Lecture 11a: Reconciliation Flashcards
Reconciliation
Three Latin Words:
Re (again)
Con (together)
Ciliere (call)
- People are apart, need to be brought back together again
William Long and Peter Brecke
- Examined reconciliation by comparing dynamics between states after violent conflict and in the context of civil wars
- Foregiveness and signalling
Foregiveness and Signalling
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.
Janine Chanteur
- 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’
Reconciliation Objectives
- Sense of Justice
- Personal Healing and Empowerment
- New Relationships
- Structural Change
- Transcendence
Sense of Justice
- 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
Personal Healing and Empowerment
- Physical harms, psychological harms, damage, emotional challenges
- Herman, Levinas, Frankl, Sawatsky
New Relationships
- New relationships are needed because they are good in of themselves, but can also help future conflict
Structural Change
- May be political, economic, or physical
e. g. post WWII structural change, formation of European Union
e. g. civil rights to Black Americans
Transcendence
- 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
Jarem Sawatsky
- Synthesized a shared concept of healing
- Justice defined as:
A collective paradigm or imagination drawing on current wisdom/tradition
Victor Frankl
- 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
Emmanuel Levinas
- Worst form of violence is that which deprive people of a capacity for action
Judith Herman
Trauma and Recovery (book)
- Describes how trauma can disempower people
Iterative Process
- Progress, regress, reassessment
- Large number of subprocesses involved
Pre-Requisites
- 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
Discursive and Symbolic Processes
E.g. Anwar Sadat visit to Jerusalem in 1977
GRIT
Gradual
Reciprocated
Initiatives in
Tension Reduction
- Institution building, process skills, support of third side
- Charles E. Osgood
- Small steps
