Monday 12th August - Friday 16th August 2002
Prague, Czech Republic

Session 11: Narratives, Politics and Education for Peace

Mike Fosdal - Violence into Politics
Oxford, United Kingdom

The route from violence into political action and from there to achieving political goals involves a range of political and social issues requiring all sides to reach an acceptance of violence as a political instrument. This acceptance entails a series of compromises which can involve both state and non-state actors. From the state there has to be a basic acceptance that the political aims of the group or groups that have been involved in violent activity should be allowed to take precedence over the legal norms of their society; from the groups that have been involved in violence, there has to be a renunciation of the continued use of violence and a distancing from the idea of the legitimacy of violence as a political activity.

Western Europe’s violent political groups of the past thirty years do not have a good record of successful conversion from violence to politics. Some – such as the RAF in Germany – never had a serious strategy for political action but others – notably the Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland – have embarked on a political route which is producing substantial gains for them. In contrast, another major group which has used violence in pursuit of political objectives, the Basque ETA, has not proved able to see through an adjustment to a political approach.

This paper will examine the political development and evolving attitudes towards violence of Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein and of the other groups in the Northern Ireland conflict. It will also examine the position of ETA and the role that violence has played in their inability to attain their political objectives.

Jerome Gellman - Educating Away from Violence: Referential Directness vs Obliqueness
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

By "direct" education for non-violence I mean education in terms of the idea of violence and its negation. This can take the form of exhortation, in which one is told or taught not to be violent because an authority says so, or because of punishment, or because of group approval. It can also take the form of "love" education, teaching to love others rather than cause them harm. By "indirect" education I mean education for peacefulness that is not in terms of the idea of violence and its negation, but in positive terms for peaceful relations. Studies in neuropsychology strongly suggest that indirect education will have greater success than direct education against non-violence. This emerges from the study of "ideomotor" behaviour and of "resistant" behaviour by neuropsychologists such as Vogt and Hyman, Wegner, and Bargh and Burrows. These, and other studies, demonstrate how when an action is prompted to the mind and the subject is told not to perform the action, a psychological mechanism is created that actually tends toward the performance of the action. This is because of the presence of the idea in the mind and the power of the idea to cause behaviour, even when the idea is negated. This applies not only to thought (as in "don't think of an elephant") but also to action. On the other hand, studies show the power of unconscious mimicking of behaviour displayed to a subject. It follows that direct education against non-violence , by introducing the idea of violence, even when negating it,runs the risk of causing violence. THis is especially so if violent acts are described or pictured. Indirect education, giving models for peaceful action without even mentioning violence, have a better chance at success. By not mentioning violence, resistant behaviour is avoided, and by providing models for peace induce unconscious mimicking.

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Elissa Teeple - Deconstructing Cultures of Violence to Build Cultures of Peace: Challenges and Opportunities
Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) at George Mason University in Virginia, USA.

This paper explores whether the sometimes disparate beliefs and behaviours having to do with conflict and with peace can or should be considered as a culture. Many discussions of conflict that invoke culture discuss the influence of culture on the etiology and course of the conflict itself. Fewer studies contemplate the influence of conflict on culture. This article asserts that there is a layer of behaviour patterns that has slipped past lenses which look for cultural Œcauses¹ of conflict, as well as lenses which look at effects of conflict on societies. It is proposed that when a population reacts to a situation of prolonged conflict, the collective behavioural and cognitive results of this stress constitute a culture, often without the conscious knowledge of the individuals or the society involved. The Œconflict culture¹ becomes a self-perpetuating entity of its own, the identity attachments and fear of change that are attendant to culture. One might then conceive of the conflict transformation process as a process of cultural change. Any transition from conflict to peace should include awareness of, and hopefully programmatic compensation for the potentially destabilizing effects of cultural change that would be necessitated by the transition to peace. Ideas from cultural change theory are then brought in to the discussion of conflict transformation. Conceptions of cultures of peace are discussed, concluding with a consideration of the challenges of transforming a culture of conflict to a culture of peace. It is offered that incorporating this cultural change model of conflict resolution may help achieve a sustainable peace which can end cycles of violence. Directions for future theoretical and empirical research are noted.

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