Peace Processes

A Sociological Approach

John D. Brewer

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745659237
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Peace processes are mostly very fragile. This engagingly written book takes a bold new approach to the topic by beginning from the premise that sociology can identify those factors that help to stabilize them.

The book draws a distinction between the political and social dimensions of peace processes, arguing that each is dependent on the other. Consideration of the social peace process, neglected in conventional treatments of the subject, is made central to this volume. While complementing current approaches that emphasize institutional reform in politics, law and economics, it pays due attention to sociological factors such as gender, civil society, religion, the deconstruction of violent masculinities, restorative justice, emotions, hope, forgiveness, truth recovery, social memory and public victimhood. These important themes are fully illustrated with examples and in-depth case studies from across the globe.

The book locates itself within the growing debate about the positive impact of global civil society on peace and identifies the new forms of peace work engendered by globalization. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of peace studies in politics, international relations and sociology departments.

1

Types of post-violence society

Introduction

If war and peace implicate one another, peace processes are obviously affected by the kind of violence that has taken place; and to understand peace, we therefore need first to know more about violence. Violence can be distinguished by its scale, such as interpersonal or collective violence; by the social space in which it occurs, such as violence in the home or in the public sphere; by its motivating force, such as ‘domestic’, political, racial, terrorist violence and the like; and by its intentionality, which contrasts direct violence with indirect structural violence. A lot of these terms overlap.

The types of violence that occurred offer one way of distinguishing the different kinds of post-conflict society. In this manner there would be post-colonial societies, post-civil war societies and so on. Oberschall (2007) has explored the dynamics of peace building in what he calls ‘divided societies’, although he restricts the term to those societies divided by ethnicity, focusing on Bosnia, Israel–Palestine and Northern Ireland. Jeffrey Alexander (2004a; see also Alexander et al., 2004) has deployed the term ‘post-trauma society’ in a similar universalistic manner (used also by the European Journal of Social Theory, 2008). Social science interest in trauma reflects the tragic reality of the atrocious events that have marked late modernity, and recovery from trauma has infused social science interest in memory, remembering and ‘truth’ recovery, amongst other things, and enabled us to see the sociological implications of things like suffering (Wilkinson, 2005). Contemporary genocides have reinvigorated interest in the Holocaust (on which see Alexander, 2004b).

‘Cultural trauma’ is used by Alexander and colleagues to refer to the scale and effects of the atrocious event and occurs when ‘members of a collectivity feel they have been subject to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways’ (Alexander, 2004a: 1). United States’ sociologists have 9/11 in mind when they write thus, although it has made them sensitive to earlier cultural traumas in their own history (such as slavery – see, for example, Eyerman, 2004). Cultural traumas can be disconnected from the sort of violence that interests me, since they are often not embedded in the social structure in which they occur; natural disasters can provoke the feelings of cultural trauma Alexander describes. Indeed, Alexander and colleagues draw heavily on Kai Erikson’s earlier disaster research in which he made a distinction between individual and collective trauma (1976: 153). Tsunamis, earthquakes, floods and hurricanes can all cause cultural trauma, making the term far removed from our purposes.

Given the inadequacy of existing terms like ‘post-divided’, ‘post-conflict’ and ‘post-trauma’ societies, my purpose in this chapter is to define the category called ‘post-violence society’ and to develop a typology that distinguishes between three kinds according to how they cohere along three axes. The taxonomy is used to identify one type of post-violence society, that in which peace accords based on consensus have been developed, as the major focus of this book. As we shall see in chapter 2, violence or its threat is rarely eliminated completely with negotiated peace processes, and these societies are characterized by having policy agendas directed to the active maintenance of peace and to the management of the risks surrounding the outbreak of renewed communal violence. The non-violence is thus relative. Peace accords tend universally to be fragile; and there are good sociological reasons why this is so. With this in mind, I want in this chapter to outline the varying ways in which post-violence societies can be distinguished and to assess their potential for stability.

The category ‘post-violence society’ is applicable to those social formations that have undergone transition from communal violence to relative non-violence, such as Latin America, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Southern Sudan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Northern Ireland, to name but a few contemporary examples. Historical examples include Spain after Franco, West Germany after the fall of Hitler, Cuba or Mexico after their revolutions, Poland and other Eastern European countries after the fall of Communism, and so on. These examples offer sociology the opportunity to reflect less on the dynamics of communal violence and more on the transition process that has brought it to an end. There are obvious differences between these societies and it is perhaps important first to celebrate difference before we address commonality.

A note on the comparative method

The category of ‘post-violence society’ includes countries that differ in their history of violence, both the scale of conflict and its nature. In some cases it is full-scale war that is being transformed, as in Rwanda; in others sporadic, intermittent acts of communal violence. They also differ in who the victims were. Sometimes the violence was directed at the state, leaving much of the population unscathed, once supporters of the old regime are discounted. In these situations the old regime or toppled dictator can be used to assign away blame. While the abolition of the apartheid regime in South Africa still leaves issues of reconciliation to be dealt with, its dissolution has confined issues of responsibility to the past, enabling the apartheid regime to be a convenient commode into which to pack all the problems that beset contemporary South Africa and explain responsibility away. The fall of Hitler, the ending of the Franco regime in Spain and the toppling of Latin American dictatorships served the same purpose. But in other cases the communal violence was focused on members of other ethnic groups, as in Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland and the Philippines; it was neighbour killing neighbour, thus spreading the scale and intensity of victimhood, limiting the capacity to assign responsibility to the past and leaving the policy problem of maintaining non-violence.

The category also includes countries that differ in the lines of social cleavage that structured the communal violence (varying from ‘race’, ethnicity, religion, national origin and identity to political ideology). Mostly there has been a single line of cleavage, although the cleavage has tended to function as a social marker for much wider inequalities. The capacity of religion in Ireland or ‘race’ in South Africa to represent broader lines of differentiation is obvious. However, some instances of communal conflict are complicated by the cross-cutting nature of the social cleavages involved. In Sri Lanka, for example, religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam are the main religions) does not map easily on to ethnic differences (Sinhalese, Tamil) or variations in wealth, so that addressing the Sinhalese–Tamil ethnic relationship is not a simple solution (see Wijesinghe, 2003). On the other hand, single lines of social cleavage make some peace accords no easier to negotiate, since some cleavages are less easily reconcilable than others, in that they are perceived as inviolable, primordial and absolute and thus lend themselves readily to the worst kind of zero-sum conflict. Some cleavages can be more readily accommodated by constitutional and institutional rearrangements, while others leave a permanent strain on the accord, increasing the danger of renewed violence.

Attempting a comparative analysis of post-violence societies thus risks over-simplification and perhaps historical distortion. Conversely, sociology’s claim to usefulness is that it rises above the particular to focus on the general, continually advancing the grounds on which comparisons between cases are possible, thus increasing its potential for drawing policy lessons and advancing knowledge. It seems particularly apposite with post-violence adjustments that general lessons are drawn from the experiences of individual cases. Nonetheless, taxonomies are heuristic devices intended to illuminate the reality they describe and are only as good as their capacity to do this. They must be sensitive to variations and subtleties. In this vein we can identify three types of post-violence society, distinguished by the basis on which peace was primarily achieved. The distinction between negative and positive peace is important to the categorization.

Kinds of post-violence society

Post-violence societies come in three forms. For the sake of alliteration they can be called ‘conquest’, ‘cartography’ and ‘compromise’. They cohere around three axes, which I call:

• relational distance–closeness

• spatial separation–territorial integrity

• cultural capital–cultural annihilation.

Relational distance–closeness refers to the extent to which former belligerents share common values and norms. This might be thought a misnomer for, inasmuch as there is (or was) conflict between them, the belligerents must surely be divided? However, people very close in culture, belief and tradition can be in conflict; if this were not the case, European nations would not have been at war with one another since the Middle Ages and few civil wars would be fought. Or, at least, the lines of cleavage between people and groups who are relationally close can appear greater than they really are and that which divides them is actually smaller than that which unites them. Perceptual cues can be measured and evaluated to exaggerate the cultural distinctions and often rely on finely graded stereotypical flags that are rendered into huge symbolic differences (such as naming practices as an index of identity). Rex (1981: 8) has made the point that conflict that touch people’s sense of ultimate values will move to more and more radical definitions of disagreement. This is the case even where relational closeness otherwise exists, so that groups find the smallest of ways of demarcating their distance from each other, such as the use of colour as emblems in Californian gang culture (see Brown Childs, 2003a, 2003b). The smallness of the degree of asserted difference seems inversely proportional to the degree of relational closeness. For example, as Akenson (1988) argued, the cultural divisions between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland are quite few, although the respective communities perceive the differences to be larger than they are and to make all the difference. But where relational closeness has some basis in people’s experience despite the evident fracture that provokes the conflict, post-conflict adjustments are easier because the line of division can become seen after the event as relatively minor and resolvable. Perceptions of relational closeness can be socially constructed after the conflict where healing becomes associated with the nation-rebuilding project, as happened in post-civil war America and post-war West Germany.

With respect to post-Nazi West Germany, for example, Frei (2002) shows that Adenauer deliberately evaded the USA’s insistence on a denazification programme of trials, purges and re-education to transform former Nazis into democrats, and almost immediately set about dismantling the Allies’ programme, adopting amnesty laws and employment policies that placed former Nazis back in government and in the professions as teachers, doctors, judges and bureaucrats. The government also took up the cause of war criminals held by the Allies (the United States, after all, employed many pro-Nazi scientists in its own nuclear and armaments industries). As West Germany’s importance rose as a base for Allied forces in the Cold War, the Western Alliance gave in to Chancellor Adenauer’s demands and by 1958 all war criminals had been pardoned or released, with the exception of the Nuremberg defendants and those held by the Soviets. Geo-politics explains why the Allies coalesced but relational closeness amongst all West Germans gave Adenauer the impetus to want to wipe away the past. Frei (2002: 156) discusses the notion that Adenauer’s generosity may have been a ploy to enhance people’s allegiance to his government but argues effectively that the amnesty and reintegration policies went much further than were necessary to placate the German right wing. Politicians and church leaders interceded for people convicted of war crimes and the government paid for their legal defence, being excessively keen to absolve ordinary Nazis and Nazi sympathizers of complicity. Frei argues that the West Germans adopted this policy in order to absolve themselves – to attribute blame to the failed Hitler regime rather than allocate responsibility to individuals like themselves; but behind this urge was the principle of relational closeness that sought to avoid the past dividing West Germans any further.

Relational distance on the other hand ensures that the lines of fissure that once provoked the conflict remain and now need to be reproduced in non-violent ways. Relational distance ensures the continued separation of peoples along lines of important social cleavage, fissures that must lose the heat of contention if the post-violence adjustment is to succeed. Some peace accords still leave people divided and proffer ways of dealing politically with the divisions in non-violent ways. This can be achieved moderately successfully where the politics works – such as in the new South Africa or in Francophone-speaking Canada, for example – but the continued social cleavages that feed relational distance can affect groups’ perception of the fairness of the politics and destabilize the new arrangements, for example in Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland and the Basque region of Spain. The extent of the new South Africa’s achievement is all the more remarkable when one considers the degree of relational distance that the fall of the apartheid regime left untouched and the failure of the African National Congress (ANC) government to deal with social redistribution.

Spatial separation–territorial integrity describes the degree to which former belligerents continue to share common land and nationhood. Partition is the extreme form of spatial separation. It is not just islands – like Cyprus, Ireland or Indonesia – that have experienced partition as a form of spatial separation to keep erstwhile enemies apart; former mainland states can also be carved up to isolate the belligerents, sometimes with a measure of equanimity, as in the division of the old Czechoslovakia, sometimes with more enmity, as with the former Yugoslavia and the separation of India and Pakistan. But partition is not the only form of spatial separation. Various forms of regional devolution can be implemented within a federal structure to maintain a weakened and limited form of territorial integrity. These federal structures are in themselves different in the way they sustain a sense of spatial separation. The United States seems capable of balancing high levels of commitment to common nationhood, at least in regard to citizens’ relationship with outsiders, while permitting local forms of government that furnish strong local state identities. The Basque region of Spain, in contrast, while formally part of the national state and included in a single territorial unit that maintains the integrity of Spain’s national borders, is for all intents and purposes culturally and linguistically distinct from the rest of Spain, with the federal structure disguising near total spatial separation.

Spatial separation, in other words, comes in degrees and some forms do not eliminate old enmities, leading to the threat of renewed conflict. This threat is more real where the peace settlement leaves the national boundaries intact. Full territorial integrity ensures the continuance of the national entity within which – and sometimes over which – the former belligerents fought. Government remains centralized and the nation keeps its geographical boundaries and symbolic borders. People and groups share the nation – perhaps now less unequally and with more inclusivity – and groups continue to live as neighbours in a shared if not quite common nationhood. Conflicts that are managed by spatial separation are resolved by keeping the warring groups apart; conflict that result in the maintenance of territorial integrity require warring groups to find ways of living with each other, side-by-side.

Full territorial integrity is not necessarily a bar to successful conflict management. Europe offers many examples of linguistic groups contentedly sharing territory but not language, as does Canada, but these examples only serve to reinforce the point that peace processes are affected by the kind of violence that has taken place. Accommodation to forms of cultural nationalism is easier to effect if the conflict was restricted to the cultural sphere – in disputes about language, cultural symbols and the like – and was not violent. Retaining full territorial integrity is more problematic when the conflict spread throughout the social structure and led to communal violence as a masquerade for politics. Kaufmann (1996, 1998) has argued persuasively that communal conflict based on identity that have caused a considerable number of civilian casualties can be pacified only by spatial separation. He notes three caveats to this rule: where such conflict end with decisive victory by one side that then occupies the entire territory (although this hardly seems to constitute peace); when third parties intervene to end the conflict temporarily (carrying the risk of renewed outbreaks of violence when the third party withdraws); and where each federated region or structure is so small as to be unable to pose an imaginable threat to all the others combined (thus constituting less than full territorial integrity). These arguments rehearse my point about the difficulties faced by post-violence societies that maintain their full territorial integrity in a non-federal system.

Cultural capital–cultural annihilation addresses the level of cultural and other resources possessed by former belligerents. I am not distinguishing here, in the contemporary fashion, between types of capital – social, material or economic – but using the term ‘cultural’ in an old-fashioned imperialistic way to describe all forms of resources, in much the same manner as when the term ‘culture’ was a synonym for society as a whole. There is the need to make another crucial qualification. Cultural annihilation does not mean total extermination. Genocide rarely wipes out the national, religious, ethnic or racial group entirely, but some groups can be so decimated that their culture does not survive with sufficient vitality to remain a living culture that furnishes people with symbols, oral histories and other material, social and political resources to maintain a separate identity or mount resistance to their defeat. Annihilation is not eradication but rather the stripping away of effective cultural resources for resistance; not the killing of bodies but the spirit. This can be achieved voluntarily by assimilation (although some assimilation policies are imposed from above in a way that is counter-productive to the purpose of assimilation and only assists in keeping the culture alive, such as in modern France with its Muslim immigrants), but annihilation is mostly accomplished by force of conquest or by dint of neglect. People survive but their cultural identity is weakened and reduced to residue, rituals, relics or memory; kept alive, if at all, in an oral or written tradition with a glorious past but little contemporary relevance to their lives. North American Indians, Australian aboriginal peoples, East European Romany culture, and South African Hottentots are examples of annihilated cultures that furnish members with very little material or symbolic capital to resist their original dispossession.

However, some groups can be vanquished in a communal conflict but retain their cultural capital. Colonial appropriation, for example, does not always annihilate the dispossessed, for metropolitan states that depend on the indigenous peoples for their economic labour never destroy the capital of the defeated, for their labour is a form of power. Their culture is kept alive as a resource to be mobilized internationally by diaspora networks that lead to third parties assisting in the maintenance of the legitimacy of the defeated group. The Tamil diaspora throughout the Western world, for example, effectively keeps Sri Lanka’s peace process on the international agenda when the country itself lacks the natural resources or strategic location to make it of much interest to Western powers. Maori groups in New Zealand have engaged effectively in forms of cultural struggle via social movement participation; the mobilization of Australian and North American Aboriginal peoples pales in comparison although is not entirely absent since, as noted above, cultural annihilation does not mean extermination. Maori culture also faces a less racist dominant culture than in Australia and North America. That the Israel–Palestine conflict has not culminated in the cultural annihilation of the Palestinians, despite the long pro-Israeli stance of most Western governments, is testimony to the importance of the cultural...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: war, peace and communal violence
• 1 Types of post-violence society
• 2 The problem of peace processes
• 3 Civil society
• 4 Gender
• 5 Emotions
• 6 Memory, ‘truth’ and victimhood/Place
• Conclusion: a sociological approach to peace processes
• References
• Index