Keynote Presentation: Building peace in the wake of disaster.
Professor Di Bretherton Honorary Professor Political Science and International Relationships University of Queensland. This presentation will contribute to the conference theme of “Promoting Peace in the Era of Globalization” through the lens of international responses to natural disasters. It will describe some of the potentials for conflict and peace in the wake of natural disasters. Drawing on case studies of natural disasters in a number of different countries ( Ride and Bretherton, 2012) and using an ecological model of social relationships, it will analyze some of the dynamics of providing aid from national governments or international agencies, to local communities, in times of crisis. Using narratives of survivors it will illustrate how the experience of disaster is a unique moment that heightens awareness of belonging to humanity as a whole and provides an opportunity for building friendships between insiders and outsiders. However, for a variety of reasons, such as stereotyping, cultural misunderstanding and political manipulation, the opportunity for peace building can be lost. The implications for peace psychology and peace psychologists will be explored with a particular emphasis on understanding the nature of positive peace. |
Coloniality in the era of Neoliberalism: Explicating Race Privilege in Rural Western Australia
Amy F. Quayle Associate Professor Christopher Sonn College of Arts Victoria University Melbourne, Australia Racialised power hierarchies continue to shape life worlds, intergroup relations and patterns of material and symbolic privilege in ‘post-colonising’ contexts such as Australia, despite dominant societal narratives of egalitarianism, multiculturalism and colour-blindness. In the era of neoliberal capitalist globalisation, racialised oppression maps itself in new and ever shifting ways, and in the Australian context, this might best be understood in terms of civilised oppression (Harvey, 1999); a subtle form of oppression, reproduced (and legitimised) in the everyday through cultural means. In this paper we outline circuits and consequences of dispossession (Fine & Ruglis, 2009) that we have identified in collaborative research with a community arts agency in Western Australia that aspires to promote Aboriginal empowerment. Emphasising the importance of being ever vigilant to the shifting nature of race/racism, we describe the ways in which this agency has sought to intervene in the cycle of Aboriginal disempowerment, in particular, into the colonial dynamics of intergroup relations in micro settings, and how we have sought to understand possibilities for change within this context. We use interview data to highlight the continuity of coloniality in the everyday lives of Aboriginal people within this context and the legitimising myths that accompany it. Explicating race privilege and creating spaces for the deconstruction and reconstruction of the social and symbolic resources that inform identity and community making processes are seen as key to the promotion of social inclusion and social justice in the era of globalisation and as central tasks for community and peace psychologies. |
The Prufication of Fiction in the Service of Peace-Making: the African Perspective
Professor Augustine Nwoye University of KwaZulu-Natal One of the cruelest ironies of the contemporary human world is the simultaneous occurrence and escalation of conflicts and divisions within and between various nations and peoples of the same world that is perceived to be consistently transforming into becoming a global village, or a united world. The existence of such an irony is extremely disturbing, given the various high-level attempts that have so far been made at critical periods in world history particularly since the end of the WW2 to get the world at peace with itself and to prevent further wars and other man-made traumatic related experiences between and within nations and cultures of the world. Incidentally, most of the existing initiatives and conflict theories in this direction have largely focused on one dimension (e.g. tribal or racial difference rationalization) of conflict formation, none of which gives rise to conflict or war by itself. In that way such classic theories of conflict formation and escalation leave unexplored other ways, most of them bordering on everyday use of language and fictions to seed hate feelings and the spirit of mistrust and hostility among people even of one nation. The unfortunate consequence is the inability of the present paradigms for peace making and conflict prevention to result in maintenance of durable peace in the contemporary world. Hence the prevailinghostilities and blood-letting conflicts that have continued unabated in most parts of the world, such as the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. Against this background there is need for a continued search for more viablemeans for defusing conflicts among and between nations and cultures in our contemporary world. This presentation proposes that one way of achieving this objective is through the purification of myths and fictions and other mechanisms of negative propaganda deployed in some parts of the world, but particularly in Africa, to cause hostility and hatred among citizens in a given nation. To facilitate this objective, a meta-analysis of extant literatureson the theme of sources of conflict provocation in two African nations (Rwanda and Kenya) will be used to show how fictions or erroneous stereotyping ofindividuals and groups against opposing parties can be utilized by the media and other negative opinion leaders to sow seeds of suspicion and hatred and hostility among members of one and the same nation. It is expected that from insights to emerge from such analysis, a new mechanism on how to institutionalize the promotion of purification of fictions in the context of peace-making will emerge, and appropriate strategy for responding to such a need will be suggested. |
Beyond Tolerance: Youth, Religion and Global Identity
Benina B. Gould, PH.D Psychology Adjunct Faculty Transformative Social Change Specialization Saybrook University Before one can build effective public policy for religious/pluralistic education it is important to know how young people position themselves on religion. Young people in high schools are of particular importance because of their influence on the future direction of their countries social and political norms. The “Student Religion/Pluralism Survey” was developed to access information about student’s interest and knowledge about religious issues. The paper to be presented will analyze over 500 surveys from 5 schools in Germany, both religious and secular. The questions consider themes such as religious identity, interaction with other students in school about religion, student’s subjective perception about different religions, the relationship between religious beliefs and crisis situations and the use of social media for religious education. Germany is of particular importance because of the problems with immigrants, particularly the guest workers from Turkey. Religious diversity is also of tremendous concern to Germans in part fueled by the “veil controversy” in Europe and its sensitivity about its past history. This makes the discussion of Pluralism in schools of utmost importance to young people “the next generation of leaders.” Educators are debating whether the implementation of Islamic education in German schools is possible due to the political, social and theological obstacles in the society.. We believe that the findings from this research will provide important guides for developing policy based interventions and peace curriculum to support other projects in Germany, and maintain and expand pluralistic views in Germany and other countries for youth and educators. |
Representations and positions of two groups in a heated territorial land conflict in Central Mindanao, Philippines
Dr. Charlie M. Inzon, OMI Notre Dame of Jolo College Jolo, Sulu, Philippines. This study examined representations and positions on landownership/grabbing by two groups in a protracted and heated territorial/land conflict in Central Mindanao, Philippines. I conducted two separate focus group discussion (FGD) to eighteen (18) elected local village officials equally represented by Muslims and Christians from selected communities in Midsayap, Cotabato of Central Mindanao. Transcripts fromFGDs’ were used in the analysis using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) to lift the social representations of land ownership/grabbing and locate positions in each representation. Results showed (a) shared and recognized representational elements contained in claims to land ownership/grabbing such as legal and ancestral ownerships among others with different interacting versions/meanings, and (b) shared and defined processes involved in the acquisition of land with contradictory judgments. Findings also showed that groups actively positioned themselves and one another on each representational elements and processes involved in the ownership and acquisition of land. These results are further discussed in relation to social representations and positioning theory, social identity, the recent signed peace agreement between the government and the Muslim armed group (MILF), and future research recommendations are discussed. |
Positive Peace Psychology: Towards Global Well-Being and Resilience
J. Christopher Cohrs, Jacobs University Bremen, Daniel J. Christie, Ohio State University, Mathew P. White, University of Exeter, Chaitali Das, Queen’s University Belfast, This is a theoretical talk. I will analyze the relationship between Positive Psychology and Peace Psychology and discuss how positive emotions, engagement, meaning, personal well-being, and resilience may impact on peace at different levels, ranging from personal and interpersonal to community, national, and global peace. First, I will argue that an individual’s positive experiences, personal well-being, and personal resilience, as defined in current Positive Psychology, may in fact contribute to personal and interpersonal peace, but can also entail detrimental consequences for other individuals, communities, and nations. Second, reviewing and extending the concept of community resilience, I will outline directions for further conceptual and empirical work in Positive Psychology inspired by Peace Psychology. Such work would do well to transcend Positive Psychology’s current bias toward individualism and nationalism and to conceptualize well-being and resilience at the level of the “global community”. This extended “Positive Peace Psychology” perspective would have important implications for our understanding of how to overcome oppression and work towards global peace. |
Creating spaces for consciousness raising: Challenging racism through arts practice
Associate Professor Christopher Sonn Recent research reports show that racism in Australia continues to shape the lives of Indigenous and CALD communities. This racism is often reflected in media and political discourse as well as in everyday settings and is expressed as uncivil attention, which undermines the extent to which people can belong and participate freely in society. These incivilities have included the hostile treatment of young people of African background by police. As a response to this, a community arts agency has sought to create spaces for dialogue and consciousness-raising and to build better relationships through community engagement and playback theatre. This presentation will outline the broader context of race relations, the intervention, and the conceptual resources that we have stitched together from critical race theory and liberation psychology to examine this peace-building initiative. It will discuss the importance of examining the everyday ways in which symbolic, and in turn, material relations of power, are reproduced as well as of creating new settings for collaborative deconstruction of racialised understandings of newcomers. I will emphasise the role of working with agencies as critical partners and the potential of critical theories of race, privilege, oppression for disrupting dynamics of oppression and promoting peace. |