Into the Circle - Perceptions of Group Formation and Democracy in the Danish Culture

Sports clubs may even want to impress the local youth with different perceptions of group formation than the ones that are currently dominant, and in this context it is even more important to know what the current cultural images of group formation may be. 

Anthropology was developed during the 19th century as the study of "strange cultures". In this epoch, everybody knew which cultures were "strange". Strangeness was confined to the heathen, far away countries in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, and maybe to some remote areas in the industrialised, western world. When one has decided about something that it is "strange", one has at the same time decided what is "normal" - and remarkably this applied to western cultures.

The perception of European or North American cultures was that they were "normal", modern, transparent, rational, and entirely explicable in terms of reason. They were hardly even "cultures" at all, with all the "strangeness" this term implied. However, during the last two or three decades, westerners have slowly realised that maybe they do have at least some culture, and even that their culture is as strange as anything that has been labelled as such.

The reasons for this discovery are several. On the one hand, the people of Africa, Asia, etc. have increasingly been objecting to the idea that they should be the strange ones. And on the other hand, more westerners than ever before have met westerners from other countries and found, that these other people may be as rational in their behaviour as they are themselves, but that they behave differently. The rational society in France and the rational society in Norway do not share the everyday norms for "normal" behaviour. In other words: they do not share the same culture. Thus, it is meaningful to study behaviour, ideas, norms, and social cosmologies in "modern" society with the same means as the ones used for studying culture in remote lands.

When studying one's own or a neighbouring country, one is of course hampered by the previous knowledge of what meaning, actions and words are supposed to convey. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to study human behaviour in the modern world and to extract other meanings from the behaviour than what is consciously intended by the participants. This is what I shall attempt with regard to the Danish culture.

Since group formation is what concerns us here, we may start with the simplest kind of ad hoc group. The conversation group. In the Danish everyday culture, one formula is very often heard in connection with social intercourse. "Let's sit down and talk it over." Usually, the talking part is what Danes stress, but I would like to draw the attention to the sitting down part. The obligation to sit down before one enters into meaningful conversation is not explicable in terms of conversation. One can hear just as well when standing up, sometimes better because one can get closer to one another. Furthermore, Danes have a huge frequency of "bad backs" which would undoubtedly be better off if we did not spend so much time sitting. But sitting down seems essential to any meaningful or lengthy conversation between Danes. It seems so natural that even when we talk about what people ought to do in Rwanda or Bosnia instead of killing each other, we do not phrase it in terms of negotiations. What we say is: "They ought to sit down and talk it over." No serious talking without sitting down first.

Now, such a cultural custom may seem to you, as it certainly does to most Danes, as innocent and without any discernibly information value as regards the local culture. But why do people sit down if it is not important in one way or another? Let us see what happens when you sit down as opposed to remaining standing.

First of all, the participants in the conversation become more similar in size than they were before. The difference between people's height is mainly a question of legs. When sitting down, normally around a table, people become more similar in height, and in the sitting position one even has the opportunity to sink down a bit in the seat or haul oneself a bit upward by hanging on the rim of the table by the elbows. This seems to Danes an immediate advantage, since it avoids the possibility of anyone "talking down" to anyone else or the obligation to "look up" to anybody. These metaphors for inequality can be viewed as descriptions of a metaphorical kind of behaviour, namely the placing of people on the exact same physical level.

The custom of sitting down corresponds very well to the widespread idea in Danish society that the more similar people are, the better are the chances that they will know how to "speak to one another." We rarely wonder whether one would have anything to talk about with people who are similar to one self and hence presumably have the same knowledge, experience, etc. But the sitting down has more effects than the levelling, which seems to Danes to be a positive thing.

A sitting group sets itself apart very clearly from its surroundings. There is no mistaking who are the participants, since they are all sitting down, and anybody who is not sitting is therefore by definition a non-participant. In other words: the sitting down creates very well defined groups. This also corresponds well to Danish notions of the nature of groups. Dubious, shifting or overlapping identities seem to most Danes to be abnormalities, even problems that something has to be done about, not least in the case of persons who confess to identifying between, say Danish and Turkish culture. They are uniformly viewed as somebody with "a problem" that will either make them perpetually unhappy or has to be solved by choosing between the two "groups", as it were.

The clear definition of the group is also a clear and graphic definition of an impenetrable boundary. Ideally, the conversation group is placed around a round table or in an approximation of a circle. In this way, it is turning its back on everybody who is not already a member of the group. Non-participants standing behind the backs of the circle are practically invisible, and it takes quite an effort to draw the group's attention to oneself. Furthermore, if the group discovers the would-be member and decides to let him in. this operation is complicated and lengthy and thus sure to draw the attention of everybody concerned. The whole sequence of finding an extra chair, getting up and moving the other chairs in order to make room for the newcomer, etc. can be regarded as an elaborate initiation ritual that clearly marks the difference between in-group and out-group persons and the importance of the transition.

It is not easy to become a member of one of these groups. But once installed, one is guaranteed the right to speak. There is no need to interrupt one another in this kind of group, and it is not done, either. One can wait patiently for the word to be passed on. One can even draw attention to oneself by being silent. Anyone who sit around a table with a group has the right to speak, but with the right comes also the duty to speak. If one sits around for, say 45 minutes without uttering a word, the rest of the group will invariably turn their gaze on the silent one and somebody will ask: "And what do you think, Peter?" Effectively, this must be heard as an order to speak up. If the "Peter" in question only mutters something inaudible, it will be perceived as hostility to the group. The rest of the group will immediately presume that if Peter spoke up he would say something negative, for what other reason could he have to be quiet? Silence is seen as hidden criticism. Speaking is compulsory. But unfortunately, not just anything can be said. The criterion for success recognised by the typical Danish conversation group is namely that any discussion, indeed any conversation, should eventually be ended by the formula "Basically, we agree. We just express it in different ways."  This formula is just as common as "Lets sit down and talk it over", and it puts into relief what is perceived as the nature of groups. They are composed of people who are similar and who are basically agreed. The "basis" which the agreement rests upon, is none other than the similarity. Group members are in actual fact seen as people who share an essence, a "basis". Who are not only similar but who are in a sense identical.

This is viewed as the ideal, not only in friendly groups at work or in social events among good friends. It is viewed as a model of society.

However, even a short glance at the underlying presumptions will reveal that the ideal is not a very democratic one. Minority views do not have a chance. If a group member states that he is not of the same "basic" opinion as the rest of the group, the discussion will typically resume and the dissident be criticized, urged to change his opinion, and even threatened with expulsion. The assumption is that if we are not agreed, we do not belong together. Hence, if the minority opinion holder insists, he may very well end up being told, "Your viewpoint does not belong here." The implication of this kind of exclusion is, of course, that somewhere out there a group exists which shares the viewpoint of the person in question, and that he therefore rightfully "belongs" there. The idea that one could accommodate to a situation of non-agreement inside the group does not occur to most Danes.

Culture does not come falling out of the sky. People have learned the norms and phrases somewhere, and in the case of the Danish perception of groups it is fairly easy to see where central parts of the notion comes from. Apart from the daily practise of group behaviour one gets from simply living in the Danish society, the Danish school system teaches these norms. Children who star in school are immediately distributed in groups of age peers, and thee group you see on your first day at school should be the group you see when you leave school after ten years. Even the main teacher should be the same, most often a female teacher who has seen herself as a "spare mother" to the children during their years in the "class".

The groups that are formed in this way of course consist of children who have nothing but their age in common, but after e few years locked up together such a group develops a distinct "personality". Teachers talk about "nice" classes, "naughty" classes, "clever" classes, and "sweet" classes, and all class members are understood as sharing the collective personality of the group. The explanation that Danish children are kept together and kept with the same teacher during ten years is cultural.

It is assumed that the sense of "security" which the arrangement is supposed to convey will make it easier for the children to learn math, geography, etc. Recent measuring of the results of the Danish schooling system does not at all seem to support this cultural conviction, and indeed we do not know from controlled experiment whether there is any reason whatsoever to assume that one learns better when feeling secure. It may well be that a certain level of insecurity is instrumental to learning. In any case, it is certain that we do not know, since we have never seriously investigated the question. We simply assume that security is the prerequisite for learning, because it sounds right. And it sounds right, because the feeling of security is the most cherished of all feelings in the Danish culture.

It may well be that the children feel secure inside their "home" classroom. But the terror of the age mates in the "parallel class" which develops during the years is a well-known phenomenon for everybody who has attended an ordinary Danish school. As a child, one could not imagine where those kids came from! So strange, so potentially dangerous did they seem. No amount of politically correct knowledge about anti-racism and no amount of knowledge about the feasibility of other cultures could possibly balance the structural knowledge implied in the experience that other ten-year-olds in the very next room are exotic, incomprehensible, and possibly murderous. No wonder that most grown up Danes find it difficult to accept fluid, shifting or undetermined identities.

It would seem that Danes have a lot of problems out of their cultural perception of the nature of groups, and one might wonder why on earth they cling to them. One answer is of course that they do it out of habit, but another answer is more interesting. What is achieved by the insistence that group members be similar and basically agree?

The answer to this question can be found when contemplating what happens when disagreement occurs, for instance in associations or organisations. It is estimated that the average Dane belongs to seven different associations, all of them democratic in nature and with yearly general assemblies. The proliferation of associations is partly due to the fact that whenever the members of one association disagree, the association normally splits in two.

Minority votes at the general assembly results in the splitting up of the association, and everybody is the happier. Happier, because it is experienced as most embarrassing that somebody wins over somebody else as is the case if a group votes. In most associations, a vote is hardly ever cast. The preferred and normal means of decision is to talk it over again and again until "basically, we agree". If this for some reason can not be attained, the split of the organisation is the logical next step. Losers thus get their own club, while winners have theirs, and nobody is compelled to consider the relationship between winners and losers. This seems to Danes a most ideal state, since it makes it possible to imagine that equality rules. Inequality is distributed on a horizontal landscape, as it were, and everybody can pretend that inequalities do not exist at all, since he is never confronted with them.

As in the case of disagreeing in a conversation group, this cultural strategy against the visibility of inequality is hard on the loosing opinion holders and - hence - the minority identity holders. They are effectively barred from making their point, since they are systematically told to go join "their own" and stop ruining the conviviality of the winners' group.

Therefore, contrary to what is generally assumed in Danish cultural and political discussion, the Danish model for group formation is rather less democratic than what one could desire. In order for concrete groups - for instance in sport - to become democratic, one therefore has to consciously create alternatives to the Danish model. The idea that participants should ideally be similar is the obvious starting point. The notion that what makes up a successful team - or a successful society - is the differences between participants does not come "naturally" to Danes. This is something they have not learned during their childhood or youth.

A successful development of a truly democratic society needs more than similarity as its ideal. In sport, one might teach participants how important it is that they stay different in order to have something to offer one another. Teamwork is not based on similarity but on difference. If people are not different, and if they do not recognise their differences, they have no reason to become a team. Just like they do not need democracy if they already agree. Democracy and teamwork are for people who are different and disagree. If the sports organisations have a future mission in society, this could well be their message.