The 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union has exposed some deep-running divisions within UK society. It is now two years since the historic vote and the intense emotions stoked up by the “Leave” and “Remain” campaigns are yet to subside. Public discourse continues to be deeply antagonistic and is often conducted along tribal lines: “Remainers” have been re-labelled the “Remoaners” for their seeming inability to get on board with the result, and “Leave” voters have been branded as racist, ignorant and/or accused of not understanding what they were voting for. In the United States, a very similar sense of separation and animosity has emerged following one of the most controversial Presidential elections in recent times. While some left-wing commentators have accused the Presidents’ supporters of being “racists” and “bigots”, Republican voters have responded to these insults in equally aggressive terms, condemning the political left for trying to curtail their right to free speech and for attempting to impose their “politically correct” beliefs on the rest of the population.
We live then – on both sides of the Atlantic – in divided times. And there is not much sign of resolution to this political drama in the near future. In the UK, negotiations with the EU are likely to drag on for many years to come, and the US is less than half way through a Trump presidency. The question is: how, within this politically turbulent context, can we move forward together?
“Tribalism couples solidarity with others like yourself to aggression against those who differ. This is a natural impulse since most animals are tribal; they hunt together in packs, they lay out territories to defend; the tribe is necessary for their survival. In human societies, however, tribalism can prove counter-productive. Complex societies like our own depend on workers flowing across borders; contain different ethnicities, races and religions; generate diverging ways of sexual and family life.” 1
One of Sennett’s main aims is to shift us away from engaging in destructive, tribal exchanges and move us closer towards what he sees as a better alternative: a more “demanding and difficult kind of cooperation”. This involves trying “to join people who have separate or conflicting interests who do not feel good about each other, who are unequal or who simply do not understand one another”.2 In his view, this requires above all else the development of the following skills:
- The ability to listen to one another;
- The ability to converse with one another, an activity which requires us to be able to find points of agreement and manage points of disagreement;
- The ability to sympathise or empathise with each other and to know which is more appropriate in particular circumstances;
- A willingness to engage with complexity and uncertainty.
Listening to others
The ability to listen to others is perhaps the most important element of Sennett’s description of constructive cooperation; a skill which he argues is often undervalued within society:
“Usually when we speak about communication skills, we focus on how to make a clear presentation, to present what we think or feel. Skills are indeed required to do so, but these are declarative in character. Listening well requires a different set of skills, those of closely attending to and interpreting what others say before responding, making sense of their gestures and silences as well as declarations. Though we may have to hold ourselves back to observe well, the resulting conversation will become a richer exchange for it, more cooperative in character.” 3
What Sennett makes clear is that listening properly is hard work. In part, because it requires us to stop focusing on ourselves and what we want to say so that we can concentrate on the specific details of what the other person is saying; it demands that we let go of our own egos for a moment. Moreover, according to Sennett, listening well does not only require us to attend to what is being explicitly said; it also involves developing an awareness of the unspoken assumptions and hidden implications that underpin people’s statements. Rarely do people always say what they truly mean. To get at these intended or hidden meanings, we need to learn how to interpret people’s facial reactions, their body language, their gestures, their tone of voice and even their silences. Paying greater attention to these subtleties will, according to Sennett, open up the space for interesting questions resulting in deeper, richer conversations and a better understanding of one another. As a sociologist, Sennett has honed these skills over a lifetime of work but his experience leads him to believe that listening is a craft: we can all get better at it with practice.
Conversation Skills
When we learn to listen carefully, Sennett suggests this can result in two types of conversation: dialectic and dialogic. In short: dialectic conversations are convergent exchanges that result in a common understanding or shared conclusion; and dialogic conversations are divergent exchanges where no common ground or shared agreements are reached. In the former, the skill lies in detecting what might establish the common ground, pushing disagreements to the side or removing them altogether in the course of the conversation. In the latter, the skill lies in managing the disagreements that exist without putting a stop to the conversation: the aim is to enable people to continue to talk, despite their different views.
Sennett argues that in modern society, we tend to be quite good at dialectal conversations but are generally very bad at dialogical conversations; a skill which is particularly important when dealing with people who have different views, backgrounds and experiences to our own. He identifies two factors which are particularly helpful to facilitating dialogical exchange. The first is the ability to empathise with others, and the second is a willingness to engage with complexity and uncertainty.
Empathy and Sympathy
To understand what Sennett means by “empathising with others” it is helpful first to consider the difference between empathy and sympathy, the latter being the more commonly understood emotion. As Sennett explains, sympathy is when we try to identify with someone else by trying to put ourselves in their shoes. That is, we try to imagine the specifics of their circumstances and how it feels to be them. Empathy, on the other hand, does not involve the presumption that we are able to imagine how another person feels in their particular situation. Being empathetic is more about trying to recognise another person’s feelings without over-identifying with them; it is about being curious about their situation. As Sennett puts it:
“Both sympathy and empathy convey recognition and both forge a bond, but the one is an embrace, the other an encounter. Sympathy overcomes differences through imaginative acts of identification; empathy attends to another person on his or her own terms. Sympathy has usually been thought a stronger sentiment than empathy because ‘I feel your pain’ puts the stress on what I feel; it activates one’s own ego. Empathy is a more demanding exercise, at least in listening; the listener has to get outside him or herself.” 4
The difference is subtle, but Sennett argues that both the skills of sympathy and empathy are necessary at different times. Sympathy is more closely linked to a dialectical exchange where we are able to move towards a shared agreement and mutual understanding. Empathy, on the other hand, is more closely linked to a dialogical exchange, where we are trying to manage difference. In the latter, empathy can provide the curiosity needed to maintain the exchange whilst not pretending to ever fully understand the other person’s experience. This can be particularly helpful when talking to people who do not share the same background as you, whose life experiences are somewhat different and who may have different political beliefs as a consequence. As Sennett explains, over-identification with someone can ruin a dialogic conversation. It can come across as an empty type of sympathy – you are trying to feel what they feel when you can’t possibly put yourself in their shoes.
Allowing for Complexity and Uncertainty
Finally, Sennett argues that dialogic conversations are helped by a willingness to engage with complexity and uncertainty. This can be achieved through the use of particular types of language. For example, he suggests that terms such as “maybe”, “perhaps”, and “possibly” or phrases such “I would have thought” can help oil the wheels of a conversation by bringing some tentativeness or uncertainty to the discussion. This can be helpful for getting others to join in or as Sennett puts it, it can open up “a mutual space” in which strangers can “dwell with one another”.5 The opposite of this is a verbal contest where people are just asserting and declaring things to one another and making emphatic statements that go nowhere. Sennett refers to this as the “familiar dialogue of the deaf in most political debate”6 and notes that Prime Ministers’ Questions in the UK parliament often operates on this basis.
So what can we take away from Sennett’s framework?
It seems to us that now more than ever, we need to dispense with tribal politics and be able to hold public debates without our political disagreements descending into a vicious spiral of name-calling and mud-slinging. Sennett’s work provides us with some of the tools to move us towards a more constructive type of conversation; one in which we listen to one another carefully, where we are able to manage disagreements without abuse and recrimination, where we can sympathise or empathise with one another when appropriate, and finally, where we can allow different viewpoints to emerge by using less declarative or self-certain forms of language. These more constructive conversations can start with our neighbours, our colleagues, our friends, and the people we meet in the course of our everyday lives. The hope is that this will result in a better understanding of each other and ultimately ourselves, giving us a stronger basis for collectively tackling the many challenges that lie ahead.
Notes and Further Resources
Together: The rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation is the second in a trio of books that Richard Sennett has written about the skills that, he believes, people need to sustain everyday life. The first book, entitled The Craftsman, is about the skills we need to make things or to do a job well, whether that is the craft of making music, dancing, cooking, dentistry or even bringing up children! The last book, Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City, tackles the question of how we can live well in cities and the implications for urban design.
To see lectures delivered by Richard Sennett on any of these topics, please go to our Mind Attic YouTube Channel Playlist.