Lecture 11a: Reconciliation

Question 1

Reconciliation

Answer 1

Three Latin Words:
Re (again)
Con (together)
Ciliere (call)

• People are apart, need to be brought back together again

Question 2

William Long and Peter Brecke

Answer 2

• Examined reconciliation by comparing dynamics between states after violent conflict and in the context of civil wars
• Foregiveness and signalling

Question 3

Foregiveness and Signalling

Answer 3

Foregiveness

• Characterized by truth-telling
• Redefinition of identity of former belligerents
• Call for new relationship

Signalling
- When a reconciliation event was part of a costly, novel, voluntary, and irrevocable concession in a negotiation bargain, it contributed meaningfully to a reduction in future conflict.

Question 4

Janine Chanteur

Answer 4

• Examined the normal state of relationships among human beings
• Overwhelming evidence that for philosophers there is a state of war or extreme conflict that is considered the narrative relationship between self and other
• Peace = temporary break of this state
• Profound dehumanization of the other
• Dehumanization exemplifies ‘ontological rift’

Question 5

Reconciliation Objectives

Answer 5

1. Sense of Justice
2. Personal Healing and Empowerment
3. New Relationships
4. Structural Change
5. Transcendence

Question 6

Sense of Justice

Answer 6

• Without a sense of justice, it is harder for group healing to occur
• A need to probe what justice may mean in any given situation
• Retributive justice - punish perpetrators - large scale atrocities
  e. g. Nuremberg Trials

Question 7

Personal Healing and Empowerment

Answer 7

• Physical harms, psychological harms, damage, emotional challenges
• Herman, Levinas, Frankl, Sawatsky

Question 8

New Relationships

Answer 8

• New relationships are needed because they are good in of themselves, but can also help future conflict

Question 9

Structural Change

Answer 9

• May be political, economic, or physical
  e. g. post WWII structural change, formation of European Union
  e. g. civil rights to Black Americans

Question 10

Transcendence

Answer 10

• Develop a perspective that includes both victim and perpatrator
• Good deal of maturity/inner development required
  e. g. Nelson Mandela and South Africa Rugby team

Question 11

Jarem Sawatsky

Answer 11

• Synthesized a shared concept of healing
• Justice defined as:
  A collective paradigm or imagination drawing on current wisdom/tradition

Question 12

Victor Frankl

Answer 12

• Healing came through discovery of meaning within the concentration camp
• Nazis couldn’t control his thoughts, found sense of agency through thoughts
• Logo therapy
  
  • Development of capacity to find meaning in ones situaiton

Question 13

Emmanuel Levinas

Answer 13

• Worst form of violence is that which deprive people of a capacity for action

Question 14

Judith Herman

Answer 14

Trauma and Recovery (book)

- Describes how trauma can disempower people

Question 15

Iterative Process

Answer 15

• Progress, regress, reassessment

- Large number of subprocesses involved

Question 16

Pre-Requisites

Answer 16

• Impulse grounded in conviction that such an outcomes is desirable and attainable
• Belief translate into ethical vision
• Vision needs to be turned into a mandate that can be given to individuals or institutions
• Population must believe in mandate
• Right people, training, skills, educaiton

Question 17

Discursive and Symbolic Processes

Answer 17

E.g. Anwar Sadat visit to Jerusalem in 1977

Question 18

GRIT

Answer 18

Gradual
Reciprocated
Initiatives in
Tension Reduction

• Institution building, process skills, support of third side
• Charles E. Osgood
• Small steps