No Contest (7 page)

 

LIFE IN OTHER CULTURES

 

Even in the era of the “global village,” as Marshall McLuhan characterized the interdependence of the modern world, ethnocentrism remains. It is present in two forms: as a value judgment that unfamiliar cultural practices are
ipso facto
inferior (“if it's different, it's worse”), and as an empirical belief that what is present in one's own land must be universal (“if it's here, it's everywhere”). I am concerned with the latter, and specifically with the assumption, usually unstated, that because competition is so pervasive in these parts it must be pervasive everywhere. If this assumption is wrong, then competition is learned and it is not inevitable.

In chapter 1, I suggested that the United States appears to be uniquely competitive. This observation also has been made by researchers who have observed other cultures and/or tested their inhabitants. Anthropologists Beatrice and John Whiting recorded the frequency of such acts as touching, reprimanding, offering help, insulting, and so on, in six cultures, one of which was in the United States (a small New England town). As a proportion of total acts observed, the latter scored lowest on offering help.
⁸⁰
Another researcher compared the way people in four Scandinavian countries, England, and the United States described child-rearing orientations and norms of masculinity in their respective nations. On both subjects, she found a far greater emphasis on competition in the United States.
⁸¹
In experiments with Anglo-American and Mexican children, two psychologists discovered that the former “tended to remain in conflict even when to do so prevented them from getting as many toys as possible”—a tendency that was rightly characterized as irrational competition. When permitted to do so, these children also took away another child's toy even though they had nothing to gain from this act.
⁸²

These data concerning the competitiveness of Americans
^*
are particularly useful because they are being contrasted with findings from other cultures. Let us now examine some of these other cultures in greater detail by turning to the reports of anthropologists and other cross-cultural observers. The United States, as we shall see, is appreciably more competitive than many other cultures; in fact, some cul tures appear to be entirely noncompetitive.

Consider first the case of primitive cultures, which many people (relying on caricatured images of growling cavemen) associate with fierce competition. As with ideas about the animal world, this perception is largely mistaken. Prehistoric people actually were remarkably cooperative, and in fact may have distinguished themselves from other primates precisely by virtue of the extent of their cooperativeness. A growing number of anthropologists are concluding that cooperation—not brain size or the use of tools, and certainly not aggressiveness—defined the first humans.
⁸³
The distinguished biologist George Edgin Pugh wrote:

 

Primitive human societies differ greatly from other primates in the
amount
of cooperation that is achieved. Within primitive human societies “sharing” is a way of life. . . . The sharing is not limited to food, but extends to all types of resources. The practical result is that scarce resources are shared within the societies approximately in proportion to need.
⁸⁴

 

Through the medium of kinship, early humans developed cooperative arrangements that, according to Marshall Sahlins, were apparently mandated by virtue of the conditions of life. In his words, “The emerging human primate, in a life-and-death economic struggle with nature, could not afford the luxury of a social struggle. Co-operation, not competition, was essential. . . . Hobbes's famous fantasy of a war of ‘all against all' in the natural state could not be further from the truth.”
⁸⁵
Substantiation for this conclusion is provided by extant hunter-gatherer societies, such as the Congo pygmies, Kalahari Bushmen, Australian Aborigines, and the Waoranis of the Amazon, all of which are overwhelmingly cooperative.
⁸⁶

The fact that some of these cultures still exist today invites a wider consideration of contemporary noncompetitive societies that cast our own competitiveness into sharp relief. It was Margaret Mead and her associates who first attended to this characteristic:
Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples
(1937) described several such cultures in some detail. These include:

T
HE
Z
UÑI
I
NDIANS
—“The orientations of all institutions, with little exception, to a basic principle of cooperative, nonindividualistic behavior is the pattern of Zuñi culture.”
⁸⁷
Possession of material goods is not seen as desirable; wealth circulates freely, and there is therefore no competition in the economic sphere. The major recreation
cum
religious ritual is a ceremonial four-mile footrace. Anyone can participate, the winner receives no special recognition, and his name is not even announced. In fact, someone who has consistently won is prevented from running.
⁸⁸

T
HE
I
ROQUOIS
I
NDIANS
—“Beyond the degree of cooperation required to achieve the greatest efficiency in production, there was found, especially in agricultural activity, cooperation for the purpose of experiencing the pleasures of group work.”
⁸⁹

T
HE
B
ATHONGA
—“Bathonga society is highly cooperative within the bounds of the village, and in all other social and economic relations it is essentially noncompetitive. . . . In economic organization, in technology, in social relations little range is given to any expression of competition.”
⁹⁰

On the basis of a dozen cultural studies that comprise the book, Mead writes that.

 

the most basic conclusion which comes out of this research [is] that competitive and cooperative behavior on the part of individual members of a society is fundamentally conditioned by the total social emphasis of that society, that the goals for which individuals will work are culturally determined and are not the response of the organism to an external, culturally undefined situation.
⁹¹

 

Cross-cultural research in this vein has continued and expanded in the half century since Mead's study was published. This research substantiates her conclusion by documenting significant differences in competitiveness among people of different cultures. Consider:

B
LACKFOOT
I
NDIAN
children cooperated far more effectively than urban Canadian children in a series of experimental games, and this occurred whether they were being rewarded collectively or individually.
⁹²

I
SRAELI
K
IBBUTZ
children cooperated far more effectively than urban Israeli children, the latter being “unable to stop their irrational competition . . . even though they obviously realized . . . [this was] not paying off for any of them.” What's more, the kibbutzniks spontaneously arranged to divide their prizes equally among the members.
⁹³
In later experiments that replicated this result, “Kibbutz groups characteristically demonstrated a high degree of organization . . . in sharp contrast to the unrestrained and unorganized tug of war that was typical of the city groups.”
⁹⁴

K
IKUYU
children from Kenya cooperated more effectively than American children at an experimental game.
⁹⁵

R
URAL
M
EXICAN
children were more cooperative than Mexican-Americans, who were in turn more cooperative than Anglo-Americans. The latter, as noted above, tended to compete even when the situation was arranged to reward cooperation and tended to take away another's toy for sheer spite twice as often as did the Mexican children.
⁹⁶
Americans often missed the cooperative solution, “spontaneously declaring], ‘This game is too hard,' or ‘No one can win.' When asked after the experiment how they might have gotten some toys, competitive subjects most often responded, ‘If I could play alone,' or ‘If I could move more than once [not take turns moving].'”
⁹⁷
Among the reasons proposed for this significant cultural disparity is the fact that “rural Mexican mothers tend to reinforce their children noncontingently, rewarding them whether they succeed or fail, whereas Anglo-American mothers tend to reinforce their children as a rigid function of the child's achievement.”
⁹⁸
The idea that children should be accepted and loved unconditionally—rather than in proportion to the number of others they have beaten at something—is a very peculiar idea to many Americans.

T
HE
M
IXTECANS OF
J
UXTLAHUACA
, M
EXICO,
“regard envy and competitiveness as a minor crime.”
⁹⁹

T
HE
T
ANGU OF
N
EW
G
UINEA
eschew competitive games, preferring one called
taketak
in which two teams spin tops. The objective of the game is to reach an exact draw.
¹⁰⁰

T
HE
I
NUIT OF
C
ANADA
live with virtually no competitive structures. Their recreation, like their economic system, is cooperative.
¹⁰¹

A
USTRALIAN
A
BORIGINES
display a marked preference for “cooperative action,” and one experiment found that they cooperated just as readily with members of other tribes as with their own tribe members.
¹⁰²

N
ORWEGIANS
almost always responded in kind to cooperative behavior in an experimental game, whereas American subjects did so only about half the time.
¹⁰³

J
APANESE
education is said to be far less competitive than ours. “The Japanese have always been inventive in devising ways of avoiding direct competition,” Ruth Benedict reported in the mid-1940s. “Their elementary schools minimize it beyond what Americans would think possible.”
¹⁰⁴
As of 1980, this was still the case: “Teachers . . . try to create balanced groups composed of people with diverse abilities, and they encourage the students to help each other.”
¹⁰⁵
And from yet another source, in 1982: “Challenging problems are posed to entire classes, whose members are encouraged to talk to, and to help, one another and are allowed to make mistakes; at times, older children visit the classrooms and aid the younger ones.”
¹⁰⁶

C
HINESE
people, despite becoming more serious about sports
¹⁰⁷
and despite the recent introduction of a system encouraging academic competition, remain far more cooperative than Americans. Students say they prefer cooperative activities to competitive ones, and “peer group norms approving helpfulness and the simple enjoyment of social rather than isolated studying often led students to cooperate even if they had to give more help than they received.”
¹⁰⁸

***

These research summaries do not by any means constitute an exhaustive account of noncompetitive societies or of the discrepant levels of competitiveness across different cultures. But even this brief survey should suggest that competition is a matter of social structure rather than human nature. Competition may be an integral part of certain institutions in contemporary Western society, such as capitalism, but it is clearly not an unavoidable consequence of life itself.

The cross-cultural data allow for several generalizations. First, as must be obvious, “rural children in all cultures studied are more cooperative in conflict-of-interest situations that require mutual assistance,”
¹⁰⁹
and we may tentatively propose that urban living is generally associated with—if not causally related to—structural as well as intentional competition. This, of course, does not mean that all rural societies will be noncompetitive or that all urban areas will be equally competitive.

Second, competitive societies tend also to hurry their children toward adulthood,
¹¹⁰
a feature of American society described and decried recently by several critics. Third, there is a remarkable correspondence between competitiveness in a society and the presence of clearly defined “have” and “have-not” groups.
¹¹¹
This correlation between economic maldistribution and competition seems to fit with the findings of Mead et al. concerning the absence of possessiveness and hoarding behavior in cooperative cultures.

These studies also allow us to debunk several widely held assumptions about competition. First, there is no necessary relationship between competitiveness and achievement. That this is true on the individual level will be explored in detail in the next chapter. On the societal level, Roderic Gorney conducted a careful study of the research available on 58 cultures. He defined achievement as complex accomplishments in the arts, sciences, the law, and other fields, and found, to his surprise, that there was no significant relationship between achievement and competition.
¹¹²

Second, competition is not a prerequisite for strong ego development, which is used by some psychologists as a shorthand expression for psychological health. “Strong ego development can occur in individualistic, competitive, or cooperative societies,” according to Mead's findings.
¹¹³
In fact, competition's deleterious effect on self-esteem and health will be explored in chapter 5.