Abstract
One often hears the slogan “No justice, no peace,” but under what conditions can the pursuit of justice sustain peace? And what role can conflict and transnational social movements play in these processes? We examine these questions utilizing data collected by a participatory action research team for a study of the World March for Peace and Nonviolence (the “March”). The March was a 2009 transnational campaign that raised awareness about alternatives to violence, militarism, and injustice through events in 588 cities and social media. Building on the work of Morton Deutsch on conflict resolution, Gene Sharp on nonviolence, and Lev Vygotsky on Activity Theory, this chapter examines how the March promoted nonviolent conflict as a key activity in the practice of justice and peace. Our data, seven written testimonios by March participants from the Unites States, Colombia, Ecuador, and Argentina, describe these participants’ experiences with injustice, the March, and their hopes for the future. Their testimonios indicate that the March was a fertile context for creative nonviolent action that: (1) widened participants’ scope of justice; (2) kindled new possibilities for constructive conflict and change; and (3) distributed information about the interlocking systems of militarism, violence, and injustice. In these ways, the March broadened landscapes of meaning, action, and possibility that nurtured individual and collective efforts to sustain a positive peace.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Anderson, R. (2004). A definition of peace. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 10(2), 101–116.
Andrews, M. (2007). Shaping history: Narratives of political change. New York: Grove.
Apfelbaum, E. (1979). Relations of domination and movements for liberation: An analysis of power between groups. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 188–204). Monterey: Brooks Cole.
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Eds., V. W. McGee, Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Barth, F. (1993). Balinese worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bouchard, C. (2010). Justice versus peace. In N. Young (Ed.), The Oxford international encyclopedia of peace (e-reference ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved January 12, 2011, from http://www.oxford-peace.com/entry?entry=t296.e380
Daiute, C., & Lightfoot, C. (2005). Narrative analysis: Studying the development of individuals in society. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
de la Rubia, R. (2010). The World March for Peace and Nonviolence. Madrid, Spain.
de Rivera, J. (2009). Handbook on building cultures of peace. New York: Springer Science.
Deutsch, M. (1973). The resolution of conflict. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Deutsch, M. (1983). The prevention of World War III: A psychological perspective. Political Psychology, 4(1), 3–31.
Deutsch, M. (1985). Distributive justice: A social psychological perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Fahey, J. J., & Armstrong, R. (1992). A peace reader: Essential readings on war, justice, non-violence and world order. New York: Paulist Press.
Fernandez Dols, J. M., Hurtado-de-Mendoza, A., & Jimenez-de-Lucas, I. (2004). Culture of peace: An alternative definition and its measurement. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 10(2), 117–124.
Fine, M. (1979). Options to injustice: Seeing other lights. Representative Research in Social Psychology, 10(1 & 2), 61–76.
Fine, M., Torre, M. E., Boudin, K., Bowen, I., Clark, J., Hylton, D., Martinez, M., Roberts, R. A., et al. (2004a). Changing minds. New York: The City University of New York Graduate Center.
Fine, M., Weis, L., Powell-Pruitt, L., & Burns, A. (Eds.). (2004b). Off white: Readings on power, privilege, and resistance (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Foa, U. G., & Foa, E. B. (1974). Societal structures of the mind. Springfield: Thomas.
Gandhi, M. K. (1957). The story of my experiments with truth. Boston: Beacon.
Gavriely-Nuri, D. (2010). The idiosyncratic language of Israeli ‘peace’: A cultural approach to critical discourse analysis (CCDA). Discourse & Society, 21(5), 565–585.
Gjerde, P. F. (2004). Culture, power, and experience: Toward a person-centered cultural psychology. Human Development, 47, 138–157.
Haidar, J., & Rodriguez, L. (1995). Power and ideology in different discursive practices. In C. Schaffner & A. L. Wenden (Eds.), Language and peace (pp. 119–135). Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Hayward, K. (2008). The role of political discourse in conflict transformation: Evidence from Northern Ireland. Peace and Conflict Studies, 15(1), 1–20.
Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Jr., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
King, M. L., Jr. (1992). I have a dream: Writings and speeches that changed the world. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.
Kool, V. K. (Ed.). (1993). Nonviolence: Social and psychological issues. Lanham: University Press of America.
Leiman, M. (1999). The concept of sign in the work of Vygotsky, Winnicott, and Bakhtin: Further integration of object relations theory and activity theory. In Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen, & R. Punamäki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 419–434). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lektorsky, A. V. (1999). Activity theory in a new era. In Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen, & R. Punamäki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 65–69). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. New York: Plenum.
Lykes, M. B. (2010). Silence(ing), memory(ies) and voice(s): Feminist participatory action research and photo-narratives in the wake of gross violations of human rights. Visual Studies, 25(3), 238–254.
Mandela, N. (2010). Conversations with myself. London: Macmillan.
Mayton, D., III. (2009). Nonviolence and peace psychology. New York: Springer.
Memoscopio (n.d.). The digital archive of nonviolence. Retrieved August 3, 2010, from http://www.memoscopio.org
Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. London: Oxford University Press.
Montiel, C. (2006). Political psychology of nonviolent democratic transitions in Southeast Asia. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 173–190.
Moro, Y. (1999). The expanded dialogic sphere: Writing activity and authoring of self in Japanese classrooms. In Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen, & R. Punamäki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 165–183). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Opotow, S. (1990). Moral exclusion and injustice: An overview. Journal of Social Issues, 46(1), 1–20.
Opotow, S. (1995). Drawing the line: Social categorization, moral exclusion, and the scope of justice. In B. B. Bunker & J. Z. Rubin (Eds.), Conflict, cooperation, and justice (pp. 347–369). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Opotow, S. (1996). Affirmative action, fairness, and the scope of justice. Journal of Social Issues, 2(4), 19–24.
Opotow, S. (1997). What’s fair? Justice issues in the affirmative action debate. American Behavioral Scientist, 41(2), 232–245.
Opotow, S. (2001). Social injustice. In D. J. Christie, R. V. Wagner, & D. D. Winter (Eds.), Peace, conflict and violence: Peace psychology for the 21st century (pp. 102–109). New York: Prentice-Hall.
Opotow, S. (2010). Social injustice and moral exclusion. In The Oxford international encyclopedia of peace (e-reference ed.).Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved January 12, 2011, from http://www.oxford-peace.com/entry?entry=t296.e380
Opotow, S. (2011). Social injustice. In D. J. Christie (Ed.), The encyclopedia of peace psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 1023–1027). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
Opotow, S. (in press). The scope of justice, intergroup conflict, and peace. In L.R. Tropp (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Intergroup Conflict and Peace. Oxford, UK: Oxford Library of Psychology.
Pettigrew, T. F. (1997). Personality and social structure: Social psychological contributions. In R. Hogan, J. Johnson, & S. Briggs (Eds.), Handbook of personality psychology (pp. 417–438). New York: Academic.
Pratt, M. L. (1991). Arts of the contact zone. Profession, 91, 33–40.
Reardon, B. A., & Cabezudo, A. (2002). Rationale for and approaches to peace education. New York: Hague Appeal for Peace.
Ryle, A. (1999). Object relations theory and activity theory: A proposed link by way of the procedural sequence model. In Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen, & R. Punamäki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 407–418). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schell, J. (2005). The unconquerable world: Why peace protest is stronger than war. London: Penguin.
Schwebel, M. (2006). Realistic empathy and active nonviolence confront political reality. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 191–208.
Sharp, G. (1973). The politics of nonviolent action. Boston: Porter Sargent.
Silo. (2003). Humanize the earth. In Obras completas, Volumen I. México, D.F: Plaza y Valdés (Original work published in 1972).
Skinner, D., Valsiner, J., & Holland, D. (2001). Discerning the dialogical self: A theoretical and methodological examination of a Nepali adolescent’s narrative. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 2(3). Retrieved November 30, 2011, from http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0103187.
Stetsenko, A. P. (1989). The concept of an “image of the world” and some problems in the onteogeny of consciousness. Soviet Psychology, 27(4), 6–23.
Thibaut, J., & Walker, L. (1975). Procedural justice: A psychological analysis. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Torre, M. E. (2005). The alchemy of integrated spaces: Youth participation in research collectives of difference. In L. Weis & M. Fine (Eds.), Beyond silenced voices (pp. 251–266). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Tropp, L. (Ed.). (in press). Oxford handbook of intergroup conflict. New York: Oxford University Press.
UNESCO. (1986). The Seville statement on nonviolence. Retrieved November 30, 2011, from http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=3247%26URL_DO=DO_TOPIC%26URL_SECTION=201.html
United Nations General Assembly. (1999). Resolution adopted by the General Assembly 53/243: Declaration and programme of action on a culture of peace. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://cpnn-world.org/resolutions/resA-53-243B.html
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The maturational process and the facilitating environment. New York: International Universities Press.
Winnicott, D. W. (1974). Playing and reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Woodward, P. (1948). How do American people feel about the atomic bomb? Journal of Social Issues, 4(1), 7–14.
World Without Wars and Nonviolence (n.d.). The World March for Peace and Nonviolence. Retrieved August 3, 2010, from http://www.theworldmarch.org
Young, N. (2009).The Oxford international encyclopedia of peace (e-reference ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved January 12, 2011, from http://www.oxford-peace.com/entry?entry=t296.e380
Yúdice, G. (1992). Testimonio y concientización. Revista de Critica Literaria Latinoamericana, 18(36), 211–232.
Zunes, S., Kurtz, L. R., & Asher, S. B. (Eds.). (1999). Nonviolent social movements: A geographical perspective. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Marco Battistella, Morton Deutsch, Antonia Devoto, Michelle Fine, Wendy Luttrell, and Carolina Villar for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. This chapter reports on data collected by the Memoscopio Project which received funding from The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Applied Social Issues Internship. The Public Science Project at the City University of New York Graduate Center, the World Center for Humanist Studies, and The City University of New York New Media Lab have also fostered the development of the Memoscopio Project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Proto, C.M., Opotow, S. (2012). Justice, Activity, and Narrative: Studying of the World March for Peace and Nonviolence. In: Coleman, P. (eds) Psychological Components of Sustainable Peace. Peace Psychology Book Series. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3555-6_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3555-6_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-3554-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-3555-6
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)