Conflict Transformation and Religion

Essays on Faith, Power, and Relationship

Ellen Ott Marshall

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137568403
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

Writing from a variety of contexts, the contributors to this volume describe the ways that conflict and their efforts to engage it constructively shape their work in classrooms and communities. Each chapter begins with a different experience of conflict—a physical confrontation, shooting and killing, ethnic violence, a hate crime, overt and covert racism, structural violence, interpersonal conflict in a family, and the marginalization of youth. The authors employ a variety of theoretical and practical responses to conflict, highlighting the role that faith, power, and relationships play in processes of transformation. As these teachers and ministers engage conflict constructively, they put forward novel approaches toward teaching, training, care, solidarity, and advocacy. Their stories demonstrate how conflict can serve as a site for positive change and transformation.

© The Author(s) 2016

Ellen Ott Marshall (ed.)Conflict Transformation and Religion10.1057/978-1-137-56840-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Learning Through Conflict, Working for Transformation

Ellen Ott Marshall¹

(1)

Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

End Abstract

Conflict can be a site for constructive change. This assertion sits at the heart of the theory and practice of conflict transformation. It is also the starting place for this volume in which teachers and Christian ministers describe the ways that conflict and their efforts to engage it constructively shape their work. Each chapter begins in a different place: the South Hebron hills of Palestine, the streets of Belfast, a Catholic seminary in Uganda, an urban park and a dormitory in the southern USA, and US classrooms at a seminary, a college, and a prison. Each chapter begins with a different experience of conflict: a physical confrontation among Jewish settlers, a Palestinian family, and the international volunteers accompanying them; shooting and killing during the Troubles in Belfast; ethnic violence in Eastern Africa; a hate crime against a gay couple; overt and covert racism; the structural violence of the prison system; interpersonal conflict related to religious practices within a family; and the ongoing marginalization and surveillance of youth. Each chapter draws on different theoretical resources to analyze and respond to conflict: strategic peacebuilding, feminist theory, relational theology, engaged pedagogy, narrative theory, theology of grace, adolescent studies, transformative mediation, and womanist thought. In their diversity, these authors reflect myriad theoretical and practical responses to conflict. As such, they expand the repertoire for transformation.

Moreover, in a striking way, the contributors to this volume utilize their experiences of conflict to transform their pedagogy and ministry. As these teachers and Christian ministers engage conflict constructively, they transform their approach to teaching, training, care, solidarity, and advocacy. Faith and theological vocation inform the context and substance of each essay, although some authors are explicit about this and others are not. They teach in Protestant theological schools, serve in parish ministry, and work with faith-related organizations. In the variety of scripture passages, convictions, and schools of thought they reference, relationality emerges as a central theme. The contributors describe practices rooted in a relational anthropology and a relational faith. They perceive connectedness among people and share a commitment to justice and mutuality within relationship. They complicate and deepen their writing on relationship by attending honestly and astutely to power. They write about the ways in which teachers, ministers, and advocates sometimes reinforce hierarchical structures or ignore the unjust power structures in which they work and from which they benefit. In racially and economically diverse classrooms, international accompaniment, journeys through trauma, circles of truth-telling and reconciliation, the prison system, and ministries with youth, these writers demonstrate the challenge and potential of power in the work of transformation. Like conflict itself, power is something that one must unveil, analyze, and engage constructively.

The reality of power, the centrality of relationship, the influence of faith, and the potential of conflict constitute inter-related themes running through the chapters. Their presence is neither coincidental nor inconsequential since they play a significant role in transformation. For each contributor, transformation requires constructive engagement with conflict, just and creative use of power, attentiveness to relationship, and commitment to a vision of mutual well-being in community. By exploring this process in the contexts of teaching and ministry, these essays draw from and contribute to the existing literature on conflict transformation.

1.1 An Introduction to Conflict Transformation

Like most new concepts and approaches, conflict transformation emerged as a response to changing circumstances and as a supplement to existing practices. In the 1980s, many scholars and practitioners found the conflict resolution framework increasingly problematic. They challenged the use of mediation in the context of asymmetrical conflicts and argued that gross power imbalances must be addressed first. They questioned a focus on negotiating immediate needs without addressing underlying, structural issues. In the face of protracted and multi-faceted conflicts, they recommended process-oriented and relationship-focused strategies in addition to problem-solving strategies. They also criticized conflict resolution procedures that included only government actors and outside experts and called for increased involvement from non-governmental actors and local wisdom.

The 1990s witnessed the publication of several important articles and texts intended to articulate this shift in response to conflict.¹ Peace and conflict studies programs began to integrate conflict transformation material and courses into the curriculum; and some graduate programs in peace studies and in theological education have since developed degree programs related to conflict transformation.² Moreover, several organizations not only practice conflict transformation, but also regularly offer training institutes and workshops on conflict transformation.³ In practice and in scholarship, conflict transformation has assumed its place as the latest development in the lineage of approaches to conflict: conflict prevention, management, and resolution. While conflict transformation scholars and practitioners generally agree that conflict cannot be prevented and should be more than managed, they disagree about the relationship between conflict transformation and its immediate predecessor, resolution. Some issue a strong critique of resolution and emphasize a conceptual and practical departure; others perceive resolution as necessary but not sufficient to the goal of peace with justice. Taking a moderate position, Hugh Miall, Professor of International Relations at the University of Kent, describes conflict transformation as distinct, but not wholly separate from these other approaches. It “is best viewed … as a reconceptualisation of the field in order to make it more relevant to [the asymmetric, protracted, and multi-faceted nature of] contemporary conflicts.”⁴

Miall is well known for his contributions to the Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation, an online resource maintained by the Berghof Foundation. In his essay, “Conflict Transformation: A Multi-Dimensional Task,” Miall offers this comprehensive description of the ways in which conflict transformation reconceptualizes the work:

Conflict transformation theorists argue that contemporary conflicts require more than the reframing of positions and the identification of win-win outcomes. The very structure of parties and relationships may be embedded in a pattern of conflictual relationships that extend beyond the particular site of conflict. Conflict transformation is therefore a process of engaging with and transforming the relationships, interests, discourses and, if necessary, the very constitution of society that supports the continuation of violent conflict. Constructive conflict is seen as a vital agent or catalyst for change.⁵

To unpack this statement, let us consider these conceptual shifts more fully. First, conflict transformation theory understands conflict as a natural and necessary part of life. Diana Francis, former President of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and Chair of the Committee for Conflict Transformation Support, defines conflict “as the friction caused by difference, proximity, and movement.”⁶ Like the ecosystem of which we are a part, human beings are changing and interrelated; therefore conflict is both natural and unavoidable. More than this, conflict is a dialectic and catalytic phenomenon as Professor of International Peacebuilding, John Paul Lederach, explains in his 1995 book, Preparing for Peace.⁷

Social conflict is a phenomenon of human creation, lodged naturally in relationships. It is a phenomenon that transforms events, the relationships in which conflict occurs, and indeed its very creators. It is a necessary element in transformative human construction and reconstruction of social organization and realities.⁸

Thus, one of the central features of conflict transformation is “understanding that conflict is dynamic and can be an agent of positive conversion.”⁹ Rather than beginning with the assumption that conflict can be prevented, this approach understands conflict to be a normal and unavoidable part of life. Rather than perceiving conflict as something to be managed and contained, conflict transformation intends to work constructively with conflict as a catalyst for change.

The second conceptual shift prompted by the transformative approach emphasizes the relational, historical, and systemic aspects of conflict. Because conflicts occur in a relational system and over time, they are not discrete, encapsulated events. Rather, conflicts are time-full and “nested” phenomena. Each conflict is embedded in a history of relationships, patterns of behavior, family systems, and social structures. Thus, a second conceptual shift in transformation approaches is to perceive the presenting issues in a conflict in connection to relational and systemic aspects. Maire Dugan introduced this form of analysis in her 1996 essay, “A Nested Theory of Conflict,” which used concentric circles to capture the relationship between an issue and its surrounding systems.¹⁰ Lederach uses a distinction between episodes and epicenters of conflict to emphasize the same form of analysis and attention to sub-structure.¹¹ When one approaches conflict as a nested phenomenon, then transformation becomes a deep and wide endeavor. Resolution of particular issues may indeed be part of the process, but transformation pushes for “deep-rooted, enduring, positive change in individuals, relationships, and the structures of the human community.”¹²

This emphasis on the potential for deep-rooted, constructive change to occur through conflict reflects the attention that transformation scholar-practitioners pay to structural injustice. As mentioned above, the mismatch between asymmetrical conflicts and traditional conflict resolution approaches generated much of the criticism that lead to the emergence of conflict transformation. In her work, Diana Francis has been very critical of conflict resolution practices that fail to address structural injustice. In doing so, conflict resolution “ignores the demands of justice and the realities of power.” Francis focuses her critique on the role of the impartial outsider brought in to mediate a dispute. If the procedure does not attend to unjust structures and the mediator is committed to impartiality, then there is “no room for moral judgements,” argues Francis. She then describes the cost of this approach as “an underemphasis on the potentially constructive roles of those directly involved in the conflict (the ‘primary parties’), and the place for advocacy and solidarity roles for third parties (Francis and Ropers, 1997).”¹³ Francis recommends linking conflict resolution to nonviolent resistance, arguing that these are truly “blood relatives” rather than antithetical practices and that they comprise the “twin halves of conflict transformation.”¹⁴ Thus, Francis situates her work among critics of conflict resolution who employ the language of transformation in order to emphasize “the need to address underlying structural and cultural violence and … the inevitability of conflict in the process of change.”¹⁵

In Francis’s work, we see clearly the influence that nonviolent action theory has had on the emergence of conflict transformation. In his effort to track the development of this approach, Stephen Ryan, Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Ulster, describes nonviolent action as one of the intellectual streams that informs the meaning of the term transformation.¹⁶ He also notes political usage of the term “transformation” in Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine in the 1980s, as actors tried to articulate their visions for social change through violent and nonviolent conflict.¹⁷ Ryan’s observation is consistent with Lederach’s experiences in Latin America in the 1980s. Lederach found that people struggling for justice and liberation were suspicious of the language of conflict management and resolution. They interpreted efforts to manage or resol...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction: Learning Through Conflict, Working for Transformation
• 2. Transformative Solidarity: International Accompaniment as Conflict Transformation
• 3. “Word Made Flesh”: Toward a Pedagogy of a New We
• 4. Serving as a Critical Friend to Men of Violence
• 5. Living a Life of Love in the Midst of Trauma
• 6. Crossing Over: Transforming the War on Kids Through Ministries with Youth
• 7. “I Am Because We Are”: A Relational Foundation for Transformation of Conflicts and Classrooms
• 8. “Loves the Spirit”: Transformative Mediation as Pedagogical Practice
• 9. The Conflict Skills Classroom as Social Microcosm
• 10. Questioning Assumptions Beneath Conflict Transformation
• 11. Trauma, Transformation, and Transcendence
• Backmatter