Contemplative solidarity

Dawn Chatty

doi:10.5871/jba/012.a35

Contemplative s...

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Contemplative solidarity

Dawn Chatty*†

Dawn Chatty*†^† ^†

Dawn Chatty is Emeritus Professor in Anthropology and Forced Migration and former Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. She was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2015. Her research interests include refugee youth, conservation and development, pastoral society and forced settlement. She is the author of Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State (Hurst Publishers, 2018).

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8710-6603

dawn.chatty@qeh.ox.ac.uk

Abstract

The term ‘civic’ refers to activities or events that involve people working for the betterment of their community. Following on from the concept of solidarity (‘asabiyya’) as first identified by Ibn Khaldun, the 14th-century jurist and sociologist, this article explores how the Arts and Humanities promote such involvement. In the 20th century, anthropologist Jacques Maquet identified the significance of the contemplative impulse in the ideational level of human society’s structure. Scholars have since recognised the significance of aesthetic appreciation and contemplative pauses in drawing a community together in contemplative solidarity. It is without question that the Arts and Humanities play an important role in enhancing, encouraging, and promoting civic society solidarity. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)

Keywords

civicsolidaritycontemplative impulseaesthetic appreciationcontemplative solidaritycivic society solidarity

JBA

Journal of the British Academy

2052-7217

The British Academy

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jba035

a35

10.5871/jba/012.a35

Commentary

Contemplative solidarity

Chatty, D.

Contemplative solidarity

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8710-6603

ChattyDawn

*†

E-mail: dawn.chatty@qeh.ox.ac.uk

†

Dawn Chatty is Emeritus Professor in Anthropology and Forced Migration and former Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. She was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2015. Her research interests include refugee youth, conservation and development, pastoral society and forced settlement. She is the author of Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State (Hurst Publishers, 2018).

17092024

2024

a35

2024

This is an open access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License

civicsolidaritycontemplative impulseaesthetic appreciationcontemplative solidaritycivic society solidarity

The terms ‘civic’ and ‘civil’ are often used interchangeably as in civil society and civic society. It is as though, to many, they mean the same thing. But there is an important distinction that goes beyond a matter of scale. The term ‘civil’ is generally understood to relate to ordinary citizens and their concerns, as distinct from military or ecclesiastic matters. It also has the sense of being polite, well-mannered, or courteous. The term ‘civic,’ on the other hand, is associated with a broad socially engaged sentiment. Civic is generally understood as ‘relating to the duties or activities of people in relation to their town, city, or local area’. I take this to refer to community involvement. Thus ‘civic’ refers to activities or events that involve people (citizens) working for the betterment of their community or serving the public interest.

As an anthropologist with a life-long focus on Middle Eastern ethnography, I am drawn to the work of Ibn Khaldun the 14th-century jurist and perhaps first ‘sociologist’, who identified ‘SOLIDARITY’ as the principle organising feature of social groups (in this case, the tribes of the deserts of North Africa) in his masterpiece, The Muqaddimah. I am not alone in my admiration. The American President Ronald Regan once cited him as did the founder of Facebook, Mark Zukerberg. Perhaps most influenced by him was the British historian, Arnold Toynbee, who described the Muqaddimah ‘as undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place’. And this great work had a significant influence on Toynbee’s own massive twelve-volume A Study of History analysing the rise and fall of civilisations. These accolades for a 14th-century North African historian and jurist were extraordinary—but then Ibn Khaldun was an unusually gifted man. His Muqaddimah is a book-length introduction to a much longer history of the world. Such histories were common among Arab writers, but no one before him had developed such an advanced theory about why civilisations rise, and why they fall. He looked at material factors in history and cast a sceptical eye over the previous, sometimes outlandish, stories and tales of earlier works, which often ascribed events solely to divine ordinances. For Ibn Khaldun the human factor always prevailed. And the rise of new civilisations in his field of vision was from the desert (or Badia) where social groups—tribes–emerged and descended upon urban centres. To him, ‘asabiyya’ (solidarity) gave strength to such communities, generally kin-related, who then were able to take over urban centres, which had become increasingly decadent. His analysis of urban civilisation was that over time it was plagued with a growing lassitude and loss of community engagement. They were then conquered by groups emerging from the desert. These new urban civilisations set up by the desert tribes then, over time, also lost a fundamental unifying ethos—solidarity—and succumbed to the same decadence. They then were overthrown by a new, vibrant civilisation emerging from the desert where solidarity had remained paramount. Solidarity, for Ibn Khadun, and many historians who came after him, was the key to successful civilisation, or in more modern terms civic engagement. His theoretical engagement with the rise and fall of civilisations or civil society was focussed on explaining the great waves of conquerors in Andalusian Spain beginning with the Damascene Umayyad rule in 711 C.E. followed by its takeover by the Almoravid from North Africa, and then the Almohad also from the north African deserts. Each succeeding group moved into Andalusian Spain and overcame previous dynasties on the basis of their greater unifying solidary.

How do the Arts and Humanities promote such involvement?

Now I turn to the 20th-century anthropologist, Jacques Maquet, who identified three core organisational levels of human existence: the material, the social, and the ideational. The material level of society consisted of the physical, palpable elements in our lives, the structures we build, the vessels we design, the tools we make, and the built environment we inhabit. The social core of human existence, he argues, consists of the learned behaviour we observe, experience, and adopt, the languages we speak, our interaction with each other and how we interpret the behaviour of others toward us. The ideational core of social life, he suggests, relates to how ideas, ideologies, religion, and concepts about the known and unknown are shaped and perceived. For Professor Maquet, it is the latter, the ideational level of social life, that undergirds the principles of aesthetic perception. This he persuasively argues is contemplation and, here, the core impulses of solidarity and mutuality are to be found. The significance of aesthetic perception, then, is manifested in the human requirement to contemplate. And contemplation is at the core of the ideational level of social life.

The Arts and Humanities play a significant role in promoting and enhancing the contemplative impulse in human society. That impulse can be nurtured though special places set aside for contemplation, such as in our museums, art galleries, and exhibition centres. In such places, the objects of contemplation are purposively identified, mounted and framed and hung on walls for members of society to pause at, gaze at, and maybe even contemplate. But this impulse can also be nurtured by setting aside spaces where the contemplative gaze can rest, as in nature reserves, public parks, green spaces, village commons, or other ‘spots of natural beauty’. Framing images and mounting them for aesthetic appreciation and contemplative pauses is one approach, as is the setting aside of physical space and cultivating it for the purposes of drawing a community together in contemplative solidarity. Similarly, public lectures by scholars and other specialists can lead to a common ‘contemplative gaze’ by a community being directed at issues of mutual interest or concern.

Moreover, the celebration of the capacity of the human mind to draw out beauty and encourage the contemplative gaze through music, opera, theatre, poetry readings, and prose presentations enhances the solidarity of the social group. Through story-telling, shared discussion, communal dance (like Morris dancing in the UK) or as spectators at musical and dance events are also significant in promoting solidarity and civic engagement. Even communal meals at significant milestones in the life cycle of the society (births, deaths, and coronation of royalty count too) enhance community solidarity and mutuality. These activities all develop, strengthen, and consolidate the ideational level of social organisation of a society.

It is without question that the Arts and Humanities play an important role in enhancing, encouraging, and promoting civic society solidarity [and in studying its impact].

Acknowledgements

The thumbnail image that accompanies this article is by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash.

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DOI: 10.5871/jba/012.a35

Published on: 17 September 2024

Volume: 12

Issue: Issue 3

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Chatty, D. (2024), ‘Contemplative solidarity’, Journal of the British Academy, 12(3): a35 https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/012.a35

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The civic importance of John Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934) Isobel Armstrong

In the Harvard lectures that became Art as Experience (1934) Dewey developed a democratic account of art that not only expanded the range of creative experience (watching a huge digger, the architectonics of a mutually satisfactory conversation, are included in the reach of art) but developed an account of art that was vitally reciprocal, participatory and social. Maker and perceiver are equally interactive creators as they mutually develop new modes of feeling and thinking. For Dewey this relationship necessarily re-makes the experience of community and, just as important, creates a civic space for interrogation and critique. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)

10.5871/jba/012.a42

17 September 2024

The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—introduction Isobel Armstrong

This kaleidoscope of short pieces derives from two Fellows Engagement Week sessions (2022, 2023) in which speakers from across the British Academy—Theatre Studies, Anthropology, Modern History, History of Science, English, Philosophy, Music—gave ten-minute talks on the civic value of the arts and humanities. The British Academy’s SHAPE acronym, answering the Royal Society’s STEM formulation, understandably stresses the economic importance of arts and humanities in today’s challenging technological world (E is for Economy). The remit of this forum, however, was to remake and reclaim arguments for the civic importance of arts and humanities, recognising that accounts of the arts are often based on 19th-century arguments that no longer have force today. Three themes emerge from this forum: the importance of collaboration, the non-instrumental significance of aesthetic experience, and the centrality of language to civic life. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)

10.5871/jba/012.a32

10 September 2024

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