Emotional Dynamics - Sociology of Peace Processes - Lecture Notes, Study notes of Sociology

Download Emotional Dynamics - Sociology of Peace Processes - Lecture Notes and more Study notes Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! 1 The Sociology of Peace Processes Lecture 9 summary: dealing with emotions in peacemaking The interest in understanding the emotional dynamics of post violence societies does not come from within the sociology of emotions. It comes instead from within the sociology of law, particularly the famous restorative justice approach and its new focus on what it calls ‘restorative peacemaking’. This gives an exclusive focus on anger-shame-guilt-reintegration as the emotions that are aroused by communal violence and which need to be managed in peace processes. This seriously misrepresents the emotional dynamics of post-violence societies. The sociology of emotions has the potential to offer a broader understanding of emotions but has not so far interested itself in post violence adjustments. We need a much wider understanding of the emotions at play in post-violence adjustments. There is only a narrow range of emotions identified within the sociology of law because the pioneering idea of restorative justice initiated the concern with emotions in law. John Braithwaite in his famous book Crime, Shame and Reintegration first outlined restorative justice. Restorative justice involves invoking public shame. This has been applied to managing the emotions after communal violence. In a later book entitled Restorative Justice and Responsive Regulation, John Braithwaite developed what he calls ‘restorative peacemaking’ and Thomas Scheff has suggested that shame and revenge can be used as forms of peacemaking. While the anger-shame-guilt-reintegration paradigm has some utility when applied to peacemaking, there are also weaknesses. This is in part because communal violence provokes a broader range of emotions than normally discussed in restorative justice and is complicated by the emotions aroused by peace itself. In addressing post- violence adjustments, the anger-shame-guilt-reintegration paradigm also tends to focus too narrowly on shame-guilt management structures adopted from restorative justice settings and neglect the broader social policy framework that facilitates successful peacemaking. This is in part because in approaching the issue of peacemaking the paradigm is heavily influenced by the ‘good governance’ discourse. The application of restorative justice to peacemaking thus begins with a difficulty in that communal violence is not like ordinary crime in the emotional response it provokes. Ordinary crimes rarely reach the range or intensity of emotions aroused by communal violence, which often involve zero-sum conflicts about groups’ core identity and tradition. When self-identity is absorbed into the group however, members are not diffuse individual spectators, for the emotional experience becomes a collective one felt by all group members: the one offence becomes a thousand cuts. Nonetheless, there are least five possible usages of restorative peacemaking, some of which are more feasible than others. They are: • Restorative justice in reintegrating belligerents • Restorative conferences in healing divisions between people • Truth commissions as a way of handling the past • The use of shame apologies for assigning culpability docsity.com 2 • Restorative diplomacy and responsive regulation A strong case has been made for the use of restorative justice in the reintegration of former perpetrators and combatants as an alternative to the criminal justice system Braithwaite stresses the contribution of restorative justice in dealing with problems around amnesty, epitomised by Rwanda’s use of traditional gacaca courts. Scheff has advocated the use of restorative conferences in Northern Ireland. These anger-shame- guilt management structures help by facilitating ‘shame apologies’. Truth commissions, or other truth recovery projects, have strong restorative justice elements and are intended to achieve much the same purpose but by means of dealing with the emotions around memory of past violence. The final contribution of the paradigm to peacemaking is the advocation of what Braithwaite calls restorative diplomacy (for initially negotiating the settlement) and responsive regulation (for maintaining it afterwards). It involves as a first choice ‘restorative peacemaking’ amongst elites and masses, but carrying with it the threat of escalating intervention by the international community – UN Security Council warnings, selective or comprehensive sanctions and UN peacekeeping forces – in a hierarchy of responses intended to generate reintegrative shame that brings perpetrators to the negotiating table. Restorative diplomacy also involves the international community strengthening the hand of tolerant elites and supporting, materially and symbolically, a range of grassroots peacemaking initiatives. Braithwaite stresses a range of regulatory measures to manage adjustment problems, including economic regulation to prevent warlords using patronage to sustain the conflict, the introduction of human rights law to regulate the use of state power, and forms of legal regulation that prioritise restorative justice to avoid retributive criminalisation. This is very like the ‘good governance’ approach. Restorative peacemaking has three weaknesses: • Naivety over what post-violence means. • The privileging of shame-guilt as post-violence emotions. • Narrow depictions of the post-violence regulatory framework. I want to concentrate on its depiction of the emotional dynamics of post-violence societies. It’s naïve because violence very rarely ends with peace processes, not even in the medium term. Restorative peacemaking has to operate in other words, in a situation where the old enmities continue, where mistrust has not been assuaged and where violence can destabilise elite and grassroots initiatives by closing the space for compromise. Restoration conferences to be successful require the communal violence to be at an end and that the emotions brought to them are not continually inflamed and reproduced by more violence. Misconceptions about the nature of violence impact negatively also on the paradigm’s focus on anger-shame-guilt as the primary emotion. Peace processes require an envisioning of the future as much as an emotional packaging of the past. Hope is as critical to restorative peacemaking as shame-guilt. In addition to the neglect of more positive emotions, the paradigm under-estimates the array of negative ones by its concentration on anger-shame-guilt. This is in part because it overlooks the emotions aroused by the peace process itself. Peace comes with an ontological cost. But the most serious objection to the paradigm’s characterisation of emotions after communal violence is that anger-shame-guilt can be docsity.com