Armenian News-NEWS.am continues Arianne & Armenia project within the framework of which Arianne Caoili tells about numerous trips across Armenia and shares her impressions and experience of living in Armenia.

Problem solving, Armenian style - Part 1

My phone has not stopped ringing since getting an Armenian number. Messages and calls arrive incessantly, at a rate incomparable to my experiences of living anywhere else. And I am grateful for it.

French sociologist Emile Durkheim argued that the individual’s very existence is dependent on his integration into and stability of society. He set out to prove this by examining suicide – an action thought to be the most private, individual and existential experience one can ever have. He discovered that highly integrated societies had very low suicide rates, while the opposite held true for profoundly individualistic societies. Suicide, rather than the quintessential personal act most people think it is, is actually “an echo of the moral state of society”.

When an individual does not know where they ‘fit’, they experience what he termed anomie – and in extreme cases characterized by purposefulness and alienation, the individual commits suicide. ‘Egoistic suicides’ are suicides which occur because the individuals are in societies in which the moral power of the group is too poor to keep them sealed into their social roles. These individuals come to see themselves as being independent of society and of having no obligations to it. The common characteristic of societies in which suicide rates are high is one in which individuals are not linked to strong, cohesive social groups.

Generally, in Armenia the idea of extreme individualism may hardly be operant. People automatically think of themselves in terms of their duty to their community and family, over and above self-actualization and personal promotion. With the exception of rapid social and particularly economic change, in which people experience swift upward or downward mobility, the number of suicides are quite stable from year to year. Armenian statistics are hard to come by, but I’d be confident in assuming that the suicide rate is relatively low. There aren’t many homeless either – social bonds and ties with family are too strong to leave a destitute relative in total abandonment (whether in the city or out in the marzes).

The prevalence of crime is also low, and my hypothesis for this is that in general Armenians are so concerned about their image to others in society: this person who knows this person who knows my uncle will eventually find out about it, and therefore the disgrace to family far outweighs the benefits of any crime. In traditional societies, the portrayal of desired image can breed a paranoia of constantly being aware of what people and the general community think. So a lot of energy is spent in controlling the image conveyed to friends and society at large. Some examples of this are when deciding what kind of gifts to give at a wedding, how many people should attend the reception, what kind of khorovats to serve, and when choosing your future partner – how educated and respected are their family, what region are they from (you know, some are more superior than others!), and what about their sexual purity? (So long as the neighbors don’t know, so what if it’s a little tainted?).

Back to the subject of my Armenian phone: the sound of its persistent buzz nipping at my so-called privacy in the beginning, truth be told, took a little getting used to. Now I have come to expect it and heartily welcome the messages enquiring into everything from my particular mood that day to my health to my needs and to what I’m getting up to later. I don’t think it’s even possible to experience anything remotely like anomie in Armenia, or to be sufficiently cut off from society. Nobody will let me.

This obsession with social gatherings infiltrates all of my relationships, particularly the business ones. Your true value is a function of your relationships – a business cliché used pretty much globally, but in this part of the world it is particularly so. Meetings in person are the default rather than resorting to an (more efficient) exchange of emails.  Personal discussions over a meal are paramount before anything really happens – a process that can be hard to endure, because as the time is ticking and questions on the report or negotiations are sitting at the forefront of your mind, your interlocutor is still showing you a video of their kid dancing at last week’s wedding and insisting on yet another shot of the homemade mulberry vodka made by his father.

A senior executive I met in Yerevan a few years ago told me that the hardest thing about doing business in Armenia are the ceremonies signifying death, marriages and birthdays: the three main events (tragedies?) in a long list of obligatory events that workers don’t skip for anything. This kind of social cohesion brought about by frequent social rituals tightens the bind between self and society, such that it is rare for individuals to go on their own deviant tangent. And it naturally requires a very patient and unique approach to human resource management. There are also some important marketing lessons to learn: successful marketing in Armenia is word-of-mouth on steroids, and commonly, entire supply chains are defined by one’s akhperutsyun. Armenians know how to take care of one’s own.

But this is not always the case. My girlfriend here in Yerevan insists that the Armenian football team can never be great because rather than coordinating towards victory as a team, they all want to score! In business, there is certainly a lot of the Middle Eastern mudir syndrome at play here – roughly translated as the ‘manager syndrome’ – in which each person feels that he should have authority and be his own boss, without working up the ladder (doing the time) or proving himself in such a way that would earn a manager’s position.

A prominent Armenian business man I met in the Netherlands several years ago advised me not to be fooled about the wonders of unity: in fact, according to him, Armenians tend to be a divided house, particularly when it comes to regions. “It’s essential to ask what village or region you are from. When they answer, you should (at least pretend) that you know the most important family or person in that particular town or sphere of influence. It’s all about connecting.” This is a powerful example of the role of social relationships in defining the individual. It also reveals how skilled Armenians are at harnessing the power of social cohesion to solve every day problems: because once you are ‘in’ the akhperutsyun, there isn’t any problem far too personal or too great not to be handled with together.

Part two to follow next week…

Arianne Caoili