Collective behaviour and moral virtue: comparing Kenya’s Harambee and Norway’s Dugnad

Collective practices of mutual assistance are often praised as communal virtue, yet it is unclear whether they form moral character or merely secure conformity. This article compares Kenya’s Harambee and Norway’s dugnad through one theory, Aristotle’s virtue ethics. Drawing on the Nicomachean Ethics and existing scholarship, it argues that both traditions supply the social conditions Aristotle thought necessary for moral development: repeated, shared and publicly valued practice. Practice alone is not virtue, however. Moral worth depends on whether participants act from understanding and settled character, or from fear of reproach. Harambee is vulnerable to patronage and status competition; dugnad to reputational surveillance and an unspoken norm of equal contribution. Both traditions also raise further questions of fairness, exclusion and individual moral autonomy. The article concludes that cultural practices are best judged by whether they move participants from compliance to understanding.