Ayuda mutua y provisión de servicios

Some participants considered anti-social tribal brawls against fellow students, to be one of the main types of behaviour exhibited by customers’ misbehaviour as a form of campus violence. For example, one respondent stated:

“There are so many incidents of discrimination and racism insults or arguing...What we hear most about is the tribal brawls and scuffles which become group fights, and many people get injured or the property of the university and the employees gets broken and damaged; these fights even spread off campus which makes it sometimes hard to control because many people or the relatives of these students come from outside the campus to help which makes it into a tribal fight”. P6 (23yrs, male, Palestine, 4)

Another perspective coming out of the findings of the study which is about personal quarrels, which are directly between two persons as described by some participants, relate to the argument raised by Keeffe (2010), some participants described consumer misbehaviour as personal quarrels which took place between two or more individuals for reasons of personal thrill-seeking and fabrications of problems. While others looked at it as altercations and problems related to personal reasons and these could start without any rational reason.

Customers’ misbehaviour in JHE is seen as dangerous because it is practised by young students, who are already thoughtless and risk takers, leading to more social and tribal conflicts among Jordanian families. The tribal mentality and parochial fanaticism was mentioned by many participants because of its negative effect on society. The value

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system in a community has a significant part to play in bringing about and motivating impulsive reactions.

With the result that students in this context typically stand up for their relatives even if they were wrong. This was evidenced in the statements made by one of the participants:

“I have seen situations where the cause of a brawl is so obvious to stem from tribal differences, and those students found as the cause of such brawls however walk away freely. You will expect such students to be queried and investigated, but this is not always the case as most of these students just walk away freely because of lack of witnesses as result of tribal sentiments, which will always play a part in the investigation of the incidents. P2

(22yrs, male, Saudi, 2)

It seems that slowness of plurality of political parties (democratic openness in Jordan), and the lack of modern party law that motivates public participation in political parties, open the door for tribalism; tribal fanaticism overlays political belonging. Students hide behind tribal and vernacular shields vis-à-vis problems they face, instead of solving them through intellectual discussion and political parties. Even a trivial problem would develop into tribal and territorial directions. It seems that tribalism is not the major motive behind customers’ misbehaviour, but membership of the tribe can give support, courage and protection as an inside driver and motivator. This analysis is supported by Arabyat (2007) as cited by Yaseen & Ajlouni (2013), president of Mu'tah University, who stated that “tribalism exacerbates violence in the Jordanian universities though not an essential contributor to violence”. According to many final year participants, on questioning the rules to be followed by the university’s committees, they believe that, the actions done by those people cannot even be justified. So it has been described that consumer misbehaviour is based on tribal and racial lines. They expressed the belief that consumer misbehaviour starts as fights and brawls because they are trying to demonstrate their tribal identities. One of the participants said that:

“In the event of trying to undermine other tribes and expect respect of great magnitude to be accorded to a particular tribe has led to tribe scuffles within the university. As an international student, I have experienced a situation where one of the home students expected me to agree that the history of … was more relevant to the historical background of my tribe. I was conscious of the possible outcome of the argument, hence I immediately conceded to avoid any form of trouble. This is not always the case where

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both students are home students; it tends to lead to scuffles”.P13 (21yrs,

female, Bahrain, 3)

Fights are more of a “show” to demonstrate that these trouble makers are “above the law” and will not be punished for their acts (see Yaseen & Ajlouni, 2013).

Other participants commented that, while most of these small arguments end the same day, sometimes they expand and include larger groups of students, especially if the students involved are enrolled in a university close to home. In this case, they call on the support of friends and relatives, which is in Jordan known as “chivalry”. It seems that all of these anti-social tribal brawls could impact not on the higher education environment only but it could create group and tribal conflicts and social division among Jordanian society.

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5.1.3 Theme Three: Drivers of Consumer Misbehaviours in the Jordanian Higher