collective harmony

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a social value and governing ideal prominent in Confucian and Buddhist-influenced East and Southeast Asian societies, emphasising the maintenance of smooth, conflict-free relationships within families, organisations, and communities as a good that takes precedence over individual self-expression, public disagreement, or personal advancement at others' expense; collective harmony — expressed in concepts like the Chinese he, the Japanese wa, and the Indonesian and Malay rukun — is not merely the absence of conflict but a positive state of social attunement in which each member of a group contributes to a coherent whole; it has been both celebrated as the foundation of East Asian social cohesion and economic cooperation and critiqued as a mechanism of social control that silences dissent, protects powerful interests, and burdens individuals — particularly women — with the obligation to subordinate their needs to the group