1 | Re-introducing Ansuni Stories
A storytelling and research project about family, communities, and culture.
What is Ansuni Stories? What are South Asian collectivist cultures?
We initiated the Ansuni Stories project in 2020. It was a creative and qualitative exploration into the lived experiences of South Asian collectivist cultures1 (SACC) where collectivism is defined as:
“...a social pattern consisting of closely linked individuals who see themselves as parts of one or more collectives (family, co-workers, tribe, nation); are primarily motivated by the norms of, and duties imposed by, those collectives; are willing to give priority to the goals of these collectives over their own personal goals; and emphasize their connectedness to members of these collectives.” (Triandis, 1995, p. 2)
Generally, collectivist cultures are seen as those that emphasise the needs and goals of the collective over those of the individual. In South Asian communities, this manifests as a strong emphasis placed on family and the social network of community relationships (Triandis, 1995; Wardak, 2000; Ayyub, 2000); ‘the collectivist tradition prioritises the needs, values and expectations of the family of origin above those of any one family member’ (Huisman, 1996; Zaidi, 2013).
We chose to research SACC and this aspect of our community after conversations held between the team about the impact it was having on our own lives, emotions, and mental health. However, when we looked for more information about these experiences, we did not find it in academia or really even in the wider research landscape. This seemed especially true when it came to the experiences of Brown people who are further marginalised, including those who are women, non-binary, queer, caste-oppressed, or disabled in the U.K. Simply put, this subject matter has not been extensively researched and this was something we wanted to correct. While we have not entirely succeeded in this, we did receive a lot of rich stories and experiences from across the U.K. This series of blogs is an attempt to share with you what we’ve learnt, and hopefully spark nuanced and thoughtful conversations within your own spaces.
A snapshot of the data
77% of our participants shared that they felt they have benefited from collectivist cultures, particularly in developing values (54%), forming identity (46%) and close family ties (44%)
96% of our participants shared that they felt pressure, judgement and disconnection due to collectivist cultures, including career choice (46%), gender roles (42%) and mental health issues (33%). Through this project, we tried to gain and provide a more distinct understanding and facilitate an open dialogue of the insidious ways in which community can be weaponised.
Only 35% of our participants were able to find community support during difficult times including depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
How has this project developed?
The first phase of Ansuni Stories was an outreach survey. 47 people responded to this survey. These responses were then coded and informed various discussions at an online community workshop where we looked at; community support; caste, race & class; mental & physical health; kinship; gender inequality; religion, faith & spirituality.
This was carried out in the spring of 2020, at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. With everything that this moment entailed came a number of challenges for The Rights Collective, both for our working practices internally and in our communications with participants. Ansuni Stories, with its focus on individual reflection and personal storytelling, inadvertently became a capsule of this difficult and unexpected time, co-created between us and our wider communities.
Reflecting on these responses and this time as a collective has been enlightening, sobering, and strangely comforting. It is our privilege to be able to bear witness to the stories of our community especially during this period. And we thank you for being in community and in vulnerability with us. We write this series hoping to do justice to the openness and generosity with which we engaged with each other, and to learn from the lived experiences shared. Everything within this writing is birthed from gentleness and within the supportive space that we were able to hold for each other during an unfamiliar time. We intend for this series to be of interest, but we hope for it to be of comfort.
On the other hand, this series of blogs cannot and does not profess to represent and include all lived experiences of collectivism held within our communities. You may feel seen in the proceeding publications but, equally, you may not. Either is fine and both are valid responses. We are not homogenous. As such, we do not aim nor claim to be representing all those within our diverse and broad-ranging communities. This is merely an account of those who were present with us during this time and their experiences with SACC. As such, they represent our biases, positionalities, privileges and marginalisations.
We see there are learnings and insights from this strange time that can usefully inform our present, even after so much time has passed. We invite you to use this as an opportunity to lean into the grey; to avoid glorifying collectivism as well as to avoid vilifying it. To be able to hold experiences beyond the binary and investigate the ways in which they may intersect and overlap. To reckon with what this means for how we view collectivism and our communities that practise it, in all its nuance. And lastly, to employ all of this insight to reimagine what communities and connection could be.
In our original iterations of this text, we used “South Asian Collectivist Culture” in the singular, taken from the papers that inspired our work and that we have referenced throughout. On reflection, we felt it was important to pluralise the phrase, signalling the breadth of cultures across South Asia in which collectivism can emerge.