Building Empathy Bridges: Lessons from a Bookstore Event in Washington for Armenia's Polarized Society
29.09.2024
By Tigran Grigoryan
On a recent work trip to Washington D.C.––my first visit to the United States––I found myself in my hotel room browsing online for interesting places to explore. I discovered Politics and Prose, a well-known bookstore, and decided to check it out. While looking through the shelves, I noticed the staff setting up for an event. A quick Google search revealed it was a book launch by the acclaimed sociologist Arlie Hochschild. Pretending I had come for the event, I took a seat to listen in.
For the past 7-8 years Hochschild has studied Donald Trump’s core electorate, seeking to understand their motivations. Her previous book on the subject, Strangers in Their Own Land, became a New York Times bestseller. Her latest book, Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, is the culmination of seven years of research, including extensive interviews in Pike County, Kentucky’s poorest congressional district, which historically voted Democratic but shifted to supporting Trump over the past decade.
It was fascinating to stumble upon an event in the heart of America where a room full of liberals sincerely tried to understand the perspectives and grievances of millions with whom they disagreed––without questioning their integrity or resorting to labels. Since Trump's first presidency, numerous scholars have pursued this same goal of bridging divides.
In past Democracy Watch reports, we identified growing political polarization as a major obstacle to democratic consolidation in Armenia. The mutual efforts of the ruling party and the parliamentary opposition to delegitimize each other have created fertile ground for anti-democratic and unconstitutional actions.
The targeting and name-calling of political opponents extends beyond political elites to their supporters as well. Since the 2018 Velvet Revolution, opposition propagandists have introduced the term "filth" (ժեխ) into Armenian public discourse to describe Nikol Pashinyan's core electorate, implying they are uneducated and lack values. Meanwhile, government propagandists frame opposition supporters or rally participants as corrupt and “anti-sovereignty”.
Amid this toxic political climate, there is a noticeable lack of genuine effort within civil society and the expert community to understand the motivations behind the political preferences of these groups. Black-and-white thinking is pervasive, fueled partly by the appalling quality of social science education in modern-day Armenia and partly by the increasing politicization and polarization within these sectors.
The unwillingness to understand the grievances and motivations of those with differing political views only deepens societal divisions and increases the risk of political violence. Scholars like Arlie Hochschild and Robert Wuthnow, author of The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, have sought to initiate conversations in the United States on the importance of addressing these issues.
Hochschild, in particular, emphasizes the need to be culturally bilingual and to build "empathy bridges" between groups with polarized political views. A central message of her latest book is that Democrats and Republicans share far more common ground than they realize. This is certainly true for Armenian society as well. Although the simplistic, dichotomous narrative of good versus evil benefits the main political actors, the priority of civil society and all those invested in the success of Armenia's democratic experiment should be to foster dialogue and understanding across these polarized political fault lines.
Democracy Watch is a joint initiative by CivilNet and the Regional Center for Democracy and Security, a Yerevan-based think tank.
This material has been funded by UK International Development from the UK government; however, the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies.