If community resistance is just an attempt to block activism, then why do clan leaders, male and female caregivers and other influencers ask why outsiders want to erase their culture? This question surfaced during a co-design workshop organised by the Impact and Innovations Development Centre (IIDC) with community influencers in Muhoroni, Kisumu, and Mwalukwa, Shinyanga. This workshop was part of IIDC’s collaboration with Investing in Children and their Societies (ICS) to foster the development of innovations for violence prevention and response by changing social and gender norms in Kenya and Tanzania. If the essence of co-designing interventions lies in user participation, it’s imperative to heed these voices and accurately interpret their concerns.
How then should we interpret influencers’ resistance? Resistance is much broader than contestation of activism. Influencers draw on cultural ideas to challenge the outsider’s age and gender-equitable norms and values. They utilise these ideas to justify their actions and call for maintaining societal norms, values, and practices.
But again, culture is fluid and dynamic rather than static/fixed. The culture of the influencers is composed of subcultures that are held in place by persons commonly referred to as positive deviants in social norm change programming. Their experiences and consciousness push them into sharing power and privileges with their spouses and children. However, often these voices are capsized in the dominant culture yet once mobilised, they can counter the dominant culture.
Listen! There is Something I Need to Make Clear
IIDC staff witnessed influencers’ use of cultural terms to counteract alternative ideas and values. When describing what social and gender norms are, we provided concrete examples of restrictive norms and often heard voices reaffirming their presence in the community. Similarly, there were soft discontented voices coupled with arm and hand movements that we interpreted as silent protests to what we were presenting.
As anticipated, a participant raised their hand and asked to comment. A fellow participant requested that he take note of the comments and present them at the end of the session. He instead raised his voice and said, ‘‘Listen! There is something I need to make clear’’. He started by asking why we think child and wife beating is wrong. He explained that Luo culture prioritises raising children with the right attitudes and values. In addition, women are expected to show respect to their spouses and complete all household responsibilities. Attaining these social expectations necessitates beating, which the influencer referred to as discipline He then questioned our credibility to speak against their culture, yet similar practices are common in the communities we live in.
Other community influencers who had been mostly silent for most of the design workshop could be seen nodding in agreement and would clap as the influencer ended by reminding us that no one should attempt to change their culture.
But not all of us hold onto similar norms and values
As we were thanking the participant for his remarks, another influencer noted that not all Luo people hold similar perspectives. He explained that beating is not right. One would be inflicting pain on another person for something that can be resolved or achieved through different means. He cited one of the scriptures to emphasize the point he was making and gave examples of how he supported his spouse with dishwashing and childcare roles. Although some of his peers had labelled him less of a man, he continues to support his spouse. He thinks that it defines responsible and loving men. He urged those who still hold onto rigid age and gender-inequitable attitudes and norms to create new friendships with people like him. These new friends will celebrate them and guide them on the path of sharing power with their spouse and children.
From cultural resistance to age and gender-equitable practices
The community influencers’ resistance represents the dominant ways of living that assign men and adults’ power, status, privilege, and influence. Notably, this form of resistance exists alongside subcultures that rearrange, challenge and counter the dominant culture. People holding onto these subcultures are imagining and creating ideas that are sometimes in line with the outsiders’ views on age and gender equality. For example, they define restrictive practices as physical abuse and not as forms of discipline as put forth by the keepers of the dominant culture. However, these contestations are engulfed in the hegemonic culture. Development practitioners, therefore, must be intentional in mobilizing such contestations.
This requires going beyond the common practice of being excited to find a positive deviant and perceiving them as a simple/easy solution that will support your social norm change program. Effective mobilization requires having a good understanding of what it means to be a positive deviant in the community. Their engagement should be informed by the internal conflicts and fears they hold as persons living differently from the majority; the kind of pain that they have to endure as they embark on their journey as positive deviants; how they mobilise their agency as they interact with their close network; the safeguards that they fall to when they experience backlash; their motivation to resist and challenge the dominant culture; and how they manage to go over the power, status and privilege trap.
About the author – Aloysious Nnyombi
Aloysious Nnyombi is a Technical Advisor on Social Norms at Impact and Innovation Development Center (IIDC). In addition, he lectures at the Department of Social Work and Social Administration, at Makerere University. He has developed evidence-based impactful social norms transformation interventions in the Eastern Africa region, as well as disseminated learnings on social norms. Away from work, he loves being around his young family and playing football.