Abstract
This essay argues that ongoing reflection of conflict transformation methods is essential. Key to such reflection is an interrogation of the assumptions that underlie the work of research and practice. Edward Queen questions assumptions about conflict itself, human beings, the purposes of transformation, and notions of time. The final portion of the essay calls for conflict transformation researchers and practitioners to practice self-critical awareness regarding their attentiveness to certain conflicts and not others. All of this work is required as a task of practical wisdom, the ongoing reflection and interrogation of what we do and why.
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Notes
- 1.
David Rieff, A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003).
- 2.
The possible exception one may make would be of an act of self-defense against immediate threats to one’s life. Even there the individual chooses to act in a particular manner. In all of these situations it is important to recall Aristotle’s distinction between proximate and sufficient causes. While external factors are proximate causes, I am talking about necessary causes.
- 3.
For discussions of those who chose not to undertake violence (or serve it) see, for example, Svetlana Broz, Good People in an Evil Time: Portraits of Complicity and Resistance in the Bosnian War (New York; Other Press, 2005); Kristen Renwick Monroe, The Heart of Altruism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Phillip P. Halle, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There (New York: Harper Perennial, 1994).
- 4.
Publius (James Madison), “The Federalist No. 10.” Although numerous editions are available, in this essay the quotations are drawn from Publius (Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay), The Federalist Papers (New York: Bantam Books, 1982).
- 5.
Montesquieu, Esprit de lois (Part One), quoted in Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 71.
- 6.
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books, 1992), 214.
- 7.
James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle To Control The Family, Art, Education, Law, And Politics In America (New York: Basic Books, 1992).
- 8.
A comment made by Slobodan Miloševiç suggests the significance of this claim. In a secret meeting with Serbia’s mayors at the Serbian parliament, he stated “… if we [i.e., the Serbs] don’t know how to work and do business, at least we know how to fight.” Quoted in Laura Silber and Allan Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (n.p.: TV Books, 1996), 129.
- 9.
Publius (James Madison), “The Federalist No. 51.”
- 10.
In writing this, I do not imply any condemnation of the grave markers or any memorials to those killed in the war. I simply note the fact that they exist as a constant reminder of a wrong inflicted on those individuals.
- 11.
“The Mont Fleur Scenarios,” Viewable art, http://www.generonconsulting.com/publications/papers/pdfs/Mont%20Fleur.pdf.
- 12.
George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States, in The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 599.
- 13.
William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun. First Vintage International Edition. (New York: Random House, 2011), Act 1, Scene 3.
- 14.
William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (New York: Random House, 1948), 148–149.
- 15.
Tom Wolfe, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970).
- 16.
See Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo (Monroe, ME: Comman Courage Press, 1999). For a self-reflective take on another conflict, see Daniel Pepper, “I was a Naïve Fool to Be a Human Shield for Saddam Hussein.” The Telegraph. Filed March 23, 2003. No longer available on newspaper website, viewable at: http://faculty.piercecollege.edu/chartrfj/Articles%20and%20UN%20and%20Iraq%20and%209%2011%20Korea/I%20Was%20A%20Fool%20To%20Be%20A%20Human%20Shield%20For%20Saddam.html.
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Queen, E. (2016). Questioning Assumptions Beneath Conflict Transformation. In: Ott Marshall, E. (eds) Conflict Transformation and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56840-3_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56840-3_10
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