxembourg

1998), 3-24.
16
See Lasse Sonne, NORDEK: A Plan for Increased Nordic Economic Co-
operation and Integration 1968-1970 (Helsinki: Finnish Society of Sciences and
Letters, 2007), 197-210.
17
Johnny Laursen, “Det nordiske samarbejde som særvej,” in Europa i Norden,
Europeisering av nordisk samarbeid, ed. Johan P. Olsen and Otto Sverdrup Bjørn
(Oslo: Tano Aschehoug, 1998), 55-56. See also Kristian Møller, Nordisk
samhandel (København: 1942). See also Kristian Møller, Nordisk økonomisk
samarbejde gennem 100 år (Stockholm: 1944).
18
Nordisk økonomisk samarbejde, foreløbig rapport, København, January 1950, 5-
6.
 Transforming Conflict into Friendship: The Case of Nordic Co-operation 37

and the Netherlands.19 The experiences of economic co-operation in the

Benelux countries were thus an important example in the discussions into
Nordic economic co-operation and integration from 1955 onwards.20 If we
take a look at the attempt to increase Nordic economic co-operation even
more during the years 1968-70 (the so-called NORDEK negotiations
between Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden), this proposed plan for
closer co-operation reminds much of the organisation chart in the Rome
Treaty. We for example now have a proposal for a so-called Secretariat
meant to be a Nordic equivalent to the European Commission. We have a
proposal for a Nordic Council of Ministers meant to be a Nordic
equivalent to the European Council of Ministers. We also have the Nordic
Council that can be seen as a kind of a Nordic equivalent to the European
Parliament. We even have proposals for an arbitration committee to deal
with legal disputes between the governments like the European Court of
Justice in the Community of Europe. Furthermore, we have proposals for
structural funds meant to deal with structural changes in fishing and
agriculture also well-known in the Community of Europe.21 The Nordic
states’ ambitions were not however obtained in the way they had aimed
for. After the NORDEK negotiations failed in 1970, Denmark
supplemented her participation in the Nordic reconciliation model with
participation in another reconciliation model, that is, the EC in 1973.
Finland and Sweden joined a further developed version of this model, that
is, the EU in 1995.
What we can learn from a Nordic model of reconciliation is however
that when the Nordic countries developed their system of co-operation it
was both a result of changing conditions in the countries’ external
environment after the Napoleonic Wars but also a result of that the Nordic
countries because of these changing conditions initiated an economic and
political integration process that lead to the establishment of The Nordic
Council in 1953, The Nordic Council of Ministers in 1971 and The Nordic
Investment Bank in 1976. Despite the fact that the Nordic co-operation
and integration system never developed supranational institutions like in
the Community of Europe the Nordic model as a model of changing
conflict into friendship among a group of previous enemies reminded

19
Beretning om nordisk økonomisk samarbejde, fremsendt af den danske, norske
og svenske regering til Nordisk Råds 4. session januar-februar 1956, Det nordiske
økonomiske samarbejdsudvalg, January 1956, 154-190.
20
Beretning om nordisk økonomisk samarbejde, fremsendt af den danske, norske
og svenske regering til Nordisk Råds 4. session januar-februar 1956, Det nordiske
økonomiske samarbejdsudvalg, January 1956, 48.
21
See Sonne, NORDEK, 112-120.
38 Chapter Four

much of the case of the Community of Europe. A combination of external

pressure and internal political will created the transformation in both cases
despite the fact that also conflicts existed within the nation-states but also
in the relations between the nation-states. A common goal as to achieve
economic growth and social welfare were in both cases an important
reason for the transformation. The economic co-operation between the
Nordic countries is an example of that these driving forces were important.
Despite the good intensions among politicians and other interest
groups striving for Nordic unity, a general democratic demand for social
welfare was probably a major cornerstone in the Nordic reconciliation
process. If we look back to the late 1700s, the demand for increased
wealth came from the peasants who wanted to emancipate themselves
from the nobility. This demand increased during the 19th century with the
rise of Liberalism, Socialism and a further development of Conservatism
introducing new ideas of the welfare state in the second half of the 19th
century not least inspired by Bismarck’s Germany where welfare was seen
as a way to prevent a Socialist revolution. With the development of
Democratic Socialism and Social Liberalism adopting the idea of the
welfare state, the issue changed from being only an economic, political
and social question to even become a cultural question and thus an
important dimension in the Nordic people’s perceptions of themselves and
their societies. The long transformation of the Nordic societies into
modern welfare states had however also an impact on transforming the
Nordic conflict society into a friendship society. The two processes took
place in the same historical period. While external pressure initiated the
Nordic reconciliation process, the internal demand for social welfare made
the process continue. The implementation of the Nordic welfare model
manifested the Nordic area as one of the most peaceful and safe areas in
the world to live.

References
Andrén, Nils. Nordisk Statskundskab, Stockholm: 1968.
—. “Nordic Integration and Cooperation – Illusion and Reality.”
Cooperation and Conflict, no. 19 (1984), 251-262
Bar-Tal, Daniel. “Societal Beliefs in Times of Interactable Conflict: The
Israeli Case,” in The International Journal of Conflict and Management
9, no. 1, 1998
Bronéus, Karen. Reconciliation – Theory and Practice for Development
Cooperation, Report from Sida, September 2003
Deutch, Karl W. “Towards Western European Integration, An Interim
 Transforming Conflict into Friendship: The Case of Nordic Co-operation 39

Assessment.”The Journal of International Affairs, no. 16, 1962

Engman, Max and Åke Sandström. Det nya Norden efter Napoleon,
Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2004
Etzioni, Amitai. Political Unification. A Comparative Study of Leaders
and Forces. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965
Lederach, John Paul. Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in
Divided Societies. Washington D. C.: United States Institute of Peace
Press, 1997
Milward, Alan S. The Reconstruction of Europe 1945-51, London:
Methuen, 1984
—. The European Rescue of the Nation-State. London: University of
California Press, 1992.
Milward, Alan S et al. ed.The Frontier of National Sovereignty. History
and Theory 1945-1992. London: Routledge, 1993.
Moravcsik, Andrew, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State
Power from Messina to Maastricht, New York: Cornell University
Press, 1998.
Sonne, Lasse. NORDEK: A Plan for Increased Nordic Economic Co-
operation and Integration 1968-1970. Helsinki: Finnish Society of
Sciences and Letters, 2007.
Møller, Kristian. Nordisk samhandel. København: 1942.
Møller, Kristian. Nordisk økonomisk samarbejde gennem 100 år,
Stockholm: 1944.
Olsen, Johan P. and Otto Sverdrup Bjørn. ed. Europeisering av nordisk
samarbeid. Oslo: Tano Aschehoug, 1998.
Rothe, Viggo. Danmarks industrielle forhold betragtet nærmest med
hensyn til Spørgsmaalet om afslutningen af told- og handelsforeninger
med nabostaterne. vol. 1.2, København: 1843 and 1845.
Urwin, Derek W. Western Europe since 1945: a Political History. New
York: Longman, 1989.
Wendt, Frantz. Nordisk Råd 1952-1978. København: Almqvist & Wiksell
International, 1979.
 CHAPTER FIVE

NIETZSCHE’S FRIENDSHIP THEORY

AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO PEACE-BUILDING

OLIVE WARDELL

Frequently misread or not read, Nietzsche held that he would not be

understood before the year 2000. If he were with us today he would be
appalled by our ongoing industrial revolution and wars of greed and
revenge. Looking beyond the shrill and abrasive Nietzsche, there is ample
scholarly evidence pointing to his abhorrence of cruelty and suffering. As
responsible philosophers we should never give up: Nietzsche’s friendship
theory contributes to peacebuilding through its connection with the self-
overcoming and life-affirmation of the Übermensch or higher type of
human being. The psychological insights are relevant to world politics and
we are presented with an alternative to liberal and conservative
worldviews–hence Nietzsche’s friendship theory is very much alive.

Friendship and the Ancients

There was a time when friendship was commonplace–this was before
the Socratic error of over-emphasising rationality to the detriment of
instinct and feelings.1 Friendship is not held together by Apollonian
reason–it is secured by our Dionysian instinct or natural attraction,
whereby we feel ‘at one with the Other’ without losing our independence

1
The Socratic error also posited a ‘true world’ beyond this one. The over-emphasis
on reason led to the nihilism of technocratic man and ultimately to the instrumental
reasoning of the Third Reich abhorred by Nietzsche. Apollo is the god of dreams,
individuation, and reason, symbolised by the eagle. By contrast, Dionysus is the
god of intoxication, instinct, and the spirit of the earth symbolised by the serpent.
In collaboration with the philosophy of the Übermensch, which is a celebration of
the earth and the aesthetic and an extraordinary spiritual challenge to the problem
of evil, Nietzsche’s friendship theory unites Apollo and Dionysus.
42 Chapter Five

of spirit. The Ancients felt no shame of having tender, enthusiastic, or

elevated feelings. However, in nihilistic nineteenth century Europe the
nobility of friendship had vanished and Nietzsche set out to recover it
through the philosophy of the Übermensch or higher type of human being.
In contrast to Kant and in accordance with Aristotle and the ancient
Greeks, friendship, for Nietzsche, is one of the noblest virtues. We see this
in the story of the Macedonian King who had his present of a sum of
money returned to him by an Athenian philosopher:

I honor the pride of this independent sage, but I should honor his humanity
even more if the friend in him had triumphed over his pride. The
philosopher has lowered himself before me by showing that he does not
know one of the two highest feelings – and the highest one at that.2

Friendship, for Nietzsche, has nothing to do with Aristotle’s first two

types of friendship– friendship of mutual advantage and friendship of
mutual enjoyment. The bar is set very high–only philia, Aristotle’s third
type of friendship of mutual inspiration, is entertained and there are pleas
for this in his personal correspondence.3 Erotic love4 is too obsessive,
Christian love is too banal–friendship is just right.5 Nietzsche practised
what he preached–there is no evidence of him ever having engaged in
friendship apart from philia: “You see, I have reached a level of honesty
where I can endure only the purest of human relations. I shun half-
friendships, and especially partisanships”.6 In friendship, each inspires the
other to “perfect himself and be the best that he or she can be”.7
What do we mean by peacebuilding? We mean the aim of the
philosophy of the Übermensch which is “an active reshaping of

2
Friedrich Nietzsche, “In honor of friendship,” in The Gay Science (New York:
Vintage, 1974), § 61, 124.
3
See Peter Fuss and Henry Shapiro, eds., Nietzsche: A Self-Portrait from His
Letters (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971).
4
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 14, 88-89. In erotic love the strength and
independence of philia turn into pathetic dependency, which is the antithesis of
Nietzsche’s life-affirming philosophy. In his relationship with Lou Salomé,
Nietzsche held that they should suppress their erotic impulses to attain the virtue of
philia.
5
Robert C. Solomon, Living with Nietzsche: What the Great “Immoralist” Has to
Teach Us (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 95.
6
Nietzsche in a letter to Mathilde Maier, July 1878, quoted in Martin Henry, On
not Understanding God (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Columba Press, 1997), 232.
7
Solomon, Living with Nietzsche, 157.
 Nietzsche’s Friendship Theory and its Contribution to Peace-Building 43

understandings, situations, and behaviours to sustain well-being for all”.8

Zarathustra comes to us as a friend to teach us the virtues of the
Übermensch which transvalue nihilism and redeem man from revenge–a
motivating force behind war and destruction.9

Friends and Enemies, Friendship and Conflict

Strife is an integral part of friendship because of different dispositions,
occupations, talents, and environments: “How unsure is the ground on
which all our bonds and friendship rest”—this is why Aristotle called out:
“Friends, there are no friends!”10 Following the Ancients, Nietzsche warns
against the type who practises polyphilia:

[T]he self-assured and overrich soul that has never troubled about friends
but knows only hospitality, and practices, and knows how to practice only
hospitality—heart and home open to anyone who cares to enter, whether
beggar or cripple or king. This is genuine geniality: whoever has that, has a
hundred “friends” but in all probability not a single friend.11

Conflict is diminished when we learn that there is an “inner

inevitability of opinions” in all of us. We must question and aim to
understand the psychological drives behind opinions, which are usually
not our own, but rather “customary” ones, “appropriate to our caste,
position, or parentage; our own opinions seldom swim near the surface”.12
We should realise that it is frequently only the tone with which an opinion
is advanced, rather than the opinion itself, that we find disagreeable.13 And
as Nietzsche aptly points out: between friends there are always certain

8
Elise Boulding, Cultures of Peace: The Hidden Side of History (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 2000), 1.
9
Richard Avramenko, “Zarathustra and his Asinine Friends: Nietzsche on Post-
modern, Post-liberal Friendship,” – paper prepared for the 2004 Annual Meeting of
the American Political Science Association (Washington D.C.: Department of
Government, Georgetown University).
10
Erasmus’s “mistranslation” is ignored by Nietzsche. It should read: “He who has
friends can have no true friend”. See James McEvoy, “Too Many Friends or None
at All? A ‘Difference’ between Aristotle and Postmodernity,” in The American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 1 (2003): 14.
11
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (New York: Vintage, 1968), § 939, 494-
495.
12
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (London: Penguin, 1984), § 571,
245.
13
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, § 303, 177.
44 Chapter Five

things which remain unsaid– friends are brought to us “by error and
deception” about ourselves. “The friend should be a master in conjecture
and in keeping silence: you must not want to see everything”.14 We would
be “fatally wounded” if we knew what our most intimate friends know
about us. By gaining deeper psychological insights into the depths of our
being, we know when to stay silent about things we disagree with. In other
words, we never reveal everything about ourselves–if we do, the
friendship will fail.
Friendship is about balance. We see our friend’s flaws but we know
that we have just as many defects. We therefore learn to despise ourselves
a bit to bring ourselves back into balance with our friends. Sometimes this
balance is restored “when we put a few grains of injustice on our own side
of the scale”.15 We should “bear with each other” so that one day we can
shout in response to Aristotle: “Enemies, there is no enemy!”16 We
recognise false “friends” when we catch someone doing a wrong that they
cannot admit to.17 Nietzsche does not shield us from the negative traits of
human nature, for he holds that most “friends” will not hesitate to “reveal
the more secret affairs of their friends” when they are at a loss for topics of
conversation.18 Intimacy among friends cannot be forced – if it is, it means
that there is no trust and hence no friendship. In The Gay Science in an
aphorism entitled: “The Good Man”, Nietzsche warns against false
friendship where he refers to what probably would be Aristotle’s
description of the friendship of mutual advantage or need:

Better a whole-hearted feud

Than a friendship that is glued.19

However, to be a good friend, Nietzsche admits that there is a certain

need for enemies “as drainage channels for the emotions of envy,
combativeness”, and arrogance.20 A problem arises when we have to
appear friendly to someone we are unsure about just because they have

14
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Of The Friend,” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (London:
Penguin, 2003), 83.
15
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, § 305, 177. Nietzsche’s friendship theory
may be applied to relations between nations.
16
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, § 376, 193-194.
17
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1998), § 217, 110.
18
Nietzsche, Human, All too Human, § 327, 180.
19
Nietzsche, “Joke, Cunning, and Revenge,” in The Gay Science, § 14, 47. See
also Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 27, 28-29.
20
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 260, 155.
 Nietzsche’s Friendship Theory and its Contribution to Peace-Building 45

done us a good turn. These types bother us more than enemies because we
do not know where we stand with them. Generally we have friends
because of fortunate circumstances whereby we have no reason to be
envious and if we lack friends it is because we are envious and arrogant.21
For many, “the gift of having good friends is much greater than the gift of
being a good friend”. In this regard Nietzsche would be thinking of his
own experiences of friendship with Wagner and the Jewish psychologist,
Paul Rée, when, in jest, he refers to a man as “a ladder”– this is the man
who finds an “appropriate friend for each phase of his development”. So
he has a series of friends who may have nothing in common with each
other. Other types attract friends of differing characters and talents–these
are less likely to be intimate friends due to their diversity and such a man
who attracts them is called “a circle”.22

The Positive Religious Dimension of Friendship

We know from the writings of the two women who knew Nietzsche
best, his sister Elizabeth and Lou Salomé, that Nietzsche regarded
friendship as a “sacred institution”. Zarathustra was written after the
infamous break-up of Nietzsche’s ménage à trois with Rée and Salomé. In
her introduction to Zarathustra Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche writes:

How he longed, in those days, for the ideal friend who would thoroughly
understand him, to whom he would be able to say all, and whom he
imagined he had found at various periods in his life from his earliest youth
onwards. Now, however, that the way he had chosen grew ever more
perilous and steep, he found nobody who could follow him: he therefore
created a perfect friend for himself in the ideal form of a majestic
philosopher, and made this creation the preacher of his gospel to the
23
world.

And as Lou Salomé points out: “The more painful the loneliness into
which Nietzsche was cast by the break-up of the Wagner friendship, the
more intimate became Nietzsche’s relationship to Paul Rée”. In a letter to

21
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, § 507, 237 and § 559, 244.
22
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, § 368, 189. See also Ruth Abbey, “Circles,
Ladders and Stars: Nietzsche on Friendship,” in The Challenge to Friendship in
Modernity, ed. Preston King and Heather Devere (London: Frank Cass, 2000).
23
Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, “Introduction to Thus Spake Zarathustra,” (Weimar:
Nietzsche Archives, 1905).
46 Chapter Five

Rée in 1880, Nietzsche wrote that “for a deep-dyed solitary, a ‘friend’

becomes a more precious thought than it is for sociable persons”.24

Star Friendship
However, Nietzsche was later to fall out with Rée and in a beautiful
aphorism named “Star Friendship” Nietzsche holds that there is no shame
in becoming estranged from one’s friend due to circumstances beyond
one’s control. Rée’s application of Darwin’s theory of natural selection to
ethics helped to draw the two friends together but Nietzsche later took
issue with many aspects of Darwin’s theory and this pushed them apart.
Even so, if friends become foes they should still believe in their “star
friendship”. As we have seen from the writings of Nietzsche’s sister, there
is a religious dimension to Nietzsche’s friendship theory:

There is probably a tremendous but invisible stellar orbit in which our

different ways and goals may be included as small parts of this path: let us
25
rise up more than friends in the sense of this sublime possibility.

On another positive note, Nietzsche holds that “The best friend will
probably get the best wife, because a good marriage is based on a talent
for friendship” and “shared joy, not compassion, makes a friend”.26

24
Lou Salomé, Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 60. For
reflections on Nietzsche’s personal friendships by his contemporaries, see Sander
L. Gilman, Conversations with Nietzsche (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
25
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 279, 225-226. In fact, there was an ever-widening
gap between Nietzsche and Rée’s outlooks and Nietzsche’s jealousy and despair
over Rée’s affair with Salomé “released him from maintaining discretion” about
their differences. Rée’s influence on Nietzsche is researched by Brendan
Donnellan. See “Friedrich Nietzsche and Paul Rée: Cooperation and Conflict,” in
The Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 43, No. 4 (October-December 1984): 595-
612.
26
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, § 378, 195 and § 499, 236. However,
Zarathustra holds that women are not yet capable of friendship – they are still “cats
and birds. Or, at best, cows”. See “Of the Friend,” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 84.
While feminists would find this comment offensive, we should note that Nietzsche
also makes many insightful comments on women and his failed relationship with
Lou Salomé nearly caused him to take his own life. His misogynist remarks are
partly derived from Schopenhauer and from the fact that he was brought up in a
household of five women without a father – his friend, Richard Wagner, later
became a father figure for him. Two of Nietzsche’s correspondents, Malwida von
Meysenbug and Meta von Salis-Marschlins were supporters of the rights of
 Nietzsche’s Friendship Theory and its Contribution to Peace-Building 47

The importance of self-criticism

The notion of universal friendships, as proposed by Kant, is rejected by
Nietzsche as they cannot be sustained without particular friendships and an
in-depth knowledge of one’s psychological drives. Severing himself from
old ideals in order to understand them, Nietzsche’s sudden inner changes
came from personal relationships. He fell out with Wagner because of his
anti-Semitism and nationalism. Furthermore, Wagner’s opera The Parsifal
was too Christian in sentiment, as well as being a betrayal of the
Dionysian spirit. It is interesting that Wagner is later confronted in “The
Sorcerer”, where Zarathustra sees Wagner’s negative characteristics and
then recognises his own imperfections. Nietzsche’s strength is that his
critique of moral disguise, religious idols, and scientific and philosophical
prejudices is always accompanied by “an awareness of how the criticised
is also present in himself”.27 This self-criticism is portrayed through the
Sorcerer’s Song in “The Song of Melancholy” where we see that by
acknowledging our own flaws, we are in a position to consider how we
might will ourselves to change for the better. Frequently lacking in
political discourse, this notion of constructive self-criticism is essential for
a peacebuilding psychology.28 It involves taking responsibility for our
actions and striving to see ourselves from different perspectives–it is
therefore linked to the virtues of perspectivism and self-overcoming.

Friendship and Modernity

There is less time for friendship in the modern industrial world.
Nietzsche notes the irony of the European becoming a slave, whereas it
used to be the other way around: “One thinks with a watch in one’s hand,
even as one eats one’s midday meal while reading of the latest news on the
stock market”. There is no longer time for ceremonies, honesty, and joy–
virtue has come to “consist in doing something in less time than someone
else”. Soon, Nietzsche argues, “we may well reach the point where people
can no longer give in to the desire for the contemplative life–taking a walk

women. See Peter Fuss and Henry Shapiro, Nietzsche, 167; 176. One might indeed
argue that Nietzsche subscribed to the complementarity of the sexes–Ariadne is the
mysterious complement of Dionysus who is referred to as “Life” and “Eternity” in
“The Second Dance Song” and “The Seven Seals” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
27
Paul van Tongeren, “Politics, Friendship and Solitude in Nietzsche (Confronting
Derrida’s reading of Nietzsche in ‘Politics of Friendship’),” in South African
Journal of Philosophy 19, no. 3 (2000): 5.
28
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 254-257; 264-270; 306-311.
48 Chapter Five

with ideas and friends without self-contempt and a bad conscience”.29

There was nothing that Nietzsche liked better than to take a walk with a
good friend while discussing philosophical ideas.

Friendship and Patience

Elaborating on the art of associating with our foes, Nietzsche holds that
we have to learn to deal with our repugnance and nausea. It takes a lot of
practise to learn to live with others:

How hard it is to digest one’s fellow men! First principle: to summon one’s
courage as in misfortune, to fall to boldly, to admire oneself in the process,
to grit one’s teeth on one’s repugnance, and to swallow one’s nausea.

We also learn to “improve” our friends by praise and to deal with them
through patience: “a home remedy amply tested in marriage and friendship
and praised as indispensable, but not as yet formulated scientifically. Its
popular name is–patience”.30 Thus to deal with foes and to maintain
friendships requires the aforementioned virtue of self-overcoming and we
must learn to love or to hate from earliest youth–if love or hatred are not
nurtured, the germs for them gradually wither.31

Friendship as a virtue of the Higher Human Being

We have seen that friendship is of the highest taste that aims at
perfection. Taste is about life-affirmation and it is usually lacking in the
herd, who is too mediocre for Zarathustra’s liking: “everyone wants the
same thing, everyone is the same; whoever thinks otherwise goes
voluntarily into the madhouse”.32 The herd lacks the independence of
spirit so essential to psychological health and friendship in the sense of

29
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 329, 258-260. This criticism of modernity is
echoed in Kant’s “Lecture on Friendship” where Kant aptly notes: “When the stage
of luxury, with its multiplicity of needs is reached, man has so many of his own
affairs to absorb his attention that he has little time to attend to the affairs of
others”. See Michael Pakaluk, ed., Kant: Other Selves, Philosophers on Friendship
(Cambridge: Hackett, 1991), 213.
30
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 364, 320-321.
31
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, § 601, 251.
32
Nietzsche, “Zarathustra’s Prologue,” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 46. The irony
here is, of course, the fact that Nietzsche was not compos mentis for the eleven
years preceding his death in 1900.
 Nietzsche’s Friendship Theory and its Contribution to Peace-Building 49

philia.33 Zarathustra teaches us, not the neighbour, but the friend: “May
the friend be to you a festival of the earth and a foretaste of the
Superman”. When we see our friend’s face when he is asleep, it is our own
face, “in a rough and imperfect mirror”.34 This is why we should honour
even the enemy in our friend.

Nietzsche’s Friendship Theory and its contribution

to peacebuilding
The nobility of friendship has been revived from the Ancients. Both
friend and foe are affirmed. Like marriage, friendship requires sustained
effort. It involves mutual inspiration aimed at the future. We observe the
lack of excellence in our friend and this “kindles a desire for the
excellent”.35 Our friend’s flaws encourage us to aspire to the virtues of the
Übermensch. We have seen that Nietzsche fell out with Wagner because
he became too estranged from these virtues and pandered to popular
culture. Even so, Nietzsche still acknowledges his love for Wagner at the
end of his life as he recognises his own deficiencies. In contrast to eros,
which involves the notion of need, Nietzsche shows us the importance of
an independence of spirit so that the exclusivity of friendship is not a
problem. In friendship there is a constant aim at self-improvement. The
idea is that one should perform to one’s maximum potential and if this
approach is adopted rather than a minimalist one, we all flourish.
Zarathustra teaches that we must delay gratification–nothing happens
instantly. He comes to us as a friend–we are taught to acknowledge the
most decadent and despicable elements of our characters to rid ourselves
of our revenge.
Investigating the psychological drives behind friendship and conflict,
Nietzsche forces us to confront the flaws of our worldviews and truths that
hurt. We should honestly assess ourselves and reconsider our values. This
upsets our comfortable world of political correctness and mediocrity but it

33
See Avramenko, “Zarathustra and his Asinine Friends”; see also Ruth Abbey,
quoted in Preston King and Heather Devere, The Challenge to Friendship in
Modernity, where Abbey argues that friendship is a “real and powerful feature of
the writings of Nietzsche’s middle period” and it is a “central feature of higher
individuals”.
34
Nietzsche, “On Love of One’s Neighbour,” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 83-87.
35
Laurence Lampert, Nietzsche’s Teaching: An Interpretation of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (Chicago and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 58. See also
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 216, 110: “[W]hen we love most intensely, we
learn how to despise”.
50 Chapter Five

is essential to advance an understanding between individuals and nations.36

Nietzsche’s friendship theory presents world politics with an alternative
perspective between liberal relativism and conservative dogmatism both in
a political and a religious sense.37

Conclusion
Only by affirming our own defects can we aspire to the excellences of
the ideal of the Übermensch, but our Apollonian pride hinders us. Hence,
Nietzsche’s friendship theory also works within: our Dionysian nature
symbolised by the earthly wisdom of the serpent is initially in conflict
with our rational Apollonian spirit symbolised by the proud independent
eagle. By learning genuine independence of spirit through the virtues of
the Übermensch, our instinctive and rational natures are united in
friendship. We are then less likely to succumb to the ravings of tyrants
such as Stalin and Hitler and we can partake in friendship as a means to
real peace. Zarathustra teaches “the way to a new mode of friendship”
which resides outside the artificial boundaries of pity and reason.38
Nietzsche’s notion of friendship as the “truest of the true loves” is part of
the philosophy of the Übermensch and through the evocative imagery of
Zarathustra’s animals–the eagle and the serpent–we are introduced to
Nietzsche’s ultimate message of friendship and peace.39

36
Nietzsche’s deeply religious pacifist stance relevant to present times is clear in §
284, “The Means to Real Peace” in The Wanderer and his Shadow, 1880.
37
For a classic negative reading of Nietzsche, see Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A
Moral History of the Twentieth Century (London: Pimlico, 1999), 11-21. Those
from the analytical tradition who interpret Nietzsche very literally tend to miss
some of the nuances of his thought. While we should not ignore the serious flaws
in Nietzsche’s philosophy, we should strive to learn from his deeply religious
teaching by embracing the positive virtues of the Übermensch. For an argument in
favour of Nietzsche’s religious instinct which presents an alternative between the
extremes of atheism and fundamentalism see Jones Irwin, “Reinvoking Nietzsche’s
Religious Instinct,’’ in Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society, ed. James
McGuirk (Maynooth: 2005), 118-133. See also Avramenko, “Zarathustra and his
Asinine Friends”; and Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 377, 338, where both
conservatives and liberals are rejected: “We ‘conserve’ nothing: neither do we want
to return to any past periods; we are not by any means ‘liberal’; we do not work for
‘progress’”.
38
For a fascinating account of Zarathustra’s new mode of friendship, see
Avramenko, “Zarathustra and his Asinine Friends”.
39
I thank Dr. Michael Dunne of N.U.I. Maynooth for commenting critically on this
paper. He is not responsible for any opinions expressed within.
 Nietzsche’s Friendship Theory and its Contribution to Peace-Building 51

References
Avramenko, Richard. “Zarathustra and his Asinine Friends: Nietzsche on
Post-modern, Post-liberal Friendship”–Prepared for the Annual
Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 2004,
Washington D.C.: Department of Government, Georgetown
University.
Boulding, Elise. Cultures of Peace: The Hidden Side of History. Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 2000.
Donnellan, Brendan. “Friedrich Nietzsche and Paul Rée: Cooperation and
Conflict” in The Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 43, No. 4,
October-December, 1984.
Förster-Nietzsche, Brendan. “Introduction to Thus Sprake Zarathustra”
Weimar: Nietzsche Archives, 1905.
Fuss, Peter and Henry Shapiro. eds. Nietzsche: A Self-Portrait from His
Letters. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971.
Gilman, Sander L. Conversations with Nietzsche. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1991.
Glover, Jonathan. Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century.
London: Pimlico, 1999.
Henry, Martin. On Not Understanding God. Blackrock, Co. Dublin:
Columba Press, 1997.
King, Preston and Heather Devere. eds. The Challenge to Friendship in
Modernity. London: Frank Cass, 2000.
Lampert, Laurence. Nietzsche’s Teaching: An Interpretation of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra. Chicago and London: Yale University Press, 1998.
McEvoy, James. “Too Many Friends or None at All? A ‘Difference’
between Aristotle and Postmodernity”. The American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly, 2003, Vol. 77, No. 1.
McGuirk, James. ed., Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society
Maynooth: 2005.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. New York: Vintage, 1968.
—. The Gay Science. New York: Vintage, 1974.
—. Beyond Good and Evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
—. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. London: Penguin, 2003.
—. Human, All Too Human London: Penguin, 2004.
Pakaluk, Michael. ed. Kant: Other Selves Philosophers on Friendship.
Cambridge: Hackett, 1991.
Salomé, Lou. Nietzsche. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
Small, Robin. Nietzsche and Rée: A Star Friendship. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005.
52 Chapter Five

Solomon, Robert C. Living with Nietzsche: What the Great “Immoralist”

Has to Teach Us. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Van Tongeren, Paul. “Politics, Friendship and Solitude in Nietzsche
(Confronting Derrida’s reading of Nietzsche in ‘Politics of
Friendship’)”. South African Journal of Philosophy, 2000, Vol. 19,
Issue 3.
 CHAPTER SIX

COSMOPOLITAN FRIENDSHIP ONLINE

ADAM BRIGGLE AND EDWARD SPENCE

In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan declared that the age of Gutenberg’s

press was at an end.1 Electronic media were collapsing space and time
barriers, allowing people from around the world to interact with one
another. The “Gutenberg Galaxy” was giving way to the “Global Village.”
Radio and television globalize communication, allowing widespread and
instantaneous connections. With their greater interactivity, the Internet and
other new or digital media further enhance and democratize participation
in a real-time, global community. The ease of communication expands
social spheres.
There is no doubt that, as an empirical matter, communication and
other technologies have created a globally interdependent world. The
normative implications of the global village metaphor, however, are far
murkier. McLuhan suggested that electronic media would have an edifying
effect on moral character—a technologically driven Bildung. He argued
that human awareness of responsibility will be heightened and that

The aspiration of our time for wholeness, empathy and depth of awareness
is a natural adjunct of electric technology...There is a deep faith to be
found in this attitude—a faith that concerns the ultimate harmony of all
being.2

Thus, the global village serves as a normative ideal regarding moral

identity: As lives become woven together through media technology,
individuals will recast their allegiances to become more inclusive or
encompassing. When asked where they live, individuals will give the

1
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographical Man
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962).
2
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1964), 5.
54 Chapter Six

famous reply of Diogenes: ‘I am a citizen of the world’. They will become

friends to all peoples, because the Internet will have broadened their good
will and empathy.
Of course, as Aristotle first pointed out, one can only have a few
friends. But we can consider McLuhan’s ideal along the lines of
Aristotle’s “civic friendship.” This is the concord or mutual affection that
makes each citizen enter sympathetically into the concerns of his fellow-
citizens. Although one cannot be friends to all, one can harbor friendly
feelings for all and this is far preferable to hatred.
Yet this raises the problem: electronic media have not moved us closer
to the ideal. We continue to live in a world of separation at best (e.g.,
Greeks and Turks in Cyprus, Protestants and Catholics in Northern
Ireland), strife, violence, and conflict at worst (e.g., Palestinians and
Israelis). What are the causes for the failure of McLuhan’s vision? The
“old” electronic media are under far too much central control to foster a
village. True, with the “new” media, especially the Internet, optimism
surged again. But whereas the old media failed to achieve the ideal due to
centralization and corporatism, the new media have failed due to
balkanization and individualism.3 Time magazine’s 2006 person of the
year was “You,” with a computer screen on the cover that was in fact a
mirror. This aptly symbolized how the Internet can reinforce pre-
established allegiances and foster narcissism. It so often fragments rather
than unites. People tend not to reach out and form new communities and
expand their sense of responsibility and identity. Rather, they use the
Internet to establish new or reinforce old ‘us vs. them’ dynamics. To take
the most blaring example, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations
regularly use the Internet to recruit new adherents, coordinate and
broadcast attacks, and showcase their ideology.4
McLuhan overplayed his “the medium is the message” trope.
Certainly, media technologies shape society by the way they structure
communication and influence values by the way they configure individual
practices. But as Raymond Williams objected in his critique of McLuhan,
society also shapes technology.5 The “global village” uncritically conflates
instant transmission, as a technical possibility, with a social fact. In reality,
all transmissions are selected and controlled by existing social authorities

3
Cass Sunstein, Republic.com (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).
4
Adam Briggle and Carl Mitcham, “Terrorism,” in Encyclopedia of Science,
Technology, and Ethics, ed. Carl Mitcham (Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan
Reference U.S.A, 2005), 1925-1931.
5
Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (New York:
Schocken Books, 1975).
 Cosmopolitan Friendship Online 55

and existing individuals and groups with their pre-established ends.

McLuhan gave too much transformative power to the media. The Internet
does not just transform, but it also reflects what already exists, including
conflict between many “villages” around the globe. Indeed, the Internet
seems to be less a cause of a global village than an effect of the stratified,
balkanized, and individualistic world that gave it birth.
Williams provides an important reality check, namely, that
cosmopolitan identity and civic friendship will not result automatically
from the mere presence of technological capacities. Instantaneous
transmission does not by itself make for a global village in the normative
sense of the term. But this does not mean that the ideal of broadening
sympathies and allegiances through the Internet is either unworthy or
unobtainable. It simply means that we must scale our analysis down and
consider individual practices and specific technological affordances.
Indeed, we suggest that the ideal can only be reached from the bottom-up
through the self-conscious formation of friendships online that challenge
Internet users to reconsider their moral identities and allegiances.
To make this argument, we first briefly articulate and defend the ideal
of cosmopolitanism in light of inter-communal conflicts in a networked
world. We then argue that, despite apparent contradictions, cosmopolitanism
must be based initially on boundary-breaking friendships. The Internet
increases the opportunity for such friendships to form, but they require
structure and right user intent. An example using the virtual world Second
Life as an educational tool illustrates this point. We conclude by fleshing
out a notion of cosmopolitan friendship online using the stoic notion of
oikeiosis.

The Ideal of Cosmopolitanism in a Networked World

To understand the relationship between Cosmopolitanism and the
Internet, it is necessary to outline the central features of Stoic philosophy
related to the concept of cosmopolitanism.6
The first feature is virtue, which is both necessary and sufficient for
living a happy life. Essential to understanding this, is the distinction the
Stoics made between those things that are completely within our power
and those things not completely within our power. To avoid unhappiness,

6
Edward Spence, Ethics Within Reason: A Neo-Gewithian Approach (Lexington,
MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 393-442.
Edward Spence, “Positive Rights and the Cosmopolitan Community: A Right-
Centred Foundations for Global Ethics,” Journal of Global Ethics 3, no. 2 (2007).
56 Chapter Six

frustration, and disappointment, we must do two things: control what is

within our power (our beliefs, judgements, desires and attitudes) and be
indifferent to that which is not in our power (things external to us). As
rational beings we should therefore perfect our characters through living a
virtuous life because it is the only thing that can bring us both ataraxia
(tranquillity) and eudemonia (happiness) – a happiness that is totally
within our control because it depends solely on our own judgement.
The second, related, feature is wisdom. The ultimate object of
philosophy according to the Stoics is to teach us not knowledge, but
wisdom, understood as a way of living a virtuous life. Wisdom is a way of
life that brings peace of mind, inner freedom (autarkeia), happiness, and a
cosmic consciousness. By “cosmic consciousness,” the Stoics understood
that quality, universal reason, by virtue of which we all are, qua human,
integrated parts of the cosmos.
Third and closely associated with the cosmic perspective in Stoic
philosophy is the communal perspective. This is the concern for living in
the service of human community and for acting in accordance with social
justice. Like Aristotle, the Stoics saw philosophy as essentially concerned
with the affairs of the polis. For the Stoics, however, the polis was not the
city-state but the whole cosmos. All things are essentially part of a single
integrated and all rational divine Cosmos in which everything that exists is
inherently inter-connected. Thus each human being is of natural necessity
a citizen of the cosmos – a cosmopolitan – regardless of their individual
gender, racial, national, religious and other cultural characteristics and
affiliations.
This cosmic dimension forms the key link between cosmopolitanism
and the Internet, which is a cosmic or universal medium of communication.
Additionally, community engagement (significantly, not a local but a
global community) is held in common by both cosmopolitanism and the
Internet. This creates a shared, albeit at present superficial, affinity
between the two.
Yet the Internet by no means embodies the other essential Stoic
features relevant to cosmopolitanism. Significantly, the practice of wisdom
understood not as information but as a way of life in accordance with
virtue is not a feature of the Internet. Wisdom is not a technical possibility,
but a human excellence. More than information, wisdom requires
transformation. To become wise one requires not only to be informed but
more importantly to become transformed though the practice of
philosophy as a way of life – in particular, the Stoic way of life that views
all human beings as essentially equal of respect and moral worthiness
 Cosmopolitan Friendship Online 57

regardless of their cultural differences. Thus, the dissemination of

information on the Internet, though potentially useful, is not enough.7
How can the connection between cosmopolitanism and the Internet
become both meaningful and a practical possibility, rather than just an
interesting metaphor such as the “global village”? What is required is the
creation, through the Internet, of a community committed to the practical
realization of cosmopolitanism. This is by no means an easy task.
Although in some sense utopian, reconciling the potential of the Internet as
an effective medium of propagating the positive features of cosmopolitanism
remains a practical possibility. With its core features of virtue, wisdom,
and interconnectedness, the cosmopolitan ideal is an apt therapy for a
world riven by strife and besieged by insatiable desires that threaten both
human and non-human well-being.

Friendship, Cosmopolitanism, and the Internet

Can the Internet provide a global medium for the development and
promotion of what we will refer to as Cosmopolitan Friendship, one that
can transcend ethnic, religious, cultural and social conflicts? If it cannot
entirely resolve traditional inter-communal conflicts such as those, for
example, between Turks and Greeks in Cyprus or Protestants and
Catholics in Northern Ireland, can it at least provide the platform for the
promotion of a better understanding between the individuals involved in
those conflicts and allow them to transcend them through the cultivation of
cosmopolitan friendship?
We begin with a personal anecdote. Luke has a passion for playing
backgammon on the Internet. His latest contest was with a Turk from
Istanbul, let us call him Mehmet. At the end of the game Luke signed off
with the words “Salam Alekum.” Mehmet’s reply was “are you a
Muslim?” to which Luke’s response was “no, I am a Greek.” This short
online exchange between a Greek in Sydney, Australia, and a Turk in
Istanbul got us thinking about the Internet and Cosmopolitanism. Two
individuals, who are traditionally divided by sharp and often hostile
boundaries of ethnicity, religion and politics, stretching back into history
for at least five centuries, come together in a way which was unimaginable
prior to the advent of the Internet.

7
Edward Spence, “The Cosmopolitan Internet,” in Proceedings: The Second
Australian Institute of Computer Ethics Conference (AICE 2000), ed. John
Weckert (Canberra: Conferences in Research and Practice in Information
Technology, vol. 1, Australian Computer Society, 2001).
58 Chapter Six

In making it possible for people like Luke and Mehmet to communicate

beyond the geo-political divisions and the impenetrable boundaries of the
traditional historical conflicts that separate them, the Internet allows for
the possibility of cosmopolitanism. For in allowing a borderless
communication between individuals like Luke and Mehmet it allows the
possibility that these two individuals separated by hundreds of years of
ethnic and religious conflict will come to see each other as human beings
worthy of equal moral respect. That is, the Internet allows the possibility
that individuals like Luke and Mehmet will come to see and appreciate
each other as cosmopolitans. Thus, the Internet makes cosmopolitanism at
the concrete and individual level and not merely in the abstract, a practical
possibility.
However, the transition from meeting someone on the Internet to
appreciating them as fellow-cosmopolitans worthy of moral respect equal
to that of the members of one’s own ken is a very big motivational jump.
What is required is an interim step that is suggested by our anecdote about
Luke and Mehmet. Before Luke and Mehmet can become cosmopolitans
they must first become friends.
Cosmopolitanism and friendship could be seen as conflicting forms of
human relations and moral identity. The former is a universalistic concept
about humanity or even all living beings. The latter often pertains to a
particular relationship between two people or a small group. The
cosmopolitan has been parodied as a lover of humanity but friend to no
one. And special obligations within friendships can clash with universal
norms. This opposition has been emphasized in modern moral philosophy.
In particular, Kantian scholars have had difficulty harmonizing friendship
with a universalistic deontology. This, in turn, has been fodder for
criticisms by those who see friendship as central to moral life.8
But this tension is overstated and stems from: (a) a misunderstanding
of cosmopolitanism, and (b) an incomplete picture of friendship. First,
unlike a hegemonic or homogenous universalism, cosmopolitanism
recognizes and celebrates human differences and particularities. Its moral
claims are primarily negative in the sense of prohibiting certain actions
and attitudes (e.g., violence and bigotry) rather than positively prescribing
a certain way of life.
Second, an underappreciated aspect of friendship is the broadening of
moral sympathy and imagination it cultivates. To cite another personal

8
Michael Pakaluk, Other Selves: Philosophers on Friendship (Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett, 1991).
Neera Kapur Badhwar, Friendship: A Philosophical Reader (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1993).
 Cosmopolitan Friendship Online 59

anecdote, while attending graduate school in the United States, Jon

became friends with Shali, a classmate who took pride in her Indian
heritage. This was more than a one-to-one relationship. As is true of
everyone, Shali’s identity is tied into larger communities, traditions, and
histories. Jon and Shali’s relationship was initiated by common classroom
experiences and other shared activities and interests. But the relationship
expanded beyond this. Jon learned about Indian cultural and religious
traditions. For him, suddenly India—a place he knew little about—had a
face, the face of Shali. He was forced to examine unconscious
assumptions, prejudices, and misunderstandings.
In short, the universal lies coiled within the particular. They are not
necessarily at odds. Rather, they can open into one another through the
mediation of friendship. Shali became a gateway for Jon to see India not as
a vague, faraway land populated by strangers with foreign customs. For
Jon, the care of their friendship grew beyond its borders. He felt a
connection to the people of India and a newfound interest in their lives.
Though he was clearly not friends with a billion people, he had an
expanded sense of friendliness and goodwill toward them. Through
friendship, he was transformed and took a step toward cosmopolitanism.
His identity became fluid and enlarged beyond simply that of an American
or a member of an ‘us’ set against a ‘them’.
As the case of Luke and Mehmet shows, the Internet expands the
opportunities for taking this step. Even individual members of hostile
communities can connect. Internet-mediated interactions often filter out
the gating mechanisms such as skin color, dress, body type, gender,
accent, and even language that signify someone as a member of a certain
group.9 Luke and Mehmet encountered each other initially as simply two
human beings who enjoy backgammon. In this way, commonalities can
rise to the forefront. Once two backgammon players come to enjoy one
another’s company, they are less likely to reject the relationship upon
discovering more about their new friend’s identity. Indeed, they are more
likely to rethink their judgments pertaining to other—unknown—members
of their new friend’s race, nationality, religion, etc.
Yet as noted above, this transformation will not result simply from the
technical possibilities. Luke and Mehmet, for example, must possess
certain virtues or at least be open to the possibility of transforming their
moral identities. As the existence of trolling, griefing, and flaming make
painfully clear, many interactions on the Internet are characterized by a

9
Adam Briggle, “Love on the Internet: A Framework for Understanding Eros
Online,” Journal of Information, Communication, and Ethics in Society,
forthcoming.
60 Chapter Six

kind of incivility and insensitivity that ruins any hope for forming
friendships that foster cosmopolitanism.10 In filtering out gating
mechanisms, the Internet also increases one’s sense of anonymity and can
reduce the reality of the other as a genuine human being. Thus, more must
be said about making cosmopolitan friendship a reality via the Internet.

Cosmopolitan Friendship Online as a Stoic Ideal

Cosmopolitan friendship can be actualized through the creation of an
online cosmopolis within a virtual world such as Second Life, where
‘residents’ create avatars that allow them to interact with one another.
Second Life is particularly promising in this regard, because in the very
creation of an avatar, users have the chance to ‘step outside of’ their
identity and begin to think of themselves and their relations in new ways.
Of course, Second Life can also be used in ways inconsistent with
cosmopolitan friendship, such as griefing fellow residents through
annoying, hostile, or offensive behavior. To achieve the ideal, then,
residents will need to be open to the cultivation of the key stoic virtues of
cosmopolitanism.11 We take inspiration from projects, such as Kids
Connect, which have utilized Second Life as a tool for intellectual, moral,
and emotional education. In particular, such projects have had success in
bridging cultural differences between students from different parts of the
world. Such work demonstrates that self-conscious, structured uses of
Second Life as a virtual cosmopolis can foster the ideal of Cosmopolitan
friendship.
Success in these kinds of experiments with a virtual cosmopolis
requires practical strategies for designing shared activities that engage
diverse resident-students with a common goal. There is not room here to
detail such strategies. What we can contribute, however, is a theoretical
“roadmap” to cosmopolitan friendship online. This provides a conceptual
structure to help organize practical steps toward the ideal. To do so, we
draw from the stoic notion of oikeiosis, which is central to the stoics’
understanding of moral development and pertains directly to the expansion
of moral identity, imagination, and sympathy discussed above.12

10
Matthias Schwartz, “The Trolls among Us,” New York Times Magazine, August
3, 2008.
11
Edward Spence, “Metaethics for the Metaverse: The Ethics of Virtual Worlds,”
in Current Issues in Computing and Philosophy, ed. Adam Briggle, Philip Brey,
and Katinka Waelbers (Amsterdam: IOS, 2008).
12
Spence, Ethics Within Reason.
 Cosmopolitan Friendship Online 61

Oikeiosis entails four stages of moral development, culminating in the

Cosmopolitan virtues. The first stage is the impulse for self-preservation,
which entails behaviors required for looking after one’s own well-being.
The second-stage is the human impulse for sociability, which is the
foundation of justice and is based in innate desires to feel accepted and to
respect and help fellow human beings. Following these two material
impulses leads to an orderly life that can be described as “appropriate
conduct.”13
However, a person who led a ‘natural life’ in this sense would not yet
be considered virtuous. For virtue is not only a matter of acting correctly,
but more importantly a matter of acting for the right reasons. According to
the stoics, virtue must be based on reason and knowledge, not on instinct.
This is the third stage in moral development. It entails raising self-
awareness so that one purposefully and rationally exhibits an entire pattern
or habit of action that is virtuous. As one contemporary stoic theorist
explains, “The switch from the pursuit of natural aims to an exclusive
interest in rational agreement with nature marks the transition to virtue.”14
The fourth stage is the perfection of this disposition such that one’s every
action is informed both by knowledge of and desire for right action, which
together comprise wisdom and result in happiness.
These stages provide a roadmap for conducting cross-cultural
interaction capable of achieving cosmopolitan friendship in the virtual
cosmopolis. It can be applied in an orderly way to help residents transcend
narrow identities with their parochial allegiances. The roadmap identifies a
series of progressive interactions that avatar residents of Second Life can
follow on their way toward cosmopolitan friendship. In the first two
stages, for example, residents learn the basics of avatar movement and
interaction. The third stage requires residents to overcome differences in
the pursuit of common goals. This would foster a loosening of moral
identity as former strangers or even enemies become partners who must be
communicated with and who become essential for personal success. Such
communication and interaction in turn leads to the fourth stage in which
personal identity is permanently expanded through the accumulation of
multiple instances of fellowship and friendly feeling. In this way,
cosmopolitan friendships are formed that transform users even after they
step outside of Second Life.
Cosmopolitan friendship might sound utopian. However, the ideal can
be actualized within an online virtual environment such as Second Life in

13
Gisela Striker, “Stoicism,” in Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. Lawrence Becker and
Charlotte Becker (New York: Garland, 1992), 1209.
14
Striker, “Stoicism”, 1209-1210.
62 Chapter Six

the way we have proposed. This is a practical possibility if not now in the
real world at least in a virtual world where first minds and then hearts can
meet and communicate freely and convivially beyond the geo-political
boundaries and cultural differences and conflicts that divide them in the
real world.

References
Briggle, Adam “Love on the Internet: A Framework for Understanding
Eros Online,” Journal of Information, Communication, and Ethics in
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MI: Macmillan Reference U.S.A, 2005, 1925-1931.
McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of
Typographical Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962.
—. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1964.
Neera Kapur Badhwar, Friendship: A Philosophical Reader. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1993.
Pakaluk, Michael. Other Selves: Philosophers on Friendship. Indianapolis,
IN: Hackett, 1991.
Schwartz, Matthias. “The Trolls among Us,” New York Times Magazine,
August 3, 2008.
Spence, Edward. Ethics Within Reason: A Neo-Gewithian Approach.
Lexington, MD: Lexington Books, 2006, 393-442.
Spence, Edward. “The Cosmopolitan Internet,” in Proceedings: The
Second Australian Institute of Computer Ethics Conference (AICE
2000), ed. John Weckert. Canberra: Conferences in Research and
Practice in Information Technology, vol. 1, Australian Computer
Society, (2001).
—. “Positive Rights and the Cosmopolitan Community: A Right-Centred
Foundations for Global Ethics,” Journal of Global Ethics 3, no. 2
(2007).
—. “Metaethics for the Metaverse: The Ethics of Virtual Worlds,” in
Current Issues in Computing and Philosophy, ed. Adam Briggle, Philip
Brey, and Katinka Waelbers. Amsterdam: IOS, 2008.
Striker, Gisela. “Stoicism,” in Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. Lawrence
Becker and Charlotte Becker. New York: Garland, 1992
Sunstein, Cass. Republic.com. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2002.
 Cosmopolitan Friendship Online 63

Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New

York: Schocken Books, 1975.
 CHAPTER SEVEN

“THEY ARE FRENCH, WE ARE MARSEILLAIS”:

IMAGINING COMMUNITY
IN FRENCH FOOTBALL

CATHAL KILCLINE

Introduction: Imagining football communities

Benedict Anderson’s notion of “imagined communities” is among the
most important modern works to influence ways of conceptualising
nationalism.1 Anderson’s concept promotes the idea that members of
nations and nation-states are bound together by shared cultural imaginings
of sameness, one-ness and we-ness. Seen this way, the roles that human
agency, creativity, and imagination play in nation building make the nation
a work of unquestionable social production. It is therefore not surprising
that we see evidence of nationhood in a whole range of cultural products
and consumptive practices including art, folklore and sport. In order to
imagine community or nationhood, the imagination needs to be redirected
toward particular places, occasions or events at which people express their
feeling of belonging to a nation that is quite distinct from a range of
cultural and national ‘others’. Football, the most popular sport in the
world, has been regarded as an especially privileged site for this
phenomenon. In particular, the victory of the French national side in the
1998 World Cup, a sporting achievement that was blatantly exploited by
political powers to reinvigorate ailing national unity, remains among the
most explicit demonstrations of the role sport can play in ‘imagining’ the
national community.2

1
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism (London, New York: Verso, 1983, revised edition 1991).
2
See Geoff Hare, Football in France: A Cultural History (Oxford, New York:
Berg, 2003); Jean-Jacques Bozonnet, “La France s’est reconnue à travers cette
66 Chapter Seven

There exists, however, a disjuncture between the idea of an inclusive,

common culture that underpins the imagined community and the conflict
in the name of ethnic sovereignty that pervades social life in most
contemporary nation-states. In struggles for self-determination members of
the nation frequently imagine and articulate themselves in opposition to a
dominant national identity. The subaltern theorist Partha Chaterjee
describes the forms that this opposition takes in postcolonial societies in
Africa and Asia. In response to Anderson, Chaterjee claims that
postcolonial societies do not necessarily form their imagined communities
from certain “modular forms” established in Europe and the Americas.
Rather, he states that sovereignty from the colonial power occurs on two
distinct levels, the material and the spiritual:

The material is the “outside”, of the economy and of state-craft, of science

and technology, a domain where the West had proved its superiority and
the East had succumbed. In this domain then, Western superiority had to be
acknowledged and its accomplishments carefully studied and replicated.
The spiritual, on the other hand, is an “inner” domain bearing the
“essential” marks of cultural identity. The greater one’s success in
imitating Western skills in the material domain, therefore, the greater the
need to preserve the distinctness of one’s spiritual culture.3

With scholars such as Eugen Weber and, more latterly, Graham Robb
having established the effective colonising of France’s regions by
representatives of the centralised Republic in the late 19th and early 20th
Centuries, this distinction between “inner” and “outer” domains can
equally be applied to the study of local and regional identities in Western
Europe.4 While the dominance of the nation is established and widely
acknowledged in political and economic terms, sporting events and
practices provide an outlet for the expression of these “essential”
characteristics and cultural distinctiveness. Just as people use sporting
events as a way of imagining community, there remain people who
consciously and conspicuously use sport to define themselves outside of

équipe multiethnique,” Le Monde, 18 July, 1998; Philip Dine, “Sport and Identity
in the New France,” in Contemporary French Cultural Studies, ed. Sian Reynolds
and William Kidd (London: Arnold, 2000), 165-178.
3
Partha Chatterjee, “Whose Imagined Community?” in Mapping the Nation, ed.
Gopal Balakrishna (New York, London: Verso, 1996), 217.
4
Eugen Joseph Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural
France, 1870-1914 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1977). Graham Robb, The
Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First
World War (New York: Norton, 2007).
 Imagining Community in French Football 67

the imagined community. It is the way in which sporting events and

practices are appropriated to express difference and opposition to national
hegemony that this article seeks to explore. The case of football in
Marseille, and in particular the symbolic gestures of its supporters and the
iconic status of its leading protagonists is of particular interest in this
regard.

Marseille: Between the Mediterranean and France

According to the legend of the founding of the city, Marseille (or
Massalia, to give the city its ancient name) was established as the first
trading-post in Gaul by Phocean traders. Protis, the leader of these
Phoceans was given a territory to found the port of Massalia by the king of
the Gauls and subsequently married the king’s daughter, Gyptis. Marseille
has thus been marked from its very foundation by the influx and
integration of diverse populations from throughout the Mediterranean. The
city’s Hellenic origins remain at the forefront of the collective
consciousness of the city and are echoed in the name of the city’s foremost
football club Olympique de Marseille (known commonly as OM). OM are,
to this day, often evoked as l’équipe phocéenne (the Phocean team) and
their supporters as les supporters phocéens, as opposed to any reference to
the surrounding region or mention of les provençaux, for example. This is
typical of representations of Marseille generally – relying on references to
the city’s past and Mediterranean heritage to evoke a sense of identity. As
outlined by Predrag Matvejevic in his broad-ranging and seminal essay on
Mediterranean culture, this construction of an explicitly civic identity is
typically Mediterranean: “Mediterraneans feel closer to their cities than to
their states or nations; indeed, cities are their states and nations and
more”.5 The waves of immigration into the port city from across the
Mediterranean have continued to the present day, contributing to
Marseille’s characteristically diverse and cosmopolitan population and
establishing the sea as the city’s primary source of distinctiveness. The
Mediterranean can thus be seen as the dominant cultural influence on
Marseille society and the pole to which the Marseillais gravitate to offset
the centralising influence of the French nation-state.
Within France, Marseille has a reputation as a rebellious city that has
turned its back on France through its traditional economic and cultural

5
Predrag Matvejevic, Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape, trans. Michael Henry
Heim (London: University of California Press, 1999), 16.
68 Chapter Seven

reliance on the Mediterranean and its existence as a distinct entity in

relation to the nation and the surrounding region:

From its medieval renaissance to its recent decline, Marseille has always
been a bande à part, vis-à-vis both Provence and France. Placing its trust
in the fluctuating fortunes of maritime trade rather than the stability of the
surrounding territory[…]6

This reliance on the Mediterranean contributed to the economic decline

suffered by the city following the end of France’s so-called Trente
Glorieuses – the thirty years of strong economic growth and structural
change following World War II. The coinciding loss of Empire across the
Mediterranean, and its consequences for the local economy, meant the
effects of the deteriorating economic climate was especially badly felt in
Marseille.7 This period was also marked by the construction of a
particularly robust and deep collective identity within the city, centred on
the football club and mobilised in opposition to the political and cultural
hegemony of Paris. As Geoff Hare explains, the downturn in economic
fortunes “gave Marseillais a sense of resentment against the rest of France
– that OM’s defeats and victories alike fuelled to stoke up a strong
supporter identity”.8

Supporting Marseille against the nation

This “resentment against the rest of France” is particularly evident in
the rivalry between OM and the club that has represented the national
capital since the 1970s, namely Paris St Germain or PSG. In recent years,
their rivalry has transcended French football to become known as the
derby de France and the foremost fixture in the domestic French football
calendar – due in no small part to the bitter rivalry between certain
sections of OM and PSG supporters, with manifestations of mutual
hostility, both symbolic, through chants, songs and banners, and real,
through acts of violence and aggression. Andrew Hussey has described a
league match between OM and Paris Saint-Germain as the encounter
between two clubs that “between them represent the polarities of French

6
Alain Gas, Villes du sud: De Massalia aux technopoles (Paris: La Renaissance du
Livre, 2004), 372. All translations are my own, unless otherwise stated.
7
See Bernard Morel, “La Recomposition Marseillaise,” Vingtieme Siecle. Revue
d'histoire 32 (1991).
8
Geoff Hare, Football in France: A Cultural History (Oxford, New York: Berg,
2003), 89.
 Imagining Community in French Football 69

life: the hard-headed metropolitan arrogance of Paris and the freewheeling

exhibitionism of the Mediterranean south”.9 The symbolic opposition of
the supporters, reflecting a tradition of tension between the two cities,
makes the OM – PSG rivalry a privileged site to study the dialectical
interactions that take place between those inside and outside an imagined
community.
Among the most striking examples of symbolic rejection of the ‘other’
in this rivalry is one of PSG’s terrace chants, which adapts the French
national anthem to express the Parisian loathing of their Southern
countrymen.10 In this version of the Marseillaise, the lines “let us go
children of the homeland / may our streets be awash with the impure
blood” are replaced “let us go fellow Parisians, may our streets be awash
with Marseillais blood”.11 This chant thus transforms a symbol of national
unity into a proclamation of division and conflict. This is particularly
ironic and revealing given that the national anthem owes its title to the
soldiers from Marseille who marched to Paris to participate in the
downfall of the monarchy and the establishment of the Republic in 1792.
The Marseillaise thus transcends the traditional cultural divide between
Paris and Southern France – a division that the chants of the PSG
supporters seek to reinforce. This mis-appropriated version of the national
anthem serves to create an imagined community that is very different to
the vision of national inclusivity implied by the official version. In the
supporter’s chant, Paris is placed firmly at the heart of a Republican
symbol, with Marseille and its citizens situated outside of the national
space and designated clearly as the “other”. The OM supporters, for their
part, revel in this opposition of their identity with their Parisian rivals. As
described in Christian Bromberger’s influential ethnographic study of
football, among their favourite mantras is the proclamation that “They are
French, we are Marseillais”, thus proclaiming themselves as belonging to a
group distinct and apart from the French nation.12

9
Andrew Hussey, “Le Temps Moderne,” Observer, 2 April, 2006.
10
The concept of “otherness” is integral to the understanding of the dialogical
construction of identity. The notion of the “Other” has been used in social sciences
to understand the processes by which societies and groups exclude those who they
want to subordinate or who do not fit into their society. Said demonstrates how this
was done by western societies to ‘other’ inhabitants of their colonies. See Edward
W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon books, 1979).
11
Andrew Hussey, “Le Temps Moderne,” Observer, 2 April, 2006.
12
Christian Bromberger, Le match de football: Ethnologie d'une passion partisane
a Marseille, Naples et Turin (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de
l'homme, 1995), 256.
70 Chapter Seven

As Crolley and Hand state in their study of the football press in

Europe: “Fans, team and city are bound together […] in a discursive
triangle with each side purportedly reflecting the same essentialist
qualities of the other two”.13 Increasingly for OM, in the era of increased
television coverage, fans include not only inhabitants of the city itself, but
supporters from various parts of France or overseas who identify with the
essentialist qualities embodied by OM and Marseille more generally.
Monique Millia-Marie-Luce’s ethnographic study of Dwet Douvan – the
Martinique-based OM supporters’ club that owes its name to a Créole
translation of Marseille’s Droit au But motto – is particularly revelatory in
this regard.14 Through her interviews with OM supporters on the
Caribbean island that constitutes one of France’s overseas départements,
Luce deduces that identification with the football club is due to an
underlying attraction to the city of Marseille and the values it is seen to
represent. The most appealing of these characteristics include the city’s
racial and cultural diversity, its history of welcoming immigrants and the
fact that “it isn’t France”.15 In this case, Martinique’s status as a part of the
French nation that is culturally and socially marginal to the centralising
influence of the Republic may be seen to contribute to the affinity between
Antillais and Marseillais.16 Intriguingly, a comparable identification
process is revealed in Patricia Valeix’s documentary film concerning
Parisian supporters of OM.17 Again, the Marseille club is seen to represent
an ideology or way of life that appeals to a group of individuals whose
attraction to the city is not based on familial or territorial bonds.
Marseillais identity can thus be considered more as a set of values, to be
adopted and assumed by newcomers, than a belonging based on jus
sanguinis or jus soli.18 In this fashion, the supporters of OM display an
ability to adopt Marseillais identity in a way that Matvejevic recognizes as
characteristic of Mediterranean culture: “Mediterraneanity is acquired, not

13
Liz Crolley and David Hand, Football, Europe and the Press, Sport in the
Global Society, ed. J.A. Mangan (London; Portland, Or: Frank Cass, 2002), 82.
14
Monique Millia-Marie-Luce, “L'Olympique de Marseille outre-mer: les
supporters à distance de ‘dwet douvan’ martinique,” Études caribéennes 7, no. 27
(2007): 95-103.
15
Millia-Marie-Luce, “L'Olympique de Marseille outre-mer”, 97.
16
Antillais refers to an inhabitant of the Antilles islands in the Caribbean, which
are under French jurisdiction.
17
Patricia Valeix, La vie en jeu (2002, 52 minutes).
18
Jus soli and jus sanguinis (or droit du sol and droit du sang) refer to the right to
citizenship based on or being born in that place or having a direct descendant born
in that place, respectively.
 Imagining Community in French Football 71

inherited; it is a decision, not a privilege”.19 This ability to “acquire”

Marseillais identity, and the centrality of opposition to the nation-state, is
also evident in the example of some of OM’s foremost figures of recent
times.

Becoming Marseillais, becoming Mediterranean

The Paris-Marseille sporting dichotomy has inspired a collection of
novellas including work by such renowned authors as Frédéric H. Fajardie
and Didier Daeninckx.20 Moreover, a series of books chronicling the
political machinations behind the OM-PSG rivalry have revealed the
importance of the media in the development of this routine fixture into a
symbolic battle for cultural supremacy.21 The Canal Plus television station
that took over PSG in the 1990s heavily promoted the side from the capital
as the principal competitors to the dominant team in France at that time –
Olympique de Marseille – which was then under the control of the
controversial and charismatic figure of Bernard Tapie. Tapie, the president
of the club from 1986 to 1994, was an extremely popular figure in
Marseille, not only because under his stewardship OM were crowned
French champions on four consecutive occasions between 1989 and 1992
and became the first ever French club to win the European Cup in 1993,
but also because his qualities were so reminiscent of the local imagination.
Tapie, of Parisian origin, was able to overcome this potential obstacle
through the display of particular qualities valued by the Marseille public –
his mantra of Rêve, Risque et Rire, underpinned by a sense of virility,
provocation and the spectacular, struck a chord with the OM faithful and
was made manifest in his confrontational approach to referees, the
presidents of other clubs and politicians.22 Tapie was not only accepted by
the public, but effectively became a leading advocate of his adopted
community, for whom Tapie’s appeal was all the greater because he chose
to become part of their society. The figure of Tapie emerges as a modern-
day Protis - an outsider seeking to return Marseille to its former glories at

19
Predrag Matvejevic, Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape, trans. Michael
Henry Heim (London: University of California Press, 1999), 93.
20
Onze fois l’OM (Marseille: L’Écailler du Sud, 2004).
21
Jean-François Pérès, Daniel Riolo, David Aiello, OM-PSG, PSG-OM : Les
meilleurs ennemis : Enquête sur une rivalité (Paris, Mango Sport, 2007, original
version 2003).
22
Christian Bromberger, Le match de football: Ethnologie d'une passion partisane
a Marseille, Naples et Turin (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de
l'homme, 1995), 131.
72 Chapter Seven

a time when the city was struggling both economically and on the football
field. Since his ignominious exit, the club has failed to re-establish its pre-
eminence in national and European competitions. Tapie’s downfall as
president of OM came due to his implication in the match-fixing
allegations made by players from the Valenciennes club, which ultimately
saw OM suspended from the domestic championship and stripped of the
European Cup by the game’s ruling authorities.23 This episode in itself
reflects something of the essentialist character of the city, which is seen as
being “often rebellious, sometimes imprudent, always on the cusp of
greatness, on the eve of an adventure, at the mercy of a scandal”.24
The propensity for Marseille to adopt emblematic figures through its
football club is also made evident through its on-field protagonists. On his
goal-scoring debut for OM, the Egyptian striker Ahmed Hossam, or Mido
as he is more widely known, was proclaimed in Le Monde newspaper as
having the potential to become an idol for the Marseille public. Pierre
Lapidi wrote that:

Mido possesses the qualities to endear himself enduringly to the

demanding Marseille supporters. He has dark skin, curly hair falling to his
neck and the innocence of his 20 years. By his feints, touches and shots…
with his Mediterranean physique and his tough character, Mido will bring
glamour and spark to the Marseille squad.25

Mido himself foresaw no problems in adapting to his new

surroundings, where, by his own admission, he “felt at home, in a great
and beautiful city on the shores of the Mediterranean”. Mido, however,
like the man who provided the assist for his goal that day, Didier Drogba,
left the club at the end of that season, following the trend of many of OM’s
major stars of the post-Tapie era, most of whom have left as a result of the
club’s inability to compete with the financial might of other major
European clubs.
Drogba, who reluctantly departed for Chelsea, scored twice in his first
European game for his new club, ironically against Parisian opposition.
Celebrating his goals in front of the Boulogne stand at the Parc de Princes,
home to PSG’s infamously right-wing extremist fans, Drogba chanted the

23
Philip Dine, “Leisure and consumption,” in Modern France: Society in
Transition, ed. Malcolm Cooke and Grace Davie (London: Routledge, 1999), 252.
24
Alain Gas, Villes du sud: De Massalia aux technopoles (Paris: La Renaissance
du Livre, 2004), 372.
25
Pierre Lapidi, “Avec ‘Mido’, Marseille s’est trouvé un buteur et un idole,” Le
Monde, 10 August, 2003.
 Imagining Community in French Football 73

mantra of the OM supporters, “Allez l’OM, Allez l’OM”, that had driven
him to such success at Marseille. Drogba thus emphasised not only that his
allegiance still lay with the southern club but also that every defeat for the
Parisians was a moral victory for Marseille in their symbolic battle for
sporting and cultural recognition. Furthermore, Drogba continued the
long-established tradition of foreign star players who have come to be
adopted as favourite sons of the maritime city. His popularity was due not
only to his on-field exploits, but also his appreciation of the Marseillais
culture, taking part in local practices favoured by OM’s supporters such as
the symbolic pilgrimage to the Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde chapel that
overlooks the city. Ironically, despite the success and popularity of players
such as Drogba, the club’s customary recruitment of prized foreign stars
may have contributed to OM’s missing out on the greatest Marseillais
footballer of all time.

Zidane: Global icon, national hero, Mediterranean man

Zinédine Zidane was born and raised in Place de la Castellane, a
disadvantaged area of Marseille. Yazid to his friends and family, Zizou to
the adoring French public, Zidane became a national hero in France after
his two goals sealed victory for France in the 1998 World Cup final in the
Stade de France, Paris. This cemented his status as the symbolic leader of
a multiethnic side that was heralded as representative of a new, inclusive
French nation. The French tricolour was re-branded as black-blanc-beur to
reflect the racial diversity of both team and nation whilst on the night of
the final, the figure of Zidane was projected onto the Arc de Triomphe
under the caption “Zidane Président”, thus appropriating Zizou as a
symbol of victorious France and an example of the success of the
Republican model of integration. Zidane also became enshrined as a
national hero in Algeria, the homeland of his parents – Berbers from the
Kabylie region who left Algeria to find work in France in the 1960s.
Following his retirement from international football, on the invitation of
the President of Algeria, Zidane was welcomed as a returning champion to
Algeria and was awarded the highest form of national honour in the form
of the Athir medal.
As a club player, Zidane began his career as a teenager with AS
Cannes before going on to win all the major honours in football with
Bordeaux, Juventus of Turin and Real Madrid. Zidane, although never
playing for the city’s flagship team, was nevertheless recognised as the
city’s favourite son and a symbolic figure for the expression of Marseille
identity. In striking contrast to the projection of Zidane’s image on the Arc
74 Chapter Seven

de Triomphe was the massive advertisement on the wall of a building at

the JF Kennedy Corniche portraying Zidane’s face beside the slogan Made
in Marseille and sponsored by sportswear company Adidas. From the
glorious summer of 1998 to Zidane’s retirement in 2006, this
advertisement became a tourist attraction, a form of mythic monument to
the Marseille identity and one of the most familiar and evocative images of
Marseille, along with the Vieux Port celebrated in Marcel Pagnol’s
Marseille trilogy, the Chateau d’If island prison immortalised by
Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo and the aforementioned
Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde basilica.26
Zidane remains a life-long supporter of OM, and fiercely proud of his
Marseillais identity – an identity which transcends his consecration as a
national hero:

I am proud of where I come from and never forget the people I grew up
with. Wherever I go, La Castellane is where I want to go back to. It is still
my home… My passion for the game comes from the city of Marseille
itself. […] Every day I think about where I come from and I am still proud
to be who I am: first, a Kabyle from La Castellane, then an Algerian from
Marseille, and then a Frenchman.27

Having spent the prime of his playing career in Spain and Italy, and as
a husband to a wife of combined Spanish and French origins and a father
to three children with Italian names, it is unsurprising that Zidane looks to
the Mediterranean to resolve this complex layering of identity: speaking of
his home in Madrid, Zidane comments that “it is a Mediterranean city, and
that is really my culture.”28
2006 marked the end of the Adidas-sponsored image of Zidane on the
Corniche. In the unsentimental era of globalisation and the mass-
marketing of sport stars, the image was judged to have become clichéd. It
was replaced by a Coca-Cola advertisement that local authorities insisted
should reflect an appreciation of the city’s culture. The response from the
soft-drink manufacturing giants depicted the Marseille colours, emblems
and banners proclaiming “Allez l’OM” splashing out from the distinctive

26
Originally plays, all three were made into films: Marius, directed by Alexander
Korda in 1931; Fanny, directed in 1932 by Marc Allegret and César, which Pagnol
himself adapted to the screen in 1936. Alexandre Dumas, Le Comte de Monte-
Cristo, ed. J.-H. Bournecque, 2 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1962).
27
Andrew Hussey, “ZZ top,” The Observer, 4 April, 2004, Observer Sports
Monthly magazine.
28
Andrew Hussey, “ZZ top,” The Observer, 4 April, 2004, Observer Sports
Monthly magazine.
 Imagining Community in French Football 75

cola bottle. The image, bathed in the blue and white colours of OM, was
crested by a bright silhouette of the Marseille skyline rising to the Notre
Dame-de-la-Garde basilica - a Mecca for OM supporters. While Zidane
may have left the field definitively, the inextricable links between
Marseille and its football team remain intact.

Conclusion
Marseille’s football club inflects and reflects many of the essential
traits of the city and its population and acts as a repository for the city’s
“spiritual culture”, as elucidated by Chaterjee. This “spiritual culture”
functions as a focal point for the construction and expression of an
alternative “imagined community” distinct from the nation state and
inspired by the city’s Mediterranean heritage. Furthermore, representative
examples of Marseillais supporters, footballers and officials demonstrate
that this Marseillais identity is based on a set of common values that
transcend limitations of territory or birthright. As Zidane recognises and as
Matvejevic describes, Marseillais identity can thus be considered as
typically Mediterranean.

References
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism. London, New York: Verso, 1983.
Bozonnet, Jean-Jacques. “La France s’est reconnue à travers cette équipe
multiethnique,” Le Monde, 18 July, 1998
Bromberger, Christian. Le match de football: Ethnologie d'une passion
partisane a Marseille, Naples et Turin. Paris: Éditions de la Maison des
sciences de l'homme, 1995.
Chatterjee, Partha “Whose Imagined Community?” in Mapping the
Nation, ed. Gopal Balakrishna New York, London: Verso, 1996.
Crolley, Liz and Hand, David. Football, Europe and the Press, Sport in the
Global Society, ed. J.A. Mangan London; Portland, Or: Frank Cass,
2002
Dine, Philip. “Sport and Identity in the New France,” in Contemporary
French Cultural Studies, ed. Sian Reynolds and William Kidd, London:
Arnold, 2000, 165-178.
Dine, Philip “Leisure and consumption,” in Modern France: Society in
Transition, ed. Malcolm Cooke and Grace Davie, London: Routledge,
1999
Gas, Alain. Villes du sud: De Massalia aux technopoles. Paris: La
76 Chapter Seven

Renaissance du Livre, 2004.

Hare, Geoff. Football in France: A Cultural History. Oxford, New York:
Berg, 2003.
Hussey, Andrew. “ZZ top,” The Observer, 4 April, 2004, Observer Sports
Monthly magazine.
—. “Le Temps Moderne,” Observer, 2 April, 2006.
Lapidi, Pierre, “Avec ‘Mido’, Marseille s’est trouvé un buteur et un idole,”
Le Monde, 10 August, 2003.
Matvejevic, Predrag, Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape, trans.
Michael Henry Heim, London: University of California Press, 1999.
Morel, Bernard. “La Recomposition Marseillaise,” Vingtieme Siecle.
Revue d'histoire 32 (1991).
Millia-Marie-Luce, Monique. “L'Olympique de Marseille outre-mer: les
supporters à distance de ‘dwet douvan’ martinique,” Études
caribéennes 7, no. 27 (2007): 95-103.
Matvejevic, Predrag. Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape, trans.
Michael Henry Heim, London: University of California Press, 1999.
Onze fois l’OM. Marseille: L’Écailler du Sud, 2004).
Pérès, Jean-François, Daniel Riolo, David Aiello, OM-PSG, PSG-OM : Les
meilleurs ennemis : Enquête sur une rivalité. Paris, Mango Sport, 2007.
Robb, Graham. The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from
the Revolution to the First World War, New York: Norton, 2007.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism, New York: Pantheon Books, 1979.
Weber, Eugen Joseph. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of
Rural France, 1870-1914. London: Chatto and Windus, 1977.
 CHAPTER EIGHT

ELEMENTS OF SUPPORTIVE
FRIENDSHIP AT WORK:
A STUDY ON THE RELATIONSHIP QUALITY
OF INFORMAL CAREER SUPPORT

PETER YANG AND JENNIFER M. KIDD

Introduction
Friendship plays a vital role in employees’ networking, and supportive
relationships with friends at the workplace are likely to benefit long-term
careers as well as daily work performance.1 However, previous career
studies seem to pay little attention to the link between employees’
friendship at work and their career development. This neglect is clear in
the existing literature, and career researchers have been mostly interested
in assigned developmental relationships at work, which are ordinarily
studied in terms of boss-subordinate relationships and formal mentoring
relationships. In contrast to studies which concentrate on formal
developmental relationships, the present study uses a psychological
approach to examine the interpersonal basis of career support that is
informally formed within Chinese work settings. In line with this aim, the
nature of close colleagueship through which employees have received
support in coping with daily work life and/or long-term careers is
investigated in this study, which extends our knowledge of the relational
dimension of career management.2

1
Kathy E. Kram, Mentoring at work: developmental relationships in
organizational life (Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman, 1985); Michael Argyle, The
social psychology of everyday life (London: Routledge, 1992).
2
Jennifer M. Kidd, Understanding career counselling: theory, research and
practice (London: Sage Publications, 2006).
78 Chapter Eight

The important role of relationship quality for research into informal

career support at work is clear when the fundamental question: “what are
the characteristics of informal relationships (friendships) that are
supportive to individuals’ careers?” is considered. This study proceeds to
address this issue: the elements of relationship quality. Despite its
contribution in describing the features of a given support tie, relationship
quality has not been widely studied in the career literature. In Higgins and
Thomas’ recent study, relationship quality refers to the conditions of a
developmental relationship, and they assessed relationship quality in terms
of the amount of career and psychosocial assistance.3 Prior to this, Ensher
and Murphy conceptualised relationship quality as a multidimensional
concept composed of four elements, including liking, satisfaction,
intended retention and degree of perceived functions.4 These two
approaches to defining and assessing relationship quality are slightly
different, but they both involve support functions in the conceptualisation
of relationship quality.
These conceptualisations of relationship quality may be questioned.
Following Chao's view of support functions as first-level outcomes5, it
seems necessary to identify the essence of relationship quality clearly, as
relationship quality and support functions are conceptually different from
each other. Furthermore, relationship quality could be viewed as the
mediator linking background similarities and support functions within the
context of Chinese networking. In the Chinese culture, relationships are
important in behaviour and relationships based on demographic factors are
captured in the concept of guanxi, which is constituted of direct ties that
are established by background similarities and common experiences, such
as working in the same department previously.6 This cultural emphasis on
guanxi suggests a need to consider the role of relationship quality in
Chinese networking. As well as conceptualizing support functions,

3
M. C. Higgins and D. A. Thomas, “Constellations and careers: Toward
understanding the effects of multiple developmental relationships,” Journal of
Organizational Behavior 22 (2001): 223-247.
4
E. A. Ensher and S. E. Murphy, “Effects of race, gender, perceived similarity,
and contact on mentor relationships,” Journal of Vocational Behavior 50 (1997):
460-481.
5
G. T. Chao, “Mentoring phase and outcomes,” Journal of Vocational Behavior
51, no. 1 (1997): 15-28.
6
J. Farh, A. S. Tsui, K. Xin, and B. Cheng, “The influence of relational
demography and guanxi: The Chinese case,” Organization Science 9, vol. 4
(1998): 471-488.
 Elements of Supportive Friendship at Work 79

relationship quality needs to be studied in terms of the characteristics of

interpersonal interactions that occur in different support relationships.
Although Kram did not establish a practical approach to measuring
relationship quality7, she discussed the varying characteristics of
interpersonal interactions between developmental relationships. She
suggested that the degree of trust, mutuality and intimacy characterise the
quality of developmental relationships. Likewise, sociologists have
argued for some years that social capital is heavily dependent on trust and
mutuality. For example, Kim and Aldrich argued that strong ties, which
provide a high level of daily support, are relatively enduring relationships
and must be maintained on a frequent and reciprocal basis.8 In these
trusting relationships, the interactions between both parties are
emotionally intense and involve a high degree of reciprocity. Despite
these arguments for a closer examination of the interpersonal dynamics
between network members, contemporary social capital studies generally
use a single-item measure for tie strength (or relationship quality) in
research practice.9
The present study goes beyond existing approaches to assessing
relationship quality, which have the potential for conceptual confusion10
and oversimplification.11 It explores specific elements within the umbrella
concept of relationship quality in the context of informal career support at
work, and as such, this study may help in our understanding of the
characteristics of supportive friendship in Chinese work settings.

Research question
What are the elements that constitute the relationship quality of informal
career support at work?

7
Kram, Mentoring at work.
8
Phillip Kim and Howard Aldrich, Social capital and entrepreneurship (Boston,
Mass.: Now, 2005).
9
For example, G. Lai and O. Wong, “The tie effect on information
dissemination: the spread of a commercial rumor in Hong Kong,” Social Networks
24 (2002): 49-75.
10
Ensher and Murphy, “Effects of race, gender, perceived similarity, and contact
on mentor relationships”; Higgins and Thomas, “Constellations and careers”.
11
G. Lai and O. Wong, “The tie effect on information dissemination”.
80 Chapter Eight

Method
This study used repertory grids as the methodology. Because
friendships and informal support relationships are established
progressively12, a clarification of the varying characteristics of support
interaction between different relationship phases may contribute to an
understanding of the elements that constitute relationship quality. For this
reason, the phases of each participant’s informal career support
relationship with one particular network member were included as the
initial elements of their grids. Also, each participant’s career support
relationships with other important people who provided them with career
support were included in the grid.

Participants and Procedure

Thirty-six participants took part in the interviews. Their ages ranged
from twenty-five to fifty-three. Twenty-one participants were male and
fifteen were female. Thirty-three had received a first or a postgraduate
degree, twenty-five were unmarried, and eleven had worked for more than
ten years.
Participants were asked to think back on their working life and identify
one support partner with whom they talked most frequently about career
issues (work-related issues and/or personal concerns) in the past year.
They elicited this network member by responding to the request to define
and identify support partners as “particular colleagues in the organisation
with whom you have supportive/good relationships that benefit your
career. Normally, such relationships are closer than normal colleague
relationships. Your supervisor and assigned mentor(s) are not included”.
Three steps (choosing the elements, generating constructs, and linking
constructs to elements) were carried out to structure the procedure of
producing grids.13 The interviews were carried out at work, and most
participants finished their grids in one hour.

12
Steve Duck, Friends for life: the psychology of close relationships (Brighton:
Harvester Press,1983; Beverley Anne Fehr, Friendship processes (Thousand Oaks,
Calif.: Sage Publications, 1996); Kram, Mentoring at work.
13
M. Easterby-Smith, “The design, analysis, and interpretation of repertory
grids,” in Recent advances in personal construct technology, ed. M. L. G. Shaw
(London: Academic Press, 1981).
 Elements of Supportive Friendship at Work 81

Analysis
A generic content-analysis procedure was employed to categorise
constructs elicited from the grids.14 Hinde's category system was used for
data analysis since it is theory based and takes account of the varying
nature of relationships. 15 The validity of the data analysis was assessed in
terms of the extent of agreement between the first researcher and a
colleague who was studying for a PhD in Management. Following
Jankowicz's procedure16, a revised category system with acceptably high
reliability was finalised through discussions about disagreements and a
redefinition of the categories, before it was used to fit with Hinde's theory-
based scheme.17 Approximately 90 % agreement was achieved (Cohen’s
Kappa = .898).

Results
Each participant produced a unique combination of elements, but there
was some commonality across the grids. The elements in Table 1 describe
the differing characteristics of the participants’ network composition.

Table 1 – A summary of the elements created in the grids

Elements Frequency %
Relationships inside the organisation
Informal career support relationships at work 121 31
Relationships with the current or previous boss or
40 10
subordinate
Relationships with a normal colleague 37 10
Relationships with a client 13 3
Relationships outside the organisation
Relationships with friends outside the company 71 18
Relationships with family members, relatives, or a
94 24
boy/girl friend
Relationships with a neighbour or housemate 4 1
Other 7 2
Total 387 99

14
See Devi Jankowicz, The easy guide to repertory grids (Chichester: Wiley,
2004).
15
R. A. Hinde, “The bases of a science of interpersonal relationships,” in Personal
relationships, ed. S. W. Duck and R. Gilmour (San Francisco, NY: Academic
Press, 1981).
16
Jankowicz, The easy guide to repertory grids.
17
Hinde, “The bases of a science of interpersonal relationships”.
82 Chapter Eight

Following Hinde's category scheme, the components of relationship

quality were categorised into eight primary groups. The result of a content
analysis is summarised in Table 2 (next page).
For the first group (‘content of interactions’), breadth of talk (N=22, 6
%) and involvement in personal life (N=19, 5%) were reported. They
varied considerably between support relationships. Unlimited topics of
conversation (N= 10, 3%) was most frequently used to characterise a wide
range of subjects to talk about with close network members. With regard
to ‘the diversity of interactions’, a diverse range of support was shown in
multiple relationships. In addition to emotional support, the participants
reported that they gained much learning from intense relationships.
Material benefits and career facilitation were also shown in the informal
career support relationships. A high level of usefulness of the relationship
(N=28, 8%) was reported in these relationships.
Knowledge of each other (N=13, 4%) and depth of talk (N=12, 3%)
were reported as the constructs which differentiated ‘qualities of
interactions’ between support relationships. In-depth talks (N=9, 3%)
varied clearly across relationships. Regarding ‘the frequency and
patterning of interactions’, the participants often used the style
(patterning) of communication to make a distinction between the varying
nature of support relationships (N=43, 12%). Frequent contact (N=16, 5%)
and easy to communicate with (N=11, 3%) were the two constructs most
frequently reported. The basis of commonality in a relationship in terms of
the current interaction in daily life (N=20, 6%) was also used to
distinguish relationships with different career support providers.
In the fifth group (‘reciprocity and complementarity’), equal
interaction (N=11, 3%) and mutual respect, consideration and protection
(N=5, 1%) varied between different support relationships. The formation
of partnerships (N=12, 3%) represented high levels of reciprocal support
and cooperation with each other between network members. Although
only few participants used intimacy (familiar and close feelings, N=10,
3%) to describe a differing degree of ‘intimacy’ shown between
relationships, trustworthiness (N=28, 8%) and willingness to provide
support (N=27, 8%) were reported quite widely in both male and female
participants’ grids. In addition, availability of tacit communication
appeared three times in these grids (N=3, 1%).
 Elements of Supportive Friendship at Work 83

Table 2 – A summary of the constructs created in the grids

(continues next page)

Frequency
Category Construct
(%)
Breadth of talk (the range of subjects to talk about):
unlimited topics of conversation; issues relevant to 22
Content of current work; sensitive issues and personal privacy; (6.2)
interactions career-related issues
Involvement in personal life: participation in leisure 19
activities; many conversations about personal affairs (5.3)
Usefulness (outcomes) of relationship: benefit
Diversity of much from the relationship; (also) benefit from learning; 28
interactions (also) benefit from career facilitation; (also) benefit from (7.9)
material benefits
Knowledge of each other: know a lot about each other;
13
familiar with one’s salient personality characteristics,
Qualities of including shortcomings (3.7)
interactions 12
Depth of talk: in-depth conversations; heart-to-heart talks
(3.4)
Style of communication: frequent contact; two-way
Relative communication; easy to communicate with; share and
frequency and communicate frequently; direct and in-depth 43
patterning of communication; more means of communication (on (12.2)
interactions phone); talk longer; chatting (talk without a particular
purpose); meeting freely
The basis of commonality in a relationship in terms of
the current interaction in daily life: physical closeness; 20
shared interests; many common experiences in daily life; (5.7)
more time staying together (than with others)
Formation of partnership: partnership; cooperate with 12
each other; reciprocal support; a true brother; a soul mate. (3.4)
Reciprocity and 11
Equality: equal interaction; peer partnership
complementarity (3.1)
Mutual respect, consideration, and protection: mutual
5
respect and consideration; protect the other party from
harm. (1.4)
Trustworthiness: genuineness and sincerity; self- 28
disclosure; the degree of trustworthiness (7.9)
Willingness to provide support: expressed voluntarily;
expressed in a great amount; expressed frequently; 27
expressed in an active way; expressed in detail; not for (7.6)
Intimacy personal benefit
Intimacy: familiar and close feelings; accessible and 12
dependable (3.4)
Availability of tacit communication: availability of tacit 3
communication (0.8)
84 Chapter Eight

The basis of commonality in a relationship in terms of

the similarity and compatibility of individual
characteristics: similar backgrounds; consistent thoughts
23
and similar thinking styles; compatible values and
philosophy; similar personality and coping models (6.5)
Interpersonal
14
perception Understanding: listening and in-depth understanding;
empathetic and comfortable support (4)
13
Positive regard: accepted; respected; supported
unconditionally (3.7)
9
Autonomy: the extent of being myself; free and relaxed (2.5)

Positive evaluation of the relationship: positive affective

17
reactions (enjoyable, warm, friendly, safe, and supportive);
positive evaluation of the interaction (4.8)

Relationship commitment: a high degree of involvement;

Commitment a high/low level of belonging; willing to know more about
15
the other party; a high intention to develop the relationship;
positive evaluation (4.2)

Importance of relationship: an important relationship;

7
rely on the relationship to a large extent; value the
relationship to a large extent (2)
353
Total
(99.7)

With regard to ‘interpersonal perception’, the basis of commonality in

a relationship in terms of the similarity and compatibility of individual
characteristics was reported in the interviews (N=23, 7%); namely, similar
backgrounds, consistent thoughts, similar thinking styles, compatible
values and philosophy, and similar personality and coping models. Among
these, consistent thoughts and similar thinking styles (N=16, 5%) appeared
most frequently. Additional constructs included understanding in an
empathic manner (N=14, 4%) and positive regard (N=13, 4%). Free and
relaxed feelings characterised a high level of autonomy with close network
members (N=9, 3%). With regard to ‘commitment’, relationship
commitment (N=15, 4%) and importance of relationship (N=7, 2%)
 Elements of Supportive Friendship at Work 85

described how the participants evaluated intense support relationships. In

addition, many participants reported positive evaluation of the relationship
(N=17, 5%), of which positive affective reactions (feeling joy and warmth,
and experiencing friendship, safety and support) (N=15, 4%) were
mentioned most frequently.

Discussion
Several decades ago, Duck studied friendship formation from a
personal construct perspective.18 Psychological constructs (e.g. very
sociable versus shy), role constructs (e.g. same age versus different age)
and interaction constructs (e.g. easy to talk to versus more difficult to talk
to) were the main three categorisations used for characterising the nature
of friendship. In contrast to Duck’s coding framework, Hinde's category
system19 was used to group the constructs created in the grids in the
present study because of the focus on the characteristics of support
interactions, rather than personality or the role in a given relationship.
Most of the constructs generated in this study can be seen as the
interaction constructs described in Duck's study.20
Support relationships at work are formed through an evolutionary
process in which the interpersonal bond between both parties is
strengthened with time, and this feature provides an important dimension
that can be used to study network members’ support interactions.21 In the
workplace, positive interactions between network members accumulate
mainly as a result of ongoing organisational experiences, such as working
together, informal interactions, and daily conversations about departmental
concerns. These common organisational experiences contribute to the
continuous establishment of an intense relationship22, which is the so-
called friendship at work in Argyle's study.23 The constructs in the first
and second categories in Table 2 (i.e. content of interactions and diversity
of interactions) are supported by Argyle's perspective, which argues that
the levels of engagement in various social activities and work activities
with different work colleagues vary a lot between workplace friendships.

18
Steve Duck, Personal relationships and personal constructs. A study of
friendship formation (London: Wiley, 1973).
19
Hinde, “The bases of a science of interpersonal relationships”.
20
Duck, Personal relationships and personal constructs.
21
C. Bidart and D. Lavenu, “Evolutions of personal networks and life events,”
Social Networks 27, no. 4 (2005): 359-376.
22
Bidart and Lavenu, “Evolutions of personal networks and life events”.
23
Argyle, The social psychology of everyday life.
86 Chapter Eight

As Duck pointed out, the study of typically-enacted types of activity

contributes to the definition of friendship formation.24 As relationships
develop from acquaintance to close friendship, different types of activities
take place.25 Multiplex relationships, where the range of interactions is
great,26 seem to appear frequently in informal relationships with close
work colleagues. In addition to the emotional support that is frequently
shown in friendship, intense support relationships at work provide support
that strengthens employees’ work performance and careers, such as
learning and career facilitation (see Table 2).
In Table 2, the presence of relative frequency and patterning of
interactions (style of communication and the basis of commonality in
daily life) is supported by Kim and Aldrich's argument that strong ties,
which provide a high level of daily support, are relatively enduring
relationships and must be maintained on a frequent and reciprocal basis.27
This point of view was also shown in social support studies that suggest
that informal support relationships are built on a high degree of familiarity
between both parties,28 as well as in the research on relationships that
suggested the importance of proximity (physical closeness) for the
establishment of friendship at work.29 In addition, Kim and Aldrich argued
that trusting relationships with network members involve a high degree of
reciprocity,30 which is similar to the mutuality discussed by Kram.31 This
reciprocal feature is shown in Table 2, in terms of several constructs under
the reciprocity and complementarity category (i.e. mutual respect,
consideration and protection, equality, and formation of partnership).
Interpersonal interactions with close network members are described as
having high levels of similarity and compatibility, and these were
frequently found in the participants’ grids. This basis of commonality
between network members contributes to the formation of intense support
relationships or friendships. It is likely that because of both parties’ mutual

24
Steve Duck, Relating to others, 2nd ed. (Buckingham: Open University Press,
1999).
25
Duck, Relating to others.
26
Duck, Relating to others.
27
Kim and Aldrich, Social capital and entrepreneurship.
28
A. Laireiter and U. Baumann, “Network structures and support functions:
Theoretical and empirical analyses,” in The meaning and measurement of social
support, ed. H. O. F. Veiel and U. Baumann (New York: Hemisphere Publishing
Corporation, 1992).
29
Fehr, Friendship processes.
30
Kim and Aldrich, Social capital and entrepreneurship.
31
Kram, Mentoring at work.
 Elements of Supportive Friendship at Work 87

understanding and positive regard, they feel relaxed in these informal

relationships. Not surprisingly, this emphasis on the interpersonal
similarities of network members has been widely addressed in relationship
science32 and mentoring studies.33 In order for intense informal support
relationships to be established, interpersonal compatibility between the
two parties may be necessary, as this may determine the degree to which
they are willing to be involved in the relationship after it has been
initiated. Furthermore, high levels of similarity and compatibility may
account for the quality of interactions (depth of talk, knowledge of each
other) which were described in Table 2, such as ‘in-depth conversations’
and ‘heart-to-heart talks’.
Intimacy points to the fundamental essence of intense relationships,
and this umbrella concept is described in Table 2 in terms of
trustworthiness, willingness to provide support, close feelings, and the
availability of tacit communication. The high degrees of trust and
intimacy which are frequently shown in effective developmental
relationships have been discussed by Kram.34 Likewise, Argyle
differentiated between work relationships of different kinds in terms of
levels of psychological closeness.35 He showed that intimacy with work
colleagues achieves a high level in close work relationships. In trusting
relationships, the interactions between both parties are emotionally
intense.36 The commitment (positive evaluation of the relationship,
relationship commitment, and importance of relationship) noted in Table 2
also involves emotionally intensity.

Conclusion
Focusing on strong ties, this study suggests that several categorisations
of constructs contribute to the understanding of high-quality relationships
within the context of informal career support at work. Research into
relationship quality is necessary to increase our understanding of
supportive interactions at work.37 Although the importance of relationship

32
Duck, Friends for life.
33
A. M. Young and P. L. Perrewé, “The exchange relationship between mentors
and protégés: The development of a framework, ” Human Resources Management
Review 10, no. 2 (2000).
34
Kram, Mentoring at work.
35
Argyle, The social psychology of everyday life.
36
Kim and Aldrich, Social capital and entrepreneurship.
37
Bidart and Lavenu, “Evolutions of personal networks and life events”.
88 Chapter Eight

quality has been increasingly noted in recent mentoring literature,38 an

acceptable measure of relationship quality has not yet been developed.
Using the constructs generated in this study, quantitative studies need to be
carried out to develop a multidimensional measure of relationship quality.
Using a multidimensional approach to measure relationship quality is an
improvement on the approach used in most social capital research, which
assesses the concept in terms of a single item.

References
Argyle, Michael. The social psychology of everyday life. London:
Routledge, 1992.
Bidart, C., and D. Lavenu. Evolutions of personal networks and life
events. Social Networks 27, no. 4 (2005): 359-376.
Chao, G. T. 1997. Mentoring phase and outcomes. Journal of Vocational
Behavior 51, no. 1 (1997): 15-28.
Duck, Steve. Personal relationships and personal constructs. A study of
friendship formation. London: Wiley, 1973.
—.Friends for life: the psychology of close relationships. Brighton:
Harvester Press, 1983.
—.Relating to others. 2nd ed, Mapping social psychology. Buckingham:
Open University Press, 1999.
Easterby-Smith, M. 1981. The design, analysis, and interpretation of
repertory grids. In Recent advances in personal construct technology,
edited by M. L. G. Shaw. London: Academic Press.
Ensher, E. A., and S. E. Murphy. "Effects of race, gender, perceived
similarity, and contact on mentor relationships." Journal of Vocational
Behavior 50 (1997): 460-481.
Farh, J., A. S. Tsui, K. Xin, and B. Cheng. "The influence of elational
demography and guanxi: The Chinese case." Organization Science 9,
no. 4 (1998): 471-488.
Fehr, Beverley Anne. Friendship processes. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage
Publications, 1996.
Higgins, M. C., and D. A. Thomas. "Constellations and careers: Toward
understanding the effects of multiple developmental relationships."
Journal of Organizational Behavior 22 (2001):223-247.

38
See B. R. Ragins, “Diversity and workplace mentoring relationships: A review
and positive social capital approach,” in The Blackwell handbook of mentoring, ed.
T. D. Allen and L. T. Eby (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007).
 Elements of Supportive Friendship at Work 89

Hinde, R. A. 1981. "The bases of a science of interpersonal relationships."

In Personal relationships, edited by S. W. Duck and R. Gilmour. San
Francisco, NY: Academic Press.
Jankowicz, Devi. The easy guide to repertory grids. Chichester: Wiley,
2004.
Kidd, Jennifer M.. Understanding career counselling: theory, research
and practice. London: Sage Publications, 2006
Kim, Phillip, and Howard Aldrich. Social capital and entrepreneurship.
Boston, Mass.: Now, 2005.
Kram, Kathy E. Mentoring at work: developmental relationships in
organizational life. Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman, 1984.
Lai, G., and O. Wong. The tie effect on information dissemination: the
spread of a commercial rumor in Hong Kong. Social Networks 24
(2002): 49-75.
Laireiter, A., and U. Baumann. 1992. Network structures and support
functions: Theoretical and empirical analyses. In The meaning and
measurement of social support, edited by H. O. F. Veiel and U.
Baumann. New York: Hemisphere Publishing Corporation.
Ragins, B. R. 2007. Diversity and workplace mentoring relationships: A
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handbook of mentoring, edited by T. D. Allen and L. T. Eby. Malden,
MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Young, A. M., and P. L. Perrewé. "The exchange relationship between
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Resource Management Review 10, no. 2 (2000):177-209.
 CHAPTER NINE

EMPATHY & SOCIALIZATION:

PRESENT IN OUR FRIENDS,
ABSENT IN OUR ENEMIES

EDMUND O’TOOLE

Without empathy it would be inconceivable to reach an understanding

of Other to truly call them 'friend'. Without empathy we could not feel for
others or value them beyond utility; they would simply be a means to an
end rather than ends in and of themselves. It has become recognized as the
basis for the cooperative, reciprocal interaction that allows society and
individuals to bond together, curtailing the destructive tendencies of our
self-interested nature and desires. It is given as a fundamental factor in
moral development and conscience.
There are many levels upon which empathy is structured, dependent on
innate dispositions and developmental processes. Empathy allows access
to the emotions of others and can lead to emotional states. It may represent
the cognitive awareness of the internal states of another person but it also
defines the vicarious affective response to others. This initial basic
distinction can make the task of understanding the relation between
empathy and moral behaviour clearer. While the former may characterize
theory of mind the latter has been offered as the basis for moral reasoning.
Socialization is dependent on the two forms of empathy but Martin L.
Hoffman defines the latter as the source of empathic morality. However,
he acknowledges the difficulty in promoting and sustaining empathic
morality:

Though empathy potentially exists in everyone, it may be reduced by

irritability, fearfulness, and other temperamental factors, and by depressive
and autistic tendencies that interfere with mimicry, role-taking, and other
empathy-arousing processes. Combining these temperamental factors with
92 Chapter Nine

non-nurturant, excessively power-assertive life experiences may well

produce individuals who cannot empathize (psychopaths?) 1

Empathy may underlie pro-social moral reasoning and conscience yet,

in itself, it is probably not sufficient for either to be objectively recognized
as moral but it does require emotional understanding and social
contaminants. Again we may recognize that empathy takes different forms
and, in contrast with the psychopath, the malleability of empathy
throughout the rest of the population deserves closer scrutiny and signifies
a point of the inherent possibility of altruistic and psychopathic potentials.2
While such object relations or objectification of Other has been
catalogued in various ways by philosophers and psychiatrists, the first
principled embrace of empathy in moral reasoning had been offered by
philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume, Smith and Hutchenson
had focused on the emotional aspect of morality and on sympathy in
particular. Sympathy had been considered as an emotion of active
engagement through the faculty of imagination, it included the popular
view of sympathy as a feeling of compassion for the sorrow of another but
was extended to the objective understanding of emotional states rather
than a purely personal one. The evaluation or feeling that such sentiment
allowed was objective rather than subjective, it was the sentiment of
humanity. The appreciation for poetry and prose existed through the
ability to appeal to this sentiment. Hume, examining the principles of

1
Martin L. Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 282-283.
2
The original concept of psychopathy was defined as moral insanity and, as with
psychopathy, moral insanity can be constructed in many ways. A violation of social
norms leads to a label and the label signifies characteristics of agency and
behaviour associated with such violations. Since its inception psychopathy has
come to signify violations of morality and it has come to be used ubiquitously.
Moral insanity has come to be associated with corporations and free-market
capitalism, the epithet of psychopath has been attributed to CEO's and presidents.
There is an understanding that the disregard for morality is instrumentally
destructive for humanity and yet it remains a consequence of many rational
systems. There is also the coincidence of the political with the market and
instrumentalism which has an inevitable relation with the utility of a self-interested
model of human nature. In many respects empathic knowledge leads to power or
paranoia rather than morality and the ability to utilize morality for self interest is a
Machiavellian virtue. While there are many ways to be evil, one of rational
amoralism is attributed to Machiavelli and others; the rejection of traditional and
conventional morality in favour of value system based on power and aggressive
self-interest.
 Empathy and Socialization 93

morals, explains: “And though this affection of humanity may not

generally be esteemed so strong as vanity or ambition, yet, being common
to all men, it can alone be the foundation of morals, or of any system of
blame or praise.”3
Philosopher and pioneering psychologist William James, recognizing
the debate between innateness and acquisition, had viewed sympathy as an
instinct. He argued that some forms were primitive, such as a mother’s
sympathy for her child. Reflex impulses were seen as synonymous with
instincts for James. He offered two principles of the non-uniformity of
instincts; that habits can allow the inhibition of instinct; and secondly, that
there is a transitory nature to instincts. He presents an outline of the largely
unconscious nature of instincts, yet instincts cannot be ‘blind’. Once they
are enacted there is conscious awareness. Memory, the ability to reflect on
action and the influence of experience can alter the instinctual process.
While the initial instinctual expression could be said to have a ‘blind’
quality it cannot be the case for subsequent expressions. Something to be
added to James' view of instinct has to be habituation. Habituation, the
internalization of behaviours and social processes, recede from conscious
awareness and become generalized as reactive automatic cognitions.4
James presents an understanding of sympathy that views it as
instinctual while offering that it may be inhibited by other instincts.
Indeed, many of other the instincts he does write about provide means of
not only inhibiting the sympathetic instinct but show the destructive
potential of humans. James did not underestimate this potential and his
view of humanity was far from romantic, he wrote: “In many respects man
is the most ruthlessly ferocious of beasts. As with all gregarious animals,
‘two souls,’ as Faust says, ‘dwell within his breast,’ the one of sociability
and helpfulness, the other of jealously and antagonism to his mates.”5 For
James it is sympathy which curtails men from following their aggressive
instincts “in a perfectly natural way”. But stimuli that elicited the
sympathetic instinct could also bring forth other instincts that could inhibit
sympathy.

3
David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning The
Principles of Morals, 3rd ed., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 273. Hume
also accepted that the degree to which it existed varied; it was also something that
need to be actively refined.
4
Although people will accept ownership for their action, agency may generally be
reactive rather than active.
5
William James, The Principles of Psychology (Harvard: Harvard, 1981), 1028.
94 Chapter Nine

Understanding does not necessitate feeling and, arguably, there exists a

trade-off between the definition of empathy and sympathy.6 If a position
emphasising the understanding of another rather than feeling for another is
accepted then it would be easier to consider the psychopath as having
empathy but lacking in sympathy and compassion.7
Martin Hoffman's defines the form of empathy he believes to be
necessary for moral reasoning as "a vicarious affective feeling". It retains
the original Scottish Enlightenment tradition of the sympathetic sentiment
of 'fellow feeling' and he does distinguish it from the general definition of
empathy as the cognitive understanding of others. It is for him an affective
response that is more appropriate to another's situation. Yet for Hoffman
moral principles are necessary for the development of sound empathic
responses leading to moral behaviour and central to these moral principles
are principles of caring and justice. How these principles are internalized
in correspondence with a vicarious affective feeling is of consequence for
morality.
Recent neurological studies suggest the existence of mirror neurons;
neurons that are active in the performance of action but which are also
activated by the perception of action by another individual. They are
regarded as enabling the internalization of simulation necessary for
imitation and a prerequisite for the meaningful understanding of the
actions and gestures of others.
Mimetic abilities and many elements of social learning are
underpinned by such structures but there are also other means of
stimulation that relate to the issue of embodied emotional arousal.
Vittorio Gallese, researching how a mirror matching system might
operate, puts forward a "shared manifold" hypothesis to try to qualify how
mirror neurons would lead to empathy. He offers:
The phenomenological level is the one responsible for the sense of
similarity, of being individuals within a larger social community of persons
like us, that we experience anytime we confront ourselves with other
human beings. It could be defined also as the empathic level, provided that
empathy is characterized in the “enlarged” way I was advocating before.
Actions, emotions and sensations experienced by others become
meaningful to us because we can share them with them.8

6
Where empathy is offered as understanding, sympathy is more broadly conceived
as simpatico or the ‘fellow feeling’ as given by the theorist of the Scottish
Enlightenment.
7
On this definition it would be easily to accept the consideration of the
psychopathic individual as one who understands but just doesn't care.
8
Vittorio Gallese, “The ‘shared manifold’ hypothesis: from mirror neurons to
 Empathy and Socialization 95

It may be more profitable to consider empathy in an "enlarged" or

broader way, thereby opening out the possibilities of just how a
prereflective awareness of similarity or intersubjectivity exists.
The responsivity to others is accepted as innate by many theorists and,
while the process has been termed in various ways, there is also the claim
that it precedes “person permanence” or “egological awareness”. Awareness
of self and others is described as either fragmented or undifferentiated
perceptions of others in relation to the self. What Hoffman calls “person
permanence”, awareness of others as distinct physical entities, and what
Crossley describes as “egological awareness” develops by the first year of
a child's life. Prior to “person permanence” or “egological awareness”
there is “empathic arousal”. Two modes of arousal have been identified.
The first is what Hoffman terms “primary circular reaction” the tendency
of newborns to cry at the sound of other infants crying.9 The second is
mimicry one undertaken mainly unconsciously, producing internal
kinaesthetic cues that results in affective feedback. These two modes of
empathic arousal require little cognitive involvement.
Subsequent modes of arousal or empathic processing require greater
cognitive involvement. A third mode, offered by Mark Davis, is through
“classical conditioning”. Affective reactions result from previous
experiences, where the affective cue of another was being perceived by the
individual while experiencing the same affect. The fourth is “direct
association”, which, while related to the third, is a more general mode
whereby cues remind the individual of past experience and evoke feelings
of that affective state. While being based on association, direct arousal is
more flexible.
The fifth and sixth forms cited by Davis require more advanced
cognitive involvement. The fifth is “language-mediated association”, is a
relatively advanced form of arousal whereby the individual becomes
aware through the verbal expression of other which causes associations
with memories of experience. Davis claims that role taking is the most
advanced form of empathic arousal. It requires active effort to imagine the
experience of a person in a particular situation, which produces an
affective component paralleling that of the person. Imagining being in
their situation requires advanced cognitive skill and requires associations

empathy.” http://www.up.univmrs.fr/wcnia/ressources/JCS%20IntersubFinal.rtf
Intriguingly, he also identifies an aspect of social cognition that is generally
overlooked; “it must be noted that social cognition also has action control as one of
its main purposes, namely controlling the action of others.”
9
This response is elicited more strongly by the sounds of other children crying
than by any other noxious stimuli.
96 Chapter Nine

with past experiences. Because of the high level of cognitive skill,

Hoffman believed it was less commonly used than the others. It is
important to note that the various modes need not be isolated processes.
As such the first mode being mainly limited to infancy, and the latter being
infrequently used; the remaining four interplay more prominently,
although the nature of the response depends on the cognitive capacity of
the individual.
What Hoffman calls the “cognitive sense of others”, to describe how
an individual mentally represents or constructs other people, Davis claims
is acquired through a three stage development. The first, person
permanence, represents the awareness that others exist. This occurs at,
approximately, the first year. Acquiring person permanence marks the
recognition of the physical distinction of self and other. Role taking ability
increases, although the ability to discern different physical entities does
not initially mean ability to interpret other as having a different internal
state. This emerges out of and in addition to role taking. Role taking starts
to appear at around two and develops in complexity throughout childhood.
By late childhood and early adolescence person identity emerges, and
marks the recognition of attitudes, experience, internal states and identities
of others exist beyond the immediate situation and is the “most abstract
and abstract form of cognitive awareness of other.”10
The goal is to detail ways in which empathic responses lead to moral
behaviour and outcomes. There are many limitations to empathy leading to
moral behaviour, some of which have been noted, but Hoffman and Davis
do not believe that the limitations are insurmountable. Empathy is the
basis for understanding, understanding of another is to grasp the meaning
of another; meaning based on the intentionality and motivations conveyed
by another. Understanding can take place on a perceptual, cognitive and
affective dimension. All are open to bias, error and exploitation. Hoffman
suggests that moral principles are necessary to reduce bias and over-
arousal:
In other words, when a moral principle charged with empathic affect is
activated, this has the stabilizing effect of heightening or lowering the
intensity of the observer's empathic affect. The empathic response by
observers is thus less dependent on variations in intensity and salience of
distress cues from victims, and empathic over-arousal or under-arousal is
less likely. 11

10
Mark Davis, Empathy, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 42.
11
Martin L. Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 239.
 Empathy and Socialization 97

Hoffman offers prosocial moral principles as being based on caring

and justice. He poses particular types of caring and justice and yet there
may be some conflict not only between them but also between type,
something that it not addressed by him. This may serious implication for
his theory and could lead to conflict within the individual. Indeed conflict
abound caring and justice principles within and between societies and
social structures. It is also possible that such abstracting rather than
particularizing may even undermine moral empathy. As James Mensch,
taking a phenomenological approach to alterity, offers: "We must move
from the scientific model of understanding through observing and
abstracting to one of understanding through embodying and particularizing.
A corresponding shift is required in the notion of the self that
understands."12
We can also add to this that categorisations and stereotyping can have
serious impact on the moral outcome of empathic processes. The same
processes that lead empathy to moral development can also create
evaluative schemas that undermine moral concerns. Our understanding of
others is also dependent on our cognitions and how we evaluate the
dispositional and situational factors, not only of the Other but also of
ourselves. Much of this may even take place outside of conscious
awareness, given its habituation.
Many psychological studies of empathy and its relation with morality
are heavily dependent on self-reporting questionnaires and are often lead
by the experimenter or the questions themselves, a fact that should be a
point of concern. Self-deception and a calm reflecting manner may hinder
the actuality of the individual, who may tend to report the idealized self or
a self image that is incongruous with the actuality.
From James to Davis there has been the recognition that the stimuli
that can elicit empathy may also bring forth other responses which would
inhibit empathy. Feeling the distress of others can even cause us to flee
from it, if the avenues of escape are open to us. Continual exposure can
lead to desensitization. James even considered that “hunting and
pugnacious instincts, when aroused, also inhibit our sympathy absolutely.
This accounts for the cruelty of collections of men hounding each other on
to bait or torture a victim.”13 Indeed, it often seems to be a hideous fact
that the majority of people would behave in a morally corrupt manner

12
James R. Mensch, Ethics and Selfhood, (New York: State University Press of
New York, 2003), 39.
13
William James, The Principles of Psychology, (Harvard, Harvard: 1881), 1029-
1030.
98 Chapter Nine

given sanction to do so by the state or other dominant authoritative force.14

The extent to which empathy can restrain behaviour is limited and can be
easily undermined, the vicarious affective response to others can be
discarded and for a myriad of reasons. Empathy may be a key requirement
for conscience and prosocial behaviour or even social manipulation but, in
respect to morality, it has limitations. Many other factors seriously limit
empathy, including the extent to which it extends. A person may show
clear compassion for family, friends or any other constellation, which may
even extend to other forms of life, and yet act in a ruthless and exploitative
fashion to those who fall outside the empathic circle. This is even the case
for dyssocial or subcultural delinquents but it can also apply to the
inhabited role identity.
While some of these criticisms may be easily addressed there is also
the fact that morality is not always evoked and other values often take
precedence, empathy can simply be utilized for other ends; empathic
processes leading to outcomes that are not based on morality. A value
system based on power is one that can promote principles of exploitation
and empathy itself can be exploited as can morality. Even the semblance
of altruism can be utilized as J.C. Flugel notes the potential of
exaggeration and misapplication of 'altruistic surrender':

It is also true, as Anna Freud points out, that this mechanism may on
occasion so serve to gratify a person's own aggression under the
camouflage of altruism, the most shameless begging or bullying (e.g. for
charitable purposes or out of patriotic fervour) appearing permissible if
only it is done on behalf of other and not for purely selfish ends.15

Systems can promote characteristics attributed to psychopathy besides

the obvious systems and institutions that promote a self-interested model
of human nature rather than one based on intersubjective affectivity.
Psychopathy is used here in the broad sense as depersonalization of
Other and an orientation to a value system based on power rather than
morality.16 Within certain social arenas the adoption of psychopathic

14
The experiments of Stanley Milgram (1963) and Phillip Zimbardo (1973) have
been influential on this issue. The philosopher John Doris suggests that situational
factors play a greater significance in determining behavioural outcomes than
personality factors or moral principles.
15
J.C. Flugel, Man, Morals and Society (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1945), 91.
16
This pertains to most intersubjective systems. Some philosophers have
considering power to be a fundamental existential orientation. Often such
approaches resulted in defining an aristocratic ethics. It was the law for
 Empathy and Socialization 99

principles or characteristics becomes a strategy by which individuals and

institutions operate. This strategy need not be applied to other social
realms other than a particular. In respect to the individual it could be
regarded as a dyssocial form of psychopathy, yet there can be difficulty in
recognizing it as such when it is not represented as part of a low socio-
economic subculture or when there is no explicitly obvious anti-social
elemental functioning or institutions may even appeal to empathy and
morality as an exploitative strategy.
Given that there may be the ability to operate in a psychopathic mode
in one setting rather than in all, this undermines general concept of the
stability of personality or the dispositional attribution of empathy leading
to morality. The adoption of a social role can require the suppression of
character traits and the acquisition of others. There is also the
consideration of the dimensionality of personality, where personality
disorders are viewed as extremes rather than strict categorisations.
Rigidity would undermine adaptability and personality disorders are
generally defined as maladaptive; what defines personality disorders is
their robustness. An adaptive personality can employ context dependent
strategies and personality itself is probably more malleable, flexible and
context dependent than our individualism allows us to believe.

References
Davis, Mark H. Empathy. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994.
Crossley, Nick. Intersubjectivity. London: Sage, 1996.
Flugel, J.C. Man, Morals and Society. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1945.
Hoffman, Martin L. Empathy and Moral Development. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Hume, David. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and
Concerning the Principles of Morals. (3rd ed). Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1975.
James, William. The Principles of Psychology, Harvard, Harvard: 1981.
Gallese, Vittorio. "The "shared manifold" hypothesis: from mirror neurons to
empathy."
http://www.up.univ-mrs.fr/wcnia/ressources/JCS%20IntersubFinal.rtf
Mensch, James R. Ethics and Selfhood. New York: State University Press
of New York, 2003.

Machiavelli, as it was later for Hobbes, which kept the destructive forces of self-
interest in check. Law requires external enforcement. The military force that gives
strength to the laws but coercion also utilizes ritual and expressive elements, the
law itself remained a force of social coercion rather than the legislation of morality.
 CHAPTER TEN

ALBERTO MANZI AND E VENNE IL SABATO:

CONFLICT AND FRIENDSHIP

BARBARA GABRIELLA RENZI

This paper on Alberto Manzi and his work on solidarity and conflict
and his life was very difficult to produce. I have written it various times.
The previous drafts were more scholarly based: I suggested comparisons
between his works and Plato’s philosophy, references to the work of Kleist
and I noted the solipsism typical of some characters of his. Then I decided
that this approach would not do any justice to Manzi, that it would not
represent fairly the man and his life. So, this article is written without
deploying literary and philosophical comparisons. This approach will not
take anything away from the analysis of his work, and from the values it
entails. Furthermore, to show how his life has been shaped by the
principles of solidarity and love, always central to his stories, I have
interviewed Stefano Renzi, a friend, a collaborator and one of his
nephews.
Alberto Manzi worked as a teacher in primary schools in Italy and the
school activity was not only the laboratory where he could carry out his
projects, but also his mission, as Stefano Renzi, will emotionally stress at
the end of this article. Between the 50s and the 70s he travelled frequently
to South America (especially to Brazil and Peru). The first time he went
there to study a particular kind of ant1 and once there, he realised that there
were other issues, far more important than ants. There were the farm
workers who could not join the unions, because they were not able to write
or read. And nobody was willing to teach them, because those who tried
risked being imprisoned, beaten up and killed. Teaching was risky; a good
teacher is always the most dangerous of the rebels. This is what we learn
from this book. E Venne il Sabato (And Then Saturday Came) is partly

1
Alberto Manzi was a biologist as well.
102 Chapter Ten

derived from the experiences he had in South America. It is a piece of

literature capable, without becoming boring or pretentious, of explaining
the philosophical concepts which gave form to his life and pervaded his
work as a teacher and as a writer.
E Venne il Sabato was published posthumously. The events take place
in the first half of the 80s and are set in a small city in the Amazonian
Forest, Pura (Pure). Here all people (men, women, children, old and sick
people) have to work for what is called through the whole book “the
Company”. They have to go into the forest, where there are rubber trees
and collect rubber for the Company. They must have five kilos of rubber
by the end of the day and when or if they cannot manage to reach the
quota they are whipped by the so called “men in black”. These are bullies
working for the Company, all dressed in black for some strange reason.
The main characters are Don Juanpablo, Don Julio, a young girl who is no
longer able to speak, Nàiso, Gongo (a naïve and old man), women, young
and old, with their patience and their sensibility, and Lo Straniero (The
Stranger). This last character may conceal Alberto Manzi himself. Stefano
Renzi noted: “it must be him; that is the way in which he used to talk,
those are his values”.
The poor people of Pura, who work without any interruption from
morning to evening, are forced to do so by law. They are treated like
slaves, as a dispensable working force.
Thanks to the use of some legal tricks, they are in debt with the
company and their work is the means by which they have to repay. The
debt, thanks to other dirty deceptions, grows day after day instead of
decreasing. People work all their life long without any hope to repay it and
very often it is inherited by their children. The story told in this novel is a
sad story and there is no happy ending. However, it is full of hope. At the
end of the book, in fact, the exploited (“gli sfruttati”) learn how to fight
back, by recovering their dignity. E Venne il Sabato is a sad story, where
people die unjustly, women are abused and children are forced to work
until they get too tired to keep breathing, but optimism and love for life
have their place too. The reader witnesses at first the awakening of a
whole village, then of the whole network of villages. Their struggle is
pacific and love finds its way through violence and destruction.
For Manzi, there is certainly hope for a better future. E Venne il Sabato
is about the interior struggle to become a human being that each of us has
to face in our life and about solidarity, love, friendship. It is also a book
about bullies and criminals who manipulate and hide behind the law.
Signatures, contracts to be respected, rules, courts, appearing in courts and
all of this is nothing else than a charade created to produce slaves. Manzi
 Alberto Manzi and E Venne Il Sabato 103

shows that violence has never the ability to destroy the charade, while
strength, dignity and love can help us to unmask it and build a new world.
Those are our only weapons.
At the beginning of the novel the stranger looks into the eyes of an old
man, after having witnessed an abuse of power and asks: “But nobody
says a thing?” The old man gazes briefly at the face of the stranger, while
lowering his head and answers “To whom? To whom?”.2 The first issue is
the isolation of the poor and the exploited (the miserable3). They could tell
what happens to them, but they don’t know to whom. “Whom could I tell
the story? Nobody will believe me! Whom could I tell the story? Nobody
believes me.” 4 Says the old man. Isolation and solitude. Those people do
not even have the chance to tell what happens to them. Barriers of silence
are erected between normal life and their lives as slaves, and in solitude
emerges to be one of the main characteristics of extremely hard work and
an inhuman way of living. And Manzi, through the words of the old man,
stresses the loneliness, the isolation, the sadness and the separation of this
population of slaves from the ‘normal’ people.
One of the wishes of these people is to learn to read and write: “We
would like to learn how to read, so we don’t sign anything without
understanding it” .5 The problem of this population is that they are forced
to work for the company; since they have “signed” (very often with a
cross) a contract without understanding it. They are subject to a law that
nobody understands, that needs intermediates, interpreters. Slowly, in this
novel, they decide to pacifically rebel; many of them die in the attempt but
anything is better than dying collecting rubber.6
When they choose to try to live a better life, the forces representing the
law are surprised. The constable of the village interrogates one of the
natives, who started a pacific rebellion, by using those words ‘“You have
decided?! Have you decided?”

2
‘”Ma nessuno dice niente?” Il vecchio guardò per un attimo il viso del forestiero
abbassando la testa “E a chi? A chi?”’
3
There are many connections between Manzi’s thought and Levinas’ and Plato’s ,
and the Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni’s work. However, those are not within
the scope of this article, I would need an entire book to describe and comment on
these.
4
“A chi raccontare nessuno mi crederà! A chi posso raccontare? Nessuno mi
crede!”
5
The old man expresses the desire of the whole population with those words:
“Vorremmo imparare a leggere, così non firmiamo più niente senza capire.”
6
“Morire alla gomma”, this is the expression used in the book by the indigenous.
104 Chapter Ten

Manzi writes “The constable appeared to be a bit surprised. ‘And since

when have you learned to decide?’”.7 The policeman assumed that some
people (the slaves) were not able to choose or even to think for
themselves. By reading the book we learn that for Manzi to be able to
decide is to be able to free oneself from subordination and dependence.
The old man looks at the constable and answers, explaining what gives the
slaves the strength to become women and men.

This is the point. We have discovered that if we do it all together…” It was

difficult to explain. Not even he knew what was going on with absolute
clarity. “Listen – he said at the end - I don’t know. But when I have to do
something, I try to imagine what the other person will do. Every other is
myself, do you understand? Every other is me”.8

The thinking of the old man is so simple and so far-reaching at the

same time: in order to undo the wrongs of the society, in order to become
human beings, we have to be part of the life of other people; we have to
feel what they feel. What happens to the others is my own business, since
the other is myself. This proves itself to be the most radical way of
thinking and acting, this is the beginning of the non –violent rebellion in
Pura and the beginning of hope.
The old man later in the book speaks his mind again:

We must go on all together. If in the past each of us waited patiently until

somebody came to tell him what he had to do, now each of us knows [what
to do]: we have to act by understanding the other and by trying to think of
the other.9

The character of the constable is very interesting, his position and his
behaviour are ambiguous; the reader has the feeling he is a good man,
although he acts against the rebels to protect the Company in order to
apply the law. He tries to capture and kill the rebels in the attempt to have
order, although not justice, in Pura. At the end of the book the constable is

7
‘“Deciso?! Tu hai deciso?” Il commissario sembrava poco sorpreso. “E da
quando in quando hai imparato a decidere?”’
8
‘”Il punto è proprio qui. Noi abbiamo scoperto che se lo facciamo tutti insieme..”
Era difficile da spiegare. Nemmeno lui sapeva con chiarezza che cosa stava
accadendo. “Sentite – disse alla fine – io non lo so.”’
9
“Dovevamo andare avanti, tutt’insieme. E se prima ciascuno attendeva
pazientemente che qualcuno venisse a dire quello che si doveva fare, ora ognuno
sapeva: occorreva fare cercando di capire, fare pensando agli altri”.
 Alberto Manzi and E Venne Il Sabato 105

scared, he knows he cannot control the situation anymore and he

acknowledges that

the change was deep, total; it was even a revolt against their very instincts,
revenge, interest, property, selfishness… an annihilation of the structures
on which society rested. […] The only rule: respect. 10

Manzi’s philosophical points re given through the opinions of the old

man and the character “lo Straniero”, who is the one who confronts the
head of the police more than once and explains to him that the villagers are
not crazy, they have just become human beings. “Here the problem lies.
Power, exploitation, possession do not have any meaning at all. If I am the
other what can I do with power?”
The most beautiful and touching element is that Alberto Manzi’s life
was lived according to those principles. Friendship, solidarity and respect
of others were considered as a way to undo the wrongs. In this novel and
in his life conflicts are not avoided, but won through love and reason,
factors that more than once helped him to reach his goals, also when he
had to face difficult struggles.
Through the following interview with Stefano Renzi (translated from
the Italian) we will learn about Alberto’s Manzi personality and his social
battles.

Who was Alberto Manzi?

I would define him a free sprit, a primary school teacher, a person who
made his work the style and the reason for his life. He was really a free
spirit, secular, but deeply Christian. He was glad to be called “teacher”
(sor mae’ – in Roman dialect) and he often quoted the words of “the
Teacher with a capital T” (Jesus Christ). He lives and grows up in council
houses between San Lorenzo and Piazza Bologna11. At the end of the
Second World War, without a job (he occasionally works as a porter, but
he is paid almost nothing) he decides to join up the San Marco landing
troops in order not to be a burden to his family, which is quite poor at the
time. After the 8th of September12 the Allies used San Marco forces in

10
“Il cambiamento era profondo, totale; era addirittura una rivolta contro gli stessi
istinti, come la vendetta, l’interesse, la proprietà e l’egoismo… un annullamento
totale delle strutture sulle quali poggiava la società [...] L’unica regola era il
rispetto”.
11
These are two areas of Rome.
12
During the Second World War the armistice, between Italy and the Allied armed
forces, was signed on September the 3rd 1943 but publicly declared on September
106 Chapter Ten

Cassino. There, during the military breakthrough, he is wounded on the

neck by a bayonet. (He will have a large scar on his neck). He faints and,
abandoned there, reaches the rest of the company (he needs days to reach
them). After a brief visit to the infirmary he is ordered to be on watch. He
obeys, sticks his rifle in the ground, places his helmet on it and goes to
sleep. He stands trial for this action, he defends himself and from being the
accused becomes the one who is charging his superiors and he is cleared
of his charges. He has defended his dignity. Human beings should not be
treated that way.

And what about his job?

When the war ended he worked as a teacher at the Young Offenders’
Institution in Rome and his first novel was written there.

How does it come about?

He improvises, tells the story to his pupils, he uses the stories to
educate them. He invents stories through which they can all reason
together, discuss the main ideas and ask questions about life, justice,
democracy. “Grogh: storia di un castoro”13 is his first novel and was
created during the teaching hours in the young offenders’ institution and
through the discussion with his pupils. It is a hymn to liberty and to
solidarity. It is a children’s book and the main characters are beavers, they
work together to reach a common goal but they are single individuals, and
this detail is never forgotten in the story. Grogh works to build a dam, the
dam which serves the community and it is for the good of the whole
people. The community of beavers build dams and defend them; it is the
whole community that works together. Solidarity, love for the other
beavers and respect for personal independence and individuality are
central elements of the story. It is a book that educates the reader to the
values of democracy, justice, solidarity and love. Zio (my uncle) was very
individualistic, but he had a strong sense of solidarity which derived from
the Gospel. The two elements were important in his stories and in his life:
personal freedom and love for one’s neighbour… He often talked of the
importance in life of working together to reach common goals.

Where else did he teach?

Manzi taught in Casal Bertone. I was young and I remember that he
cared about his pupils. He even used to take them to the zoo. Casal

the 8th. In Italy it is referred to as “The 8th of September” (l’8 settembre).

13
“Grogh: the story of a beaver”.
 Alberto Manzi and E Venne Il Sabato 107

Bertone is a suburb of Rome, it is near Tiburtina station. In the past it was

at the outskirts of the city, full of needy pupils. Now it is an area for
university pupils.
Going back to the topic ‘conflict and solidarity’ I wish to tell this event
from Manzi’s life. This story shows my uncle’s dignity, the importance he
attributes to his work. Working as a teacher was a mission for him: he was
really proud of his job.
An inspector visited the school in which Manzi was working at the
time. This was quite a normal and regular event in Italy. He showed the
inspectors all the work they did in the class and explained why they were
keeping animals in the school. The inspector appreciated the quality and
the quantity of the work and then asked why he was making such an effort,
why he was wasting so much energy for pupils of a working-class suburb;
they would not achieve anything in their life anyway. The teacher Manzi
sent the inspector away from the class-room in quite a vigorous way. This
happened in front of all his pupils. Again, in his life, he had to face a legal
process; it was an investigation carried on by the Ministry of Education
and, again, he defended himself and won his battle. He transformed
himself again from being the accused to the one who was accusing.
In both the episodes I told you, Manzi wanted to be respected as a
human being. It is unfair to abandon a wounded man during a battle and,
when he is badly injured and exhausted, send him on watch without taking
care of him properly.
His main goal was not to show that he was right and the others were
wrong, he wanted to make the point: this is not the way human beings
should be treated, not even animals should be treated like that.
In the second situation he tried to defend the dignity of his pupils and,
secondly, his own dignity. He was not a person to lose control. He did not
send the inspector away because he was overcome by anger; he wanted to
give him a lesson that he would remember, since nobody has the right to
offend another human being, especially children, simply because they
come from a working class suburb.
He was a man who had respect for others but he was not afraid of
conflict. When needed he used to fight by means of reason, to obtain
justice and to defend weak people, as in the case I have told you just now,
his pupils.

What was the relationship between you and Alberto Manzi?

We were friends. The cultural formation I have was given to me
mainly by the relationship with him, by him. He was a paternal figure for
me and I was his collaborator as well. He used to call me every time he
108 Chapter Ten

needed help for his numerous projects: books for children, articles for
newspapers and so on…
He helped me to grow. For instance, he used to take me to the meetings
with Xaverian fathers14; those were extremely interesting. We learned
what they had seen happen in the world with their own eyes: China’s
situation, for instance, I remember it was Mao’s time. Or what was
happening in South America. Some of these friars had to get away from
those regions of the world. Some of them were missionaries and they had
to come back home because their life there was at risk. It was
extraordinary to learn from their experiences, to listen to their stories. My
relationship with my uncle was special and he was a brilliant man.

What was the role of friendship in his life?

Friendship had for Manzi a very important role. Friendship had to
grow through the sharing of work and it was an everyday commitment.
His yearning for solidarity took him more than once to South America: he
went to give a hand to the cooperatives. His work was always related to
the activity of the missions of the Xaverian friars. At the end the Brazilian
Government told him he was not welcome anymore…

What have you learned from your friendship with him?

He loved nature and human beings. He always thought that helping
others is an act of love, it is gratuitous. Helping others help ourselves,
gives us the opportunity to become a complete person, and gives us
dignity.
Manzi used to say that in the Gospel it is written that Jesus will take as
his corner stone the one that is rejected by the builders. The outcasts are
such because they have different values. To be different does not mean
that a person is less a human being than others. That was something he
used to repeat.
I have learned that the teacher and the pupils grow up together. The
real issue is: is it the teacher who helps the pupil or is the other way
round? When a person is not able to learn anymore, she/he cannot teach
anymore. Helping others makes us better, makes us human beings. I have
spent my life working as a teacher and that was my choice.

14
The Xaverian Brothers or Congregation of St. Francis Xavier (CFX) are a
religious order named after Saint Francis Xavier. The order is dedicated to Catholic
education.
 Alberto Manzi and E Venne Il Sabato 109

Can you tell me something more about Manzi and his trips to South
America?
He helped in building farm cooperatives. He was a pacifist, he did not
believe in violence but in basic education and in the freedom that derives
from being economically autonomous. It is important not to depend on
others for essential things. He used to say that loneliness and isolation are
the conditions of people when they are used and exploited. At a social
level a way to fight these conditions is education, which gives you
freedom from ignorance.
I want to take a moment to note that Manzi had a very reserved
temperament, but he was brave. During his life he always tried to help
others. He went to war in order not to be a burden to his family…he once
told me that when they shot at him the only thing he could do was to lie on
the ground and hope for the best. In fact, he used to have his rifle tied
under his rucksack, a place from which he could not take it out easily and
quickly.

References
Works on Manzi
Farné Roberto. “Tv buona maestra: la lezione di Alberto Manzi”.
Orientamenti Pedagogici 1 (2001).
— Buona maestra TV. La RAI e l'educazione da "Non è mai troppo tardi"
a "Quark". Roma: Carocci, 2003.
— “L'avventura di insegnare. L'ultima intervista ad Alberto Manzi”. In
Adolescenti e dispersione scolastica, edited by Enzo Morgagni. Roma:
Carocci, 1998.
— “Comunicazione educativa. Le sfide e il futuro. Editoriale della mostra
dedicata a Alberto Manzi”. Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica
(Università degli Studi di Bologna) 3 (2008).

Books Written by Alberto Manzi

E venne il sabato. Iesa (SI): Edizioni Gorée, 2005.
El Loco. Iesa (SI): Edizioni Gorée, 2006.
Grogh, Storia di un Castoro. Milano: Edizioni Bompiani, 1986
Gugù. Iesa (SI): Edizioni Gorée, 2005.
La luna nelle baracche. Iesa (SI): Edizioni Gorée, 2006.
Orzowei. Milano: Edizioni Bompiani, 1987.
 FRIENDS AND FOES

AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERTO BELLONI

Can you introduce yourself? What are your areas of academic interest?
I am a currently a Lecturer in Ethnic Conflict and Conflict Management at
the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s
University Belfast. I began my interest in conflict issues in the early 1990s
when the process of Yugoslav dissolution started. At that time my interest
was primarily humanitarian. I was involved in supporting refugees arriving
in my home town in Italy. What puzzled me most was the gap between the
way the western media described the war and its participants and the
reality of people escaping the conflict, While the war was depicted as
driven by ancient, irrational hatreds and sustained by a passion for
violence, the refugees I met were ‘regular’ people who had the misfortune
of been born on what turned out to be the wrong side of the Adriatic Sea.
Shortly afterwards, I decided I would concentrate my academic studies
on conflict management and conflict intervention and teach in these areas.
My primary research interest is still on the Balkans but meanwhile I have
studied other conflict areas including Northern Ireland and the western
Sudanese region of Darfur – currently the most high profile humanitarian
crisis in the world. What interests me most is the post-conflict phase, what
is known in academia as peacebuilding. Rarely do wars end permanently.
Rather wars, especially civil wars, tend to repeat themselves, that is,
societies which experienced war tend to revert back to fighting. Thus, my
research asks the question of how to the international community can help
and support peace processes to avoid a relapse into fighting.

The phenomenon of war seems to have changed considerably over the last
generation or so…
The standard definition of war differentiates between international and
domestic wars. Simply put, international wars involve two or more states
fighting each other (and the victims are primarily soldiers) while domestic
wars involve groups living in the same political space (and the victims are
primarily civilians). Of course, this is a simplification, since the two
aspects often overlap, but it represents a useful starting point to think
112 Friends and Foes Volume II

about war. Throughout the 20th century international wars have been more
common, or perhaps more visible. However, since the end of the Cold War
domestic wars have increased due primarily to conflicts in the former
Yugoslavia and Central Africa, such as Rwanda. The number of domestic
wars peaked in the early/mid 1990s at 25. Many of these conflicts were
also active earlier, but they were overshadowed by the rivalry between the
United States and the Soviet Union, who fought each other through proxy
wars in the so-called Third World. Interestingly, the end of the Cold War
also meant the end of many domestic wars, since local warlords lost their
international patrons. Since the mid 1990s the number of wars has
decreased to around 16/17. This development means, in practice, that a
major challenge for policy-makers is to support a growing number of
peace processes. The problem, in essence, is that even after the signing of
a peace agreement profound differences remain between the former
combatants. Their lack of mutual trust too easily leads to a relapse into
war. What is needed to prevent further violence is considerable
international attention and resources.
Since 9/11 the war paradigm seems to have shifted again. The current
‘war on terror’ is hard to classify. It is fought against an elusive target and
seems to have no clear political objective. Perhaps most damaging of all,
the ‘war on terror’ is failing miserably in one key aspect, that is, ‘winning
the hearts and minds’ of Muslim populations. All of this is quite well-
known even to the casual observer, so I do not want to spend too much
time discussing it. Rather, I would like to draw your attention to yet
another issue that is likely to have a great impact on why and how wars are
fought. One important development we are currently experiencing is the
process of environmental degradation that is contributing to increasing
competition for scarce natural resources. Until very recently wars have
been fought to access wealth and resources – think, for example, of ‘blood
diamonds’ in Africa. No doubt this kind of conflict is still fought in a
number of areas (the Democratic Republic of Congo is probably the most
notable example) and will continue in the future. However, it is likely that
wars will increasingly be fought to access scarce resources, not abundant
ones. The control of land, water and non-renewable energy sources is
already spurring a world-wide competition, and has very real, local
consequences. In Darfur, for example, many observers claim the conflict
was triggered by competition over a shrinking set of natural resources.

Which leads me to ask you about the causes of war…

There is no one single reason why war breaks out. I have just mentioned
that competition for resources is one explanation for conflict. However,
 An Interview with Roberto Belloni 113

one should remember that in one form or another competition is normal in

all societies. While some societies are able to manage differences
peacefully, others break down into conflict. The reasons for this are
complex, but in essence the breakdown of the normal political process and
the descent into war almost invariably is due to bad political leadership. In
most situations of state failure from the 1990s on, political leaders have
played a crucial role in triggering violent confrontation. Milosevic in
Yugoslavia, Stevens in Sierra Leone, Mobutu in Zaire, Taylor in Liberia,
Siad Barre in Somalia are only a few examples of politicians responsible
for war. More recently al-Bashir in Sudan has been instrumental in
triggering the violence in Darfur. Actually, this is a very good example of
the responsibility of political leaders. It is true that environmental
degradation contributed to pitting nomadic Arabs and African farmers one
against the other in Darfur, but the political response to that competition
for resources was the decisive factor. It is the government in Darfur that
chose to support a military solution to the problem while other, non-
violent approaches were discarded.

What is your opinion about the current situation in Northern Ireland?

The situation in Northern Ireland seems to be developing along positive
tracks, despite occasional lapses. Since the signing of the Belfast
agreement in 1998, no serious violence has broken out while a number of
contentious issues have been or are being addressed. In particular, the
release of the paramilitaries under the terms of the agreement and the
reform of the police force, which have complicated greatly the initial post-
agreement transition, are no longer so politically divisive. Of course, that
does not mean that the two main communities in Northern Ireland have
solved all of their differences. Rather, they remain as divided and
suspicious of each other as before. It is interesting to note that in the post-
agreement phase residential segregation has actually increased, a telling
sign of a general lack of comfort vis-à-vis the ‘other’ group. And yet, the
general political climate has really changed, and there is nothing
suggesting a possible relapse into conflict. Most Northern Ireland citizens
want to move on with their lives, put the past behind them, and benefit
from the economic opportunities brought by the peace process. Politics is
slowly moving from a focus on group issues to a focus on ‘normal’ aspects
such as education, health care, jobs and so on. It might take a generation or
so, but I am hopeful that Northern Ireland will become a society like the
rest of Europe.
114 Friends and Foes Volume II

Do you think peace is something achievable once and for all, or perhaps
human societies are doomed to face intermittent war?
Peace is a very elusive concept. In the academic literature there is a
common distinction between negative peace and positive peace. Negative
peace is roughly speaking the absence of war, that is to say, simply a truce
between two fighting periods. Positive peace has a more substantive and
deep meaning, involving notions of social justice, political participation,
economic and educational opportunities for all and respect for human
rights. We might live in a society with little physical violence, but with a
lot of structural violence, that is, a situation in which exclusion,
marginalization, and repression disempower large segments of the
population. This situation is one of negative peace, and is only setting the
stage for further violence.
I don’t know whether positive peace is an achievable goal, but it is
certainly one worthwhile striving for. That said, it seems to me that the
essence of peace is the fact it is a process. Peace is never achieved once
and for all, but requires the contribution and vigilance of all individuals
and groups in society to become a tangible reality. If the task of building
and securing peace is left to the political professionals, politicians and
political parties, then the chances to live in a truly peaceful society are
small.

Interview by Barbara Gabriella Renzi

Belfast, October 2008
 CONTRIBUTORS AND EDITORS

Malachi O'Doherty is a freelance journalist and writer based in Belfast.

He writes regularly for several newspapers and BBC programmes. His
latest book, The Telling Year (Gill and Macmillan), is a memoir of living
and working through the worst year of the troubles, 1972. He has also
published I Was A Teenage Catholic (2003) and The Trouble With Guns
(1998).

Jaime Rollins McColgan is currently carrying out fieldwork for her PhD
at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research is focused on republican
marching bands in Northern Ireland and the expression of republican
identity through music. Her past research has included flags and emblems
in Northern Ireland, and political music. Jaime is the membership
secretary for the Anthropological Association of Ireland and enjoys
learning about new research being done in Ireland, whether in
anthropology or other disciplines. She holds an MA in the Anthropology
of Music from Queen’s and a BA in Music from Mills College, California,
and she funds her education by working as a veterinary nurse.

Laura Eramian is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at

York University, Toronto, Canada. She received both her B.A. and her
M.A. from the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. Her
areas of research interest include political violence and genocide studies,
African studies, political and legal anthropology, and memory/history. Her
current doctoral research is on the role of memory in the formation of
post-genocide social relationships among middle class genocide survivors
in Butare, Rwanda. She has two publications forthcoming, one in the
University of Toronto Graduate Journal, Vis-A-Vis, and the other in the
March 2008 issue of InTensions.

Lasse Sonne is Dr. Soc. Sc. from the University of Helsinki and MA from
the University of Copenhagen. He has specialised his research on Nordic
co-operation and the Nordic states’ integration in Western Europe. His
current position is project manager and research assistant at the Nordic
Centre of Heritage Learning in Östersund, Sweden. He coordinates a
number of projects subordinated the European Commission but also leads
116 Contributors and Editors

an examination subordinated the Nordic Council of Ministers. Besides, he

is attached to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in
Trondheim as a teacher and co-ordinator of master courses.

Olive Wardell is currently affiliated to NUI Maynooth where she was

awarded a BA in anthropology and philosophy and a BPhil from St.
Patrick’s College in 2006. The following year she graduated with an MA
in philosophy and in 2008 she will sit the Zertifikat Deutsch examination
in order to facilitate her Nietzschean studies. Current research interests
include ‘peace’ and ‘equality’ studies, international politics, and
Nietzschean existentialism. An edited version of the author’s
undergraduate anthropology thesis entitled ‘Ploughing her own Furrow:
Anthropological Perspectives on Farm Women in Ireland’ was published
in the Irish Journal of Anthropology, Volume 10 (1) 2007.

Adam Briggle graduated with a PhD in Environmental Studies from the

University of Colorado, Boulder. His dissertation research was on the
President’s Council on Bioethics. Briggle is currently working as a
member of a team at the University of Twente Philosophy Department in a
project entitled "evaluating the cultural quality of new media."

Edward Spence, BA (Hons, First Class), PhD (University of Sydney), is a

senior lecturer in Moral Philosophy and Professional Ethics in the School
of Communication, Charles Sturt University, Australia. He is a Senior
Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics
(CAPPE) in Canberra. He is currently working as a Research Fellow (2006
to 2009) on the VICI Research Project on the Evaluation of the Cultural
Quality of New Media at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. He
is the lead author of Advertising Ethics and co-author of Corruption and
Anti-Corruption: A Philosophical Approach, both published in 2005 by
Pearson/Prentice Hall, USA. He is the author of Ethics Within Reason: A
Neo-Gewirthian Approach, Lexington Books, USA, 2006. He is also the
author of several refereed papers in national and international journals on
professional ethics, including media ethics.

Cathal Kilcline is a doctoral researcher at the French department of

National University of Ireland, Galway. After graduating from NUI
Galway with First Class Honours in Commerce International, Cathal went
on to complete a Master of Arts in French with honours in 2006. He is
currently working on a project entitled ‘Sport and Identity in
Mediterranean France: Construction and Representation’, for which he is
 Friends and Foes Volume II 117

funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social
Sciences. Cathal’s doctoral research has already yielded two publications
which are due to appear in 2008. These include an analysis of the socio-
cultural importance of the Mediterranean Games, to be published in the
International Journal of Olympic History and an article elucidating
parallels between sporting and literary representations of the
Mediterranean, for which Cathal was awarded the Host University ‘Young
Scholar Award’ at the International Congress of the European Committee
for Sports History.

Peter Yang is a PhD student in the Department of Organizational

Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London. Since July 2008, he has
continued to teach in WuFeng Institute of Technology. He received his
master's degree in Counselling from the Department of Educational
Psychology and Counselling, National Taiwan Normal University in 1997.
Before studying in London, he was the Director of a Counselling Centre
and taught in colleges/universities in Taiwan. His main interests of
research include informal career support, workplace counselling
interventions and short-term counselling in Chinese settings. He is
currently involved in the study of a social capital approach to informal
career support at work.

Jennifer M Kidd is Reader in the Department of Organizational

Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London, where she is Course
Director for the MSc degree in Career Management and Counselling. She
has a first degree from the University of Keele and a PhD from the
University of Hertfordshire. She is Co-Editor of the British Journal of
Guidance and Counselling and also a Chartered Occupational
Psychologist. Her writing and research in the field of career development
and career management span 30 years. Her most recent book is
'Understanding Career Counselling: Theory, Research and Practice
(Sage, 2006), and her current work focuses on career well-being and the
role of emotion in careers.

Ed O’Toole is a PhD student at the National University of Ireland,

Galway, where he is studying the philosophy of psychology and
psychiatry.

Barbara Gabriella Renzi completed her PhD in Philosophy of Science at

Queen’s University Belfast. She studied Philosophy of Science and
specialised in Bioethics at the University ‘La Sapienza’ in Rome. She
118 Contributors and Editors

published various papers in peer-reviewed journals and co-edited two

collections of philosophical papers, published by Cambridge Scholars
Press. Her poems appear in Italian anthologies and she is currently
working on the translation of short stories from the Troubles.

Roberto Belloni is a Lecturer in International Politics at Queen's

University Belfast (moving to the University of Trento). His main research
interest is on the management of conflict and democratisation of deeply
divided societies, with special reference to the Balkans. He has a particular
interest in the role of international actors in post-settlement interventions,
and the influence of human rights norms in these interventions.

Máiréad Collins is a PhD student at QUB's School of Politics,

International Studies and Philosophy. Her main academic interests are
transitional justice theories, moral philosophy and theories of narrative and
identity.

Elisabetta Viggiani graduated in English Language and Literature at “La

Sapienza” university in Rome. After completing a Master’s degree in Irish
Studies on public forms of memorialisation for the victims of the
“Troubles” in Belfast, she is currently undertaking a PhD on the politics of
commemoration in Northern Ireland at Queen’s University Belfast. Her
database of memorials in Belfast is available online at
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/viggiani/index.html.

Graeme Watson is a writer, researcher, comedian and library assistant

based at Queen's University Belfast. His current research involves
investigating the possibilities and limitations of the new 'politics of well-
being' and articulating a 'radical humanist' political philosophy, drawn
from the work of Erich Fromm, Lewis Mumford and Ivan Illich.
 INDEX

Al Qaeda, 53 civic, 54
Anderson, Benedict, 63 cosmopolitan, 59
Aristotle, 41, 42, 43, 50, 53, 55 Gallese, Vittorio, 91
Belfast, 3 happiness, 55, 60
bonding, 1, 2, 5, 7 Hoffman, Martin, 91
career development, 113 human nature, 43, 89, 95
communication, 17, 52, 53, 55, 57, identity, 10, 12, 13, 17, 20, 24, 27,
60, 80, 81 52, 53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 64, 65,
community, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 73, 93, 95,
18, 20, 21, 22, 32, 55, 56, 63, 64, 111
67, 69, 73, 91, 102 Internet, 14, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57,
global, 52 58, 61
imagined, 63, 64 IRA, 3, 4, 5
comrades, 7 Italy, 30, 36, 72, 97, 102, 103
Comradeship, 1 James Connolly, 9, 15, 19
conflict, 4, 5, 7, 17, 19, 22, 23, 24, James, William, 90, 94
25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, Manzi, Alberto, 97, 98, 101, 104,
37, 38, 48, 49, 53, 54, 57, 64, 67, 105
94, 97, 103 Marseille, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71,
cosmopolis, 59, 60 72, 73, 74
cosmopolitanism, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, McLuhan, Marshall, 52, 61
59 media, 54, 69
Davis, Mark, 92, 93 memory, 11, 14, 16, 21, 23, 25, 26,
Denmark, 29, 30, 36 27, 111
Derry, 3 men, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 47, 90, 94,
emotions, 5, 10, 11, 16, 17, 43, 88, 98, 100
91 moral development, 59, 60, 88, 94
empathy, 52, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, morality, 88, 89, 91, 94, 95, 96
95, 96 music, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17,
Europe, 30, 33, 35, 36, 37, 39, 41, 18, 19, 20, 111
64, 68, 73, 111 nation-building, 21
fellowness, 17 nations, 43, 49, 63, 65
football, 5, 63, 66, 68, 73, 74 nation-states, 30, 31, 33, 34, 38, 63,
Förster-Nietzsche, Elizabeth, 44 64
France, 30, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, Nietzsche, Frederich, 40, 41, 42, 43,
69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 112 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51
friendship, 1, 4, 5, 7, 17, 18, 31, 34, Nordic countries, 29, 30, 31, 34, 36,
36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 37
46, 47, 48, 49, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, Nordism, 34, 35
59, 60, 99, 104
120 Index

Northern Ireland, 10, 12, 13, 14, 17, Second World War, 34, 36, 102
18, 19, 31, 53, 56, 111 soldiering, 1
Norway, 29, 30, 34, 36 soldiers, 1
Oikeiosis, 60 solidarity, 16, 18, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26,
peacebuilding, 40, 41, 46, 48 27, 97, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104
polyphilia, 42 songs, 1
post-conflict, 22, 23, 24, 25, 31, 33 Stoics, 54, 55
reconciliation, 21, 27, 31, 32, 33, strife, 42
34, 37, 38 sympathy, 12, 57, 59, 89, 90, 91, 94
Renzi, Stefano, 97, 98, 101 Tapie, Bernard, 69
republicanism Übermensch, 40, 41, 48, 49
Irish, 10, 14, 20 violence, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,
Ricoeur, Paul, 26 53, 57, 66, 98, 99, 105, 111
Russia, 30 political, 23
Rwanda, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, virtue, 41, 46, 47, 54, 55, 56, 60, 89
31, 111 Williams, Raymond, 53, 62
Salomé, Lou, 41, 44, 45, 50 wisdom, 49, 55, 56, 60
Scandinavism, 30, 34 World Cup, 63, 71
Scottish Enlightenment, 89, 91 Zidane, Zinédine, 71
Second Life, 54, 59, 60