Resolving Conflict Flashcards
Violence and Peace
Violence is not necessarily a natural impulse for human beings
Violence must be justified
Peace must be imagined and maintained
Both violence and peace are political and social processes
Collective Violence
Justified through deeply held beliefs
Violence becomes normalized
Others are created as acceptable to practice violence on
Can lead to the dehumanization of Others
Collective Peace
Not allowing violent acts to be boasted about
Ceremony is used to mediate conflict
More difficult to find than violent societies
Most are a mix of both – violence is justified in certain situations
Social, political, and economic factors
Structured government
Need to protect resources
Protection against invaders and/or colonizers
Sexism and racism
Colonialism increases violence in formerly non-violent communities
Power
ability to bring about results
power may be informal and based on force
coercive power versus persuasive power
Legitimacy
the socially recognized right to hold, use, and allocate power
Authority
the socially recognized right to exert power (power plus legitimacy)
Violence and the Nation-State
Violence and the threat of armed force is key in creating and maintaining the nation-state
Imposed national culture
Violent punishment for “punishable categories of people” (Robbins et al, 2017)
“We only beat bad people”
Ethnocide
attempt to destroy the culture of a people
Genocide
attempt to exterminate a people
Discipline
State enforced laws that people are held to
Punishing people into “appropriate” culture and behavior
Justified invasion and war
Indonesian invasion of East Timor
US invasion of Iraq
How do we justify war?
Punishing “bad” people – terrorists, communists, etc
Saving people from bad leadership
Protecting ourselves and/or the rest of the world
Refugees
groups of people who have left their homeland due to warfare, forced expulsion, acts of terrorism, or other factors
Diaspora
a population whose members are dispersed and living outside their homeland
