Journal of Moral Education, Vol. 32, No. 2, 2003

Resistance and Subversion in Everyday Life ELLIOT TURIEL University of California, Berkeley, USA

ABSTRACT The main thesis of this article is that resistance and subversion are part of everyday life in most cultures, and that they are integral to the process of development. Many of our theories of social and moral development either fail to account for resistance, and treat it largely as anti-social, or view it as unusual activity sometimes undertaken by those who have reached a high level of development. Several examples are presented to illustrate that resistance and subversion are common among people in positions of little power in the social hierarchy—especially on the part of women in patriarchal societies. Moreover, research has demonstrated that social conflict and resistance based on moral aims occur in childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Especially among adults, conflicts occur over inequalities embedded in the structure of social systems that allow greater power and personal entitlements to some groups (e. g. social hierarchies based on gender, socio-economic class, ethnic or racial status). In their everyday lives adults come into conflicts with others and resist moral wrongs embedded in cultural practices that serve to further the interests of those in higher positions in the social hierarchy. Resistance frequently entails deceptive actions aimed at transforming aspects of the social system judged unfair and detrimental to the welfare of groups of people.

Presenting the Kohlberg Memorial Lecture is of great significance to me, personally and intellectually. Larry Kohlberg was my teacher and mentor when I was a graduate student, and we collaborated subsequently on several projects. The propositions put forth in this article are, in my view, largely consistent with the approach taken by Kohlberg, who had a major influence on thinking and research on the development of morality. His ideas, presented first in the 1960s, were in keeping with moral philosophic views that emphasised the role of thought (e.g. Rawls, 1971) and moral psychological views that emphasised construction through individual-environment interactions in the developmental process (e.g. Piaget, 1932, 1960/1995). Kohlberg’s influence was major in shifting positions within psychology regarding three interrelated propositions. The first is that the study of moral development and behaviour requires an epistemological foundation through sound definitions of the realm (see especially Kohlberg, 1971). The second is that judgements are central in moral functioning starting in childhood (he coined the metaphor of the child as a A version of this essay was first presented as the 15th Kohlberg Memorial Lecture at the 28th Annual Conference of the Association for Moral Education, Chicago, 9 November 2002. ISSN 0305-7240 print; ISSN 1465-3877 online/03/020115-16  2003 Journal of Moral Education Ltd DOI: 10.1080/0305724032000072906

116 E. Turiel “moral philosopher”, Kohlberg, 1968). The third is that the development of morality is not a function of the incorporation of social norms or cultural patterns, but instead stems from reciprocal interactions with a variety of aspects of the social world (Kohlberg & Turiel, 1971). The topics of this article—conflict, resistance and subversion—were also part of Kohlberg’s approach, although in an undeveloped form. Concerns with conflict and resistance were evident in the methods he used to study moral judgements. They involved interviews around stories that in several cases posed conflicts between considerations of welfare or justice and laws or authority (as in the well-known dilemma as to whether a man should steal a drug that might save his ailing wife’s life). Furthermore, the sequence of stages proposed by Kohlberg culminated in ways of thinking (the “principled” level at the highest two stages) involving moral judgements that go beyond a societal perspective. The historical examples he used to illustrate moral thought at those stages were of people such as Socrates, Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr, who engaged in oppositional moral activities toward goals of social justice. In this article, I present a position on morality that gives a central role to conflict, resistance and subversion in social relationships. Social relationships are many-sided, entailing the application of judgements from several domains. Even within the moral domain, positive orientations to justice and concerns for the welfare of others bring with them conflict, opposition, and resistance in the face of inequalities and injustices. Resistance and subversion are common because social arrangements and practices often embody inequalities. Social resistance and subversion are, therefore, part of most people’s everyday lives and have their roots in childhood. I discuss ways in which resistance and subversion are manifested in childhood, become more salient in adolescence, and are particularly common among adults in positions of lesser power within social hierarchies—that is, people in lower social castes or classes, minorities and, in much of the world, girls and women. Accordingly, moral resistance is not reserved for those at supposed “higher” levels of development or people supposedly classified as special or e´lite in their personal moral characteristics. As part of everyday life, resistance is not restricted to organised social and political movements. Social conditions embedded in cultural practices, social norms and societal arrangements motivate people to act. However, this is not only in the usual sense of people acting in line with societal expectations; social conditions evoke opposition, resistance and subversion. Opposition in Childhood and Adulthood Martin Luther King Jr has been long recognised as a great moral leader who spearheaded extremely significant changes towards social justice for African–Americans in the United States. However, King himself recognised that social change is connected with the aspirations of large numbers of people affected by societal injustices. As he put it in his famous letter from a Birmingham (Alabama) jail (King, 1963, pp. 6 and 12), “We know through painful experience that freedom is never

Resistance and Subversion in Everyday Life 117 voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed…. Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will come. This is what happened to the American Negro.” King wrote his letter while imprisoned for leading a non-violent demonstration in Birmingham. The letter was in response to a public letter, sent by eight prominent clergymen, admonishing King for his civil rights activities. In the response, King challenged religious and governmental authorities to support protest and demonstrations to combat injustice. Conflict and tension, King maintained, can serve positive moral ends (King, 1963, p. 5): “I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth … to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.” King also levied a corresponding challenge to psychologists when he addressed the American Psychological Association at its annual meeting in 1967. Recognising the tendency for psychologists to focus on social adaptation and adjustment, he pointed to the imperative to study ways it is not morally beneficial to fit in socially. As he put it: “There are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which we should never be adjusted. There are some things to which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will.” Many explanations of social and moral development are, indeed, tied mainly to social adjustment insofar as they focus on compliance and internalisation of societal norms. If tension in society is needed for social change, and if resistance is part of everyday life, then those theories have serious shortcomings. However, in his work on the development of moral judgements Piaget provided a basis for an alternative view to compliance and internalisation in his formulation of moral autonomy, by which he meant “that the subject participates in the elaboration of norms instead of receiving them readymade as happens in the case of the norms of unilateral respect that lie behind heteronomous morality” (Piaget, 1960/1995, p. 315). Piaget proposed that the autonomous morality of late childhood is preceded in early childhood by heteronomous morality, with its norms of unilateral respect. Because norms are ready-made in heteronomous morality young children presumably do not oppose or defy authorities: “From this it follows, for example, that if distributive justice is brought into conflict with authority … the youngest subjects will believe authority right and justice wrong” (Piaget, 1960/1995, p. 304). With regard to young children and the origins of morality, Piaget’s proposition differs from my own. Young children begin to form moral judgements which are not ready-made and which are not determined by authority, rules, or the customs and conventions of society (Turiel, 1983, 1998, 2002). Furthermore, the origins of opposition and resistance are in early childhood. Young children do not accept authority as right when they contradict justice (Laupa & Turiel, 1986; Laupa, 1991). As an illustrative example, consider the judgements of a five-year-old boy, as made in a study designed to examine distinctions between the domains of morality (pertaining to welfare, justice and rights) and social convention (pertaining to uniformities coordinating interactions within social sys-

118 E. Turiel tems). In that study (Weston & Turiel, 1980), children from five to 11 years of age were presented with hypothetical stories of pre-schools depicted as permitting certain actions. One example was that children were allowed, in this school, to be without clothes on warm days (classified as a conventional issue). A second example of an act permitted within a school pertained to the moral issue of physical harm: children were allowed to hit each other. Whereas most of the children judged both types of acts as wrong prior to the presentation of the hypothetical stories, the majority at all ages judged the school rule regarding clothes acceptable and the one regarding hitting as unacceptable. The findings of the study are consistent with findings from a large body of research documenting that children’s moral judgements differ from their judgements about conventions on a variety of dimensions (which I will not discuss here). For the present purposes, it is judgements about authority in the context of the study that are relevant. Consider the following excerpts of responses by the five-year-old boy. The first excerpt begins with his answer as to whether it is alright for the school to allow children to remove their clothes; the second excerpt begins with his answer as to whether it is alright to allow hitting (from Turiel, 1983, p. 62): “Yes, because that is the rule.” (Why can they have that rule?) “If that’s what the boss wants to do, he can do that.” (How come?) “Because he’s the boss, he is in charge of the school.” (Bob goes to Grove School. This is a warm day at Grove School. He has been running in the play area outside and he is hot so he decides to take off his clothes. Is it okay for Bob to do that?) “Yes, if he wants to he can because it is the rule.” “No, it is not okay.” (Why not?) “Because that is like making other people unhappy. You can hurt them that way. It hurts other people, hurting is not good.” (Mark goes to Park School. Today in school he wants to swing but he finds that all the swings are being used by other children. So he decides to hit one of the children and take the swing. Is it okay for Mark to do that?) “No. Because he is hurting someone else.” Even at the young age of five years this boy is of two minds about rules and authority. With regard to clothing, he accepts the rules of the school as stipulated, but with regard to hitting he does not. Permitting children to remove their clothes is judged by him as acceptable because of the rule and because the boss (i.e. the head of the school) has the authority to impose the rule or practice. When it comes to permitting children to hit each other, however, this boy is unwilling to grant the boss the authority to institute or implement the rule. If we looked only at this boy’s judgements about clothing, it might appear that he is compliant (or heteronomous) about school rules and authorities. His judgements about the act of hitting reveal that he makes discriminations between different types of rules or commands and wants to place restrictions on the jurisdiction of a person in a position of authority. In so doing, he expresses opposition to rules and authority from a moral standpoint (autonomy). The responses of this boy indicate that the origins of opposition are in early

Resistance and Subversion in Everyday Life 119 childhood. Although that study was not designed to examine opposition, other research has shown that children do engage in oppositional activities and enter into conflicts with siblings, peers and parents (Dunn & Munn, 1985, 1987; Dunn, 1987, 1988; Dunn & Slomkowski, 1992; Dunn, Brown & Maguire, 1995). These oppositional activities exist, in the same children, alongside positive, prosocial actions and emotions. Now consider two examples illustrative of opposition, resistance, and subversion among adults—but which implicate children as well. These examples do not come from research, but from recollections in adulthood. The first are my own recollections, and the second come from those of a sociologist from Morocco, as reported in Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Childhood (Mernissi, 1994). In order to place the first example into a cultural context, I need to provide some personal background. I was born on the Greek Island of Rhodes (my father’s birthplace), where I lived till I was six years old. My family then lived in the city of Izmir in Turkey (my mother’s birthplace) for two years. We then moved to New York City. My contacts and knowledge of Greek and Turkish cultural practices were maintained because we were part of a large community of people who had immigrated from Greece and Turkey to New York, and because I went back to those places for extended periods many times (I have also conducted research in Turkey). The most relevant feature of cultural practices for the present purposes is that, for the most part, men were in socially dominant positions and women were in subordinate positions. In my parents’ generation women did not work outside the home and men had almost exclusive control of the family’s finances. Typically, women were given an allotted amount of money (such as a weekly allowance) for household expenses. In many respects, women were not content with the inequalities or the control exerted by their husbands. One of the actions women took to subvert the situation was, when possible, to put some money into places available to them and secret from their husbands. Doing so involved elaborate deceptions, as well as a fair amount of risk. Women had several reasons for maintaining secret funds: to have some control over their lives and to be able to make purchases without the continual oversight of their husbands; in order to have resources to help members of their side of the family in times of need; and to ensure that resources would be available in the case of a husband’s death. The last reason was particularly important, because laws were highly unfavourable towards widows. The hidden activities I have described were not conducted in isolation. Women conspired with other women they could trust. In addition, they often discussed their concerns and activities with their children. The second illustrative example, from Fatima Mernissi’s published childhood recollections, shared some of the same features. Mernissi recounted stories from her childhood living in a harem in the city of Fez during the 1940s (Mernissi, 1994). Before relating her story, let me mention that our research has identified another domain that stands alongside the moral and conventional—the domain of judgements about autonomy of persons and boundaries of their jurisdiction (Nucci, 2001). Children form judgements about various activities, including recreational ones that are considered up to individual

120 E. Turiel choice. Although resistance and subversion are grounded in moral judgements, the personal domain can be part of it. When personal prerogatives are systematically restricted in unequal ways, the inequality can turn the personal into moral issues. This can be seen in Mernissi’s story—which on the surface is about the desire of some women to listen to music and dance. On a deeper level, the story is about how in everyday activities there is commitment to combating injustices and inequalities, as well as defiance of those in positions of power. According to Mernissi the women, who were confined to the walls of the compound in which they lived, were prohibited from listening on their own to a radio in the men’s salon; the men kept the radio locked in a cabinet. It seems, however, that while the men were away the women listened to music on that very radio. As it happened, one day Fatima (when she was nine years old) and her cousin were asked by her father what they had done that day. They answered that they had listened to the radio. Mernissi (1994, pp. 7–8) tells the rest of the story as follows: Our answer indicated that there was an unlawful key going around … it indicated that the women had stolen the key and made a copy of it…. A huge dispute ensued, with the women being interviewed in the men’s salon one at a time. But after two days of inquiry, it turned out the key must have fallen from the sky. No one knew where it had come from. Even so, following the inquiry, the women took their revenge on us children. They said that we were traitors, and ought to be excluded from their games. That was a horrifying prospect, so we defended ourselves by explaining that all we had done was tell the truth. Mother retorted by saying that some things were true, indeed, but you still could not say them: you had to keep them secret. And then she added that what you say and what you keep secret has nothing to do with truth and lies. Mernissi’s tale is a good example of persistence in the pursuit of what is regarded as right. In addition to violating the rules imposed by the men by listening to the radio, the women resisted by refusing to say how the key was obtained in spite of two days of interrogation. As told by Mernissi, resistance on the part of the women went beyond recreational activities such as listening to music. The women desired freedoms and rights in many respects, and especially the freedom to venture beyond the walls of the compound. The women also desired a future for their daughters with greater freedoms and opportunities than had been available to them. The women conveyed their goals to their daughters directly and indirectly. As an example, one of the lessons Fatima received from her mother pertained to symbolic ways of resistance toward the goal of social change. Fatima’s mother told her that (1994, p. 187), “the whole crusade against chewing gum and American cigarettes was in fact a crusade against women’s rights as well … ‘so you see’, said Mother, ‘a woman who chews gum is in part making a revolutionary gesture. Not because she chews gum per se, but because chewing gum is not prescribed by the code.’ ” The use of seemingly trivial actions, such as chewing gum, for symbolic purposes occurred in other places and times. Another example can be seen in the

Resistance and Subversion in Everyday Life 121 activities of women in contemporary Iran. In Iran, women are required to dress in certain ways and cover their faces with veils. They are also prohibited from wearing make-up. However, it is not uncommon for women to defy, in safe public places, the requirements to keep their faces covered and free of make-up. As was the case with the mother’s use of chewing gum, make-up is seen to serve broader purposes in Iran. As one woman put it, “Lipstick is not just lipstick in Iran. It transmits political messages” (“Lipstick Politics in Iran”, The New York Times, August 19, 1999). The restrictions imposed by Iranian governmental and religious authorities on women and men are extensive, including prohibitions on ways of dressing, watching videos, listening to music, use of alcohol and relations between females and males. Moreover, there are serious efforts to enforce these policies, as told vividly by V.S. Naipul (“After the Revolution”, The New Yorker, May 26, 1997, p. 65): “And helicopters flew over Northern Tehran looking for satellite disks, just as the Guards walked in the park to watch boys and girls, or entered houses to look for alcohol and opium.” In spite of the risks of detection, many people engage in hidden activities in violation of the prohibitions. There is widespread use of satellite disks, videocassettes, compact disks and alcohol. In Iran, too, parents worry about the future of their children. The reflections of an Iranian woman are informative (“Beating the System, with Bribes and the Big Lie”, The New York Times, May 27, 1997, p. A4): We live a double-life in this country. My children know that when their school teachers ask whether we drink at home, they have to say no. If they are asked whether we dance or play cards, they have to say no. But the fact is we do drink, dance, and play cards, and the kids know it. So they are growing to be liars and knowing that to survive in this country we have to be. That’s a terrible thing, and I want to change it.

Oppression and the Urge for Freedom The features exemplified in the various examples I have discussed thus far were writ large in events in Afghanistan that came to great public attention toward the end of 2001. As is well known the Taliban, who had ruled Afghanistan since 1996, fell in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC on 11 September 2001. While in power, the Taliban imposed severe restrictions on people’s activities. They banned televisions, VCRs, most music, movies, kites and much more. They banned depictions of living creatures and required men to have beards. The restrictions imposed on women were the most severe. Women were confined to their homes unless accompanied by a male relative. When venturing out women were required to be covered totally by a burka. Females were denied schooling and work. Furthermore, females could not receive medical treatment from male physicians—but females could not work as physicians. As a consequence, the health of women suffered greatly. Immediately after the fall of the Taliban, the sense of liberation felt by many women and men was striking. As told in media accounts day after day, the reaction was strong and swift. There was widespread use of the previously banned videos,

122 E. Turiel audiocassettes, televisions, VCRs, musical instruments, the keeping of birds, and flying of kites. People flocked to newly reopened cinemas and barbershops did a brisk business with men shaving their beards. Women mobilised quickly to reopen schools for girls. Women also began looking for work and sometimes participated in organised demonstrations for their rights. Many women did shed their burkas, although there was still fear of the reactions of men to doing so. It certainly appeared, to use Martin Luther King’s words, that the urge for freedom had come. It also appeared that the urge for freedom had been there, but in a hidden, underground, subversive form. This becomes evident if we merely ask, where did all the objects (televisions, VCRs, kites, etc.) brought out in such quantities come from? The answer, of course, is that the people had resisted the dictates of the Taliban by hiding many banned objects (difficult-to-hide objects such as televisions were buried in back yards). There were several other examples of resistance and subversive activities that emerged at the time. Artwork, for instance, was preserved by businessmen and museum directors who hid them in the basements of their homes and museums (sometimes having secured paintings with bribes). One artist, at least, managed to save many banned paintings of living creatures from destruction by covering them over with watercolours. Women, too, resisted at great personal risks by running, in their homes, secret schools for girls or beauty shops for women. It is still not well publicised that resistance on the part of women from Afghanistan took an organised form. As early as 1977, women organised to fight for human rights and social justice by forming the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). Their objective was to involve women explicitly in social and political activities pertaining to areas such as education, health, work and politics. RAWA worked within Afghanistan until the Taliban took over (even after the group’s founder and leader was assassinated in 1987). After 1996, RAWA was forced to work in other countries such as Pakistan, where they held several demonstrations. Within Afghanistan, members of RAWA documented the activities of the Taliban by surreptitiously taking photographs and making videos to smuggle to members in other countries. Those activities involved great risks, because taking such photographs was illegal and punishable by death. The photographs and videos (which can be found on their website, www.RAWA.org), reveal the harsh conditions of people’s lives, executions and amputations in sports stadiums, beatings of women for showing a little hair from beneath the burka, and much more. If it were the only example, the reactions of the women and men of Afghanistan could be interpreted as an uncommon reaction provoked by the extreme restrictions imposed by the Taliban. However, all the other examples I have presented (from Morocco, Iran, Greece, Turkey; see also Nussbaum, 1999, 2000 for examples from India and Bangladesh) share key features with those from Afghanistan. The examples demonstrate that people resist in social conditions of inequality, injustice and oppression. Resistance and subversion are connected with the domains of moral and personal judgements. Moreover, the examples point to the ways children are exposed to a multitude of social experiences. They often receive mixed messages about social norms, laws, cultural practices, relations among authorities (e.g. mother

Resistance and Subversion in Everyday Life 123 and father, parents and governmental authorities) and about matters portrayed by some as moral virtues (especially honesty and dishonesty, truth and lies). The complex and multi-faceted nature of children’s social interactions was captured by Piaget (1951/1995, p. 276) in his assertion that: “Socialization in no way constitutes the result of a unidirectional cause such as the pressure of the adult community upon the child through such means as education in the family, and subsequently in the school…. it involves the intervention of a multiplicity of interactions of different types and sometimes with opposed effects.” The Influences of Morality on Cultures The idea that children’s social and moral development is a function of a multiplicity of different types of interactions is in accord with the proposition that resistance and subversion reflect individuals’ heterogeneous relations to cultural practices, including individuals’ efforts to evaluate and transform those practices. In discussing the multiplicity of social interactions, Piaget (1951/1995, p. 276) went on to caution about “sweeping generalizations” in attempting to “make sense of the systems of relations and interdependencies actually involved”. However, sweeping generalisations are by no means uncommon when psychologists and others attempt to draw contrasts between cultures. The most familiar set of generalisations are seen in descriptions of differences between western and non-western cultures; it is said that western cultures are primarily individualistic and non-western cultures are primarily collectivistic (e.g. Shweder & Bourne, 1982; Triandis, 1989; Markus & Kitiyama, 1991). By virtue of an individualistic orientation, westerners place at the forefront freedoms, independence, and rights. Given the emphasis on the individual rather than the group, it may well be that westerners engage in resistance to cultural practices. It is not expected that non-westerners would engage typically in resistance, no less subversive activities, given their emphasis on the group rather than individuals. Within that viewpoint, non-westerners accept their prescribed social roles, which in turn produces social harmony. The various examples I have presented contradict the proposition that there are shared understandings regarding social roles in a system of interdependence in non-western cultures. Conflicts occur when people are treated unequally, hold subordinate positions, and are restricted from exercising their freedoms and rights. People in subordinate positions are not simply content to accept the perspectives of those in positions of power. As put by Okin (1989, p. 67): “Oppressors and oppressed—when the voice of the latter can be heard at all—often disagree fundamentally.” With such fundamental disagreements and the associated conflicts, it does not make sense to characterise cultures through any kind of orientation meant to portray a general set of perspectives held by the group. Philosophers and anthropologists have voiced objections to the prevalent mode of attempting to characterise cultures or communities in these ways. As one example, Nussbaum (1999, p. 14) has asserted that “Cultures are not monoliths, people are not stamped out like coins by the power machine of social convention. They are constructed by social norms, but norms are plural and people are devious. Even in societies that

124 E. Turiel nourish problematic roles for men and women, real men and women can find spaces in which to subvert those conventions.” From an anthropological perspective, Wikan (1991, p. 290) stated that “the concept of culture as a seamless whole and society as a bounded group manifesting inherently valued order and normatively regulated response, effectively masked human misery and quenched dissenting voices”. Research has documented that fundamental disagreements occur within cultures and that resistance and subversion are everyday activities. Studies among Druze Arabs in Northern Israel (Wainryb & Turiel, 1994; Turiel & Wainryb, 1998) and in India (Neff, 2001) have shown that judgements about decision-making in the family include many of the features attributed to both individualism and collectivism. For instance, the Druze, who maintain a strong patriarchic structure, do make judgements about duties and social roles. These are attributed especially to females. Druze adolescents and adults think that a wife needs to follow her husband’s directives on the grounds that she should fulfill her duties and social roles. By contrast, they think that a husband does not need to follow his wife’s directives and that he is entitled to freedom of choice, independence and autonomy. Members of the Druze community are fully aware of cultural expectations regarding male independence. They use terms such as freedom, self-reliance and rights to characterise the cultural perspective on males (see Turiel & Wainryb, 2000; Turiel, 2002). They are also fully aware that holding a subordinate position in the social hierarchy makes deviation difficult because of the serious consequences that might ensue. Nevertheless, adolescent and adult females are critical of those practices, judging them as unfair. Other studies have examined how people act to counter restrictions judged unfair (Abu-Lughod, 1993; Wikan, 1996). Spending considerable time with Bedouin groups in a small hamlet on the northwest coast of Egypt, Abu-Lughod demonstrated that women employ a variety of strategies to get around the unequal restrictions imposed on them by men (husbands, fathers, brothers). Those strategies pertained to matters such as educational opportunities and goals, arranged marriages, polygamy and the distribution of resources. The Bedouin women did not always obey their fathers or husbands, did not always adhere to cultural expectations, and disagreements, conflicts and struggles between females and males were common. As articulated by Abu-Lughod (1993, p. 19): “The Awlad Ali are patrilineal, but reckoning descent, tribal affiliation, and inheritance through the male line does not foreclose women’s opportunities or desires to shape their own lives or those of their sons and daughters, or to oppose the decisions of their fathers.” Deviousness, Subversion and the Question of Honesty Opposing decisions of those in positions of power appears to often involve deception. When Nussbaum stated “people are devious”, she did so in the context of subversion of conventions. In most of the examples I have discussed, there has been an element of deception (e.g. in Mernissi’s account, in the use of secret bank accounts, in the description by the Iranian mother and in the activities of people in

Resistance and Subversion in Everyday Life 125 Afghanistan and RAWA). In several of these examples, the deceptions were apparent to children—and it was even conveyed by parents that dishonesties were necessary and right. Yet, honesty is considered one of the hallmarks of morality in many accounts of virtues and character (Sommers, 1984; Wynne, 1989; Bennett, 1993). From the perspective of virtues and habits of character, honesty is to be valued highly and not to be violated. As the examples I have conveyed suggest, however, honesty and dishonesty entail highly complex philosophical and psychological issues that have been debated for a long time (Bok, 1978/1999). Some philosophers have maintained that the prohibition against lying is absolute (e.g. Kant), whereas others argue that it depends on how it may conflict with other moral ends, such as if whether truth-telling would result in harm. A classic example used in these debates is whether one is obligated to tell the truth to a murderer who asks to be told where his intended victim has gone. These types of musings among philosophers do sometimes have real-life relevance. A well-known example is that people frequently had to decide whether to engage in deception in order to save people from concentration camps during World War II. The activities of Oscar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg have been well publicised. Many others, including diplomats from several countries (e.g. Japan, Turkey, Holland) and people who were not in official positions, used deception to save lives. This type of deception has received little attention in developmental research. The bulk of the research on honesty has looked at children cheating in games or tests (Hartshorne & May, 1928–1930; Grinder, 1961, 1964). A little research has examined what are referred to as white lies—that is, lies to spare the feelings of others (Lewis & Saarni, 1993). There is not much research on judgements about deception to prevent harm or promote justice. Research of that type has been conducted in the realm of medicine. One study, published in a medical journal (Freeman et al., 1999) examined the judgements of physicians about deception in the context of medical care. A sample of physicians was presented with a series of hypothetical situations that depicted a doctor who considers deceiving a third party payer (an insurance company or a Health Maintenance Organization) in order to obtain treatment or a diagnostic procedure for a patient who would otherwise be unable to receive it. Six situations were presented, depicting different medical needs of varying severity (from the most severe of the need of coronary bypass surgery and arterial inevascularization to the least severe of cosmetic rhinoplasty). Whereas very few (3%) of the physicians judged deception acceptable for cosmetic surgery, the majority (58% and 56%) judged it acceptable for the two most severe conditions (percentages for the other conditions fell in between). Judgements about honesty and dishonesty, therefore, varied by the situation. We can assume that, in the abstract, the physicians would judge honesty to be good and dishonesty wrong. Nevertheless, many judged deception acceptable in some situations but not other situations. Honesty is not a habit of character applied in a non-reflective fashion. People approach social situations with the type of flexibility of mind that entails a weighing of their various features. In these types of situations physicians judged it necessary to engage in deception in order to attain the greater

126 E. Turiel good of their patients. (There is evidence that physicians actually do engage in this type of deception; see Wynia et al., 2000.) Perhaps it was the ability to have flexibility in mind that Mernissi’s mother tried to convey to her when she said that “what you say and what you keep secret has nothing to do with truth and lies”. Flexibility of mind is also reflected in the subversive activities of women and men in Afghanistan and Iran, as well as in the deceptive activities of those who saved people from German concentration camps. It is likely that the physicians’ judgements about deception involve a willingness to subvert a system that is perceived to unduly grant power to insurance companies and too little power to the medical judgements of physicians. Nevertheless, the societal context for judgements about deception by the physicians differs from the types I have discussed as it does not involve societal arrangements of inequality and dominance and subordination in the social hierarchy. However, we have begun conducting research on judgements about deceptions in the context of inequalities. In that research, which was conducted with adults in the United States, we obtained judgements about several situations involving deceptions between wives and husbands. In one version of the situations presented it is only the husband who works outside the home and the wife who engages in deception; in another version of each situation only the wife works and it is the husband who engages in deception. Analyses of the results of this study are still under way. For now, consider findings from two of the situations involving deception. In one, a spouse keeps a bank account secret from the working spouse who controls all the finances. In the other, a spouse with a drinking problem attends meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous without telling the working spouse who disapproves of attending such meetings. With regard to finances (i.e. maintaining a secret bank account), whether it is a wife or husband who engages in the deception makes a difference. The majority of participants (64%) thought that it is acceptable for a wife to have a bank account secret from her working husband who controls the finances. However, the majority (66%) also thought that it is not acceptable for a husband to do so, even when the wife works and the husband does not. It appears, therefore, that the structure of power outside the family is taken into account in making these judgements. In other words, a non-working husband is viewed as having more influence and power than a non-working wife. The differences in judgements about deception by wives and husbands does not extend to all situations. The large majority (over 90%) judged that deception is acceptable by both wives and husbands when dealing with a drinking problem by attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. In that situation, such as situations involving physicians’ deception of insurance companies, judgements about welfare override the value of maintaining honesty. I should stress that people in the study were not sanguine about deception between spouses—just as physicians are not content that they may sometimes be compelled to deceive insurance companies. They view deception as undesirable but sometimes necessary in order to deal with unfair restrictions, especially restrictions imposed by those in greater power and control. The results of these studies indicate that issues revolving around honesty and deception are far from straightforward from a psychological standpoint. To be sure, deception sometimes occurs for

Resistance and Subversion in Everyday Life 127 self-serving purposes. Nevertheless, the reasons people engage in deception are multi-dimensional and motivated by moral goals. The complexities, and moral reasons, in people’s decisions regarding honesty and dishonesty are often lost when people lament the decline of morality in our youth because so many adolescents admit to dishonesties. This occurs when survey-takers, posing questions such as: “have you lied to your parents in the past 12 months?” find that most adolescents honestly admit to having done so. We can ask, would the findings be different if physicians were posed with a similar question: “Have you lied to an insurance company in the past 12 months?” A more productive approach to honesty among youths would be to examine closely how they understand moral and personal considerations in relation to people in authority, including parents and teachers. Concluding Remarks The data on judgements about honesty and deception point to flexibilities of mind in applying moral considerations to social situations. The contextual variations in judgements do not reflect situational determinism, but weighing, balancing and co-ordinating different social and moral goals. More generally, the types of acts of resistance and subversion evident in several of the non-research examples I have described, along with findings from studies with Druze and Bedouin women, reflect flexibilities of mind in the ways people relate to the social world. Social relationships involve a multiplicity of features. Moral and social development, as Martin Luther King Jr implied in his address to the American Psychological Association, does not involve a straightforward adjustment to social conditions. Social development is not a process of increasing acceptance of, or identification with, culture and its norms or practices. This is not to say that people are always or completely at odds with each other, with the culture, or with societal arrangements. It is to say that there is heterogeneity of orientations. Adjustment and acceptance co-exist with resistance and opposition. Social harmony co-exists with social conflict, discontents and efforts at changing norms and established practices. The multiplicity of people’s judgements and approaches to the social world means that in order to adequately understand social development it is necessary, as Piaget proposed, to understand children’s constructions stemming from many types of social experiences. I return, then, to the main idea that resistance and subversion are part of everyday life. As part of everyday life, most people have moral convictions and commitments that they act upon in the face of possible social disapproval and serious repercussions. As I have indicated, moral resistance is not the province of a limited number of individuals to be characterised as moral e´lites. The commitment and conviction of many people to the viewpoints they hold results in some complexities in evaluating differing positions in ongoing debates. If we could say that the few—our moral leaders—have the courage of their convictions in opposition to the many, who simply go along with system, then that would constitute a basis for discriminating sides on particular issues. However, conviction and commitment appear in many guises and, most often, can be seen in people holding opposing

128 E. Turiel views. I can draw from some of my examples: the women of RAWA, as well as many people of Afghanistan had the courage of their convictions, but so did the Taliban. In the civil rights movements in the United States Martin Luther King Jr had the courage of his convictions, as did many who were involved in demonstrations and protests at the time; however, counter-demonstrators in southern states and elsewhere also maintained their positions with conviction even in the face of opposition from the federal government. A clear example of conviction and commitment on opposing sides of civil rights issues was evident in confrontations over the integration of the University of Mississippi in the fall of 1962. Two individuals—James Meredith and Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi—are illustrative. James Meredith, a black man, had attended Jackson State University (a black school) but held back from obtaining sufficient credits to graduate so that he could apply to the University of Mississippi, which has been referred to as the pinnacle of Mississippi’s wealthy segregationist plantation society. Meredith pursued the matter all the way to the US Supreme Court, which ordered his admission to the university. Meredith’s commitment to equality and integration was paralleled by Governor Barnett’s commitment to segregation. Barnett physically blocked Meredith’s efforts to register at the university several times and proclaimed publicly, “I am a Mississippi segregationist and proud of it.” Moreover, Governor Barnett was unresponsive to the directives of President Kennedy who had to mobilise a large number (over 30 000) of federal troops and National Guardsmen to be sure that James Meredith was enrolled safely in the University. Conviction, commitment and courage are not features that distinguish between James Meredith and Ross Barnett, nor between the many supporters of each side. We must look elsewhere for the distinguishing features—to the nature of moral argumentation, moral struggle and most importantly to the details of the moral evaluations and moral judgements involved. One incident surrounding James Meredith’s efforts to enroll in the University of Mississippi demonstrates poignantly that resistance, subversion and commitment come from large numbers of people whose involvement often goes unnoticed. James Meredith spoke about the incident when he was interviewed on the “Morning Edition” news show of National Public Radio on the occasion of the 40 anniversary of his enrollment at the University of Mississippi. As introduced by the interviewer, “in the first minutes after he registered Meredith got a message that still brings him to tears”. As told by James Meredith, “The most significant thing that happened when I finished registering, came out to go my first class, there was a Black standing in the hall. I thought that looked a little strange. And he had a broom on his arm. When I walked by he turned his body so the broom handle would touch me. And he was delivering, probably, one of the most important messages I ever got at Ole Miss. The message was that we are looking after you—every Black eye is looking after you. That was a greater act of defiance than what I was doing because he could have lost his job for that.” So it is not only in the acts of famous figures like Socrates, Mahatma Ghandi, and Martin Luther King Jr that we see moral defiance, resistance, and subversion. We see it in many people, in people who were not well known as moral leaders with

Resistance and Subversion in Everyday Life 129 outstanding personal characteristics, such as Oscar Schindler, James Meredith and an unnamed janitor working at the University of Mississippi.

Correspondence: Dr Elliot Turiel, Chancellor’s Professor, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. Tel: 510 642 7972; Fax: 510 642 3555; E-mail; [email protected]

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