Our challenge, therefore, if the differences that will define the future of this space are not to lead to political decay is to strengthen as many “voices” as possible, while smoothening the edges of the debates to deny fringe elements their distortive appeal.
“Culture wars” divide societies as much as they define them. Over the years, in parts of Europe and North America, these intense and often arcane ideological arguments have been prosecuted over an equally bewildering array of issues: universal suffrage; slavery; abortion; lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender rights, etc. Nearly always, these are often long-drawn and very involved conversations about how attitudes to these issues define a people. Just as much, narratives at the edge have invited levels of violence that seem at odd with the end purpose of the main arguments. Inevitable, this, given that each side to the debates, invariable claims that they are the true representatives of the zeitgeist. A time-lapse rendering of each strand of the many perspectives that have come to define these culture wars, however, describes in finer detail, how both sides of the argument contributes to society’s re-appraisal of itself.
Do culture wars then lead to more liberal spaces? Or are they implicated in “political decay”? The context in which these wars take place would seem to matter in resolving this question. The more open societies are, the more plural the debates that take place within them. Similarly, the less acerbic these disputations are, and the less likely they are to be sublimated (taking on, thereafter, forms that make it impossible for the respective political systems to adjust to changes in their environments).
Put this way, “culture wars” are but a part of the cut-and-thrust of the many conversations that must take place as societies come into an understanding of themselves, and thereafter proceed to define themselves as unique spaces. Are they, therefore, identitarian? Yes. But not only in the way in which they help the respective social groups which cling to their different aspects to define themselves as different. But just as well in how they help societies that have resolved some of the questions to which they apply describe themselves as different from (if not morally superior to) others that may not have posed these questions or are themselves at relatively earlier periods of their own battles.
In this rather broad sense, culture wars, the perspectives around which they are prosecuted, and the intensity with which they are fought are but access codes with which societies may be decrypted.
While they may not yet have donned the toga of the existential battle between adherents of traditionalist values on one hand, and defenders of social liberal values on the other, they clearly speak to the challenges of development that these address.
How do we (in Nigeria) shape up?
Most commentators on these matters are agreed that our identities (how they are constructed, and the realities they speak to) still coalesce around the primal: ethnic groupings; the church, etc. And the tensions between these two nearly always capture all that passes for “culture wars” here. While they may not yet have donned the toga of the existential battle between adherents of traditionalist values on one hand, and defenders of social liberal values on the other, they clearly speak to the challenges of development that these address. Indeed, one could argue that because at the primordial level that our debates remain stuck they speak to quotidian challenges more than do the debates in the West between conservatives and social democratic traditions, our own issues matter more.
Take the ongoing gory debate between pastoralists and herdsmen across the country’s food basket — and the at times farcical reflection of it among our talking heads. Notwithstanding some of the resonances about this matter from our echo chambers, it is clear that this difference is as much a contest for lebensraum as it is one upshot of growing resource constraints. On one hand, unambiguous definitions of the rights of ingress and egress are central to managing interfaces in multicultural societies. Yet, even within properly defined spaces, a thinning of resources (water as in this instance), by narrowing the space within which the respective parties must co-exist, invariably raise tensions.
Which of the competing views are likeliest to result in a more efficient use of the living room and the resources available therein? This is the central question that a goal-oriented approach to understanding culture wars seeks to answer. It should help that the problem is posed in as free a way as possible.
At bottom, though, whether it is the search for a bigger living space, or how access to resources within such spaces are divvied up, questions of efficiency remain central to the intensity of culture wars, and their chances of resulting in arrangements that support society’s progress. Which of the competing views are likeliest to result in a more efficient use of the living room and the resources available therein? This is the central question that a goal-oriented approach to understanding culture wars seeks to answer. It should help that the problem is posed in as free a way as possible. And that the resulting debate goes on with few hindrances to the canvassing of competing perspectives.
So, open debate helps.
But then this leads to the paradox of democracies being more prone to culture wars, while remaining the most efficient framework within which they may play out. Our challenge, therefore, if the differences that will define the future of this space are not to lead to political decay is to strengthen as many “voices” as possible, while smoothening the edges of the debates to deny fringe elements their distortive appeal.
Uddin Ifeanyi, journalist manqué and retired civil servant, can be reached @IfeanyiUddin.
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