Types of Post-Violence Societies: A Sociological Perspective, Study notes of Sociology

Download Types of Post-Violence Societies: A Sociological Perspective and more Study notes Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Sociology of peace processes lecture 2 Types of post-violence Hello again. Nice to see again those who came last week and the newcomers. For those who missed last week’s lecture, let me explain that overheads are placed on the web in advance of the lecture – and very occasionally so too the lecture. A summary of today’s lecture, like last week’s, is on the web under Notes Manager; make I make a heartfelt plea and ask that you please don’t abuse my generosity by not turning up. Last time I talked about the nature of communal violence, distinguishing it from similar terms like collective or interpersonal violence. I did this because peace processes are affected by the kind of violence that has taken place; and to understand peace, we need first to know about violence. The rest of our course is obviously about some of the key sociological aspects of the transition process by which communal violence is brought to an end. If you think about it, there are many examples where communal violence has been reduced or eliminated as the result of peace accords, as in much of Latin America, Rwanda, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland, to name but a few contemporary examples. There are many historical examples: in the twentieth-century one thinks of 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 docsity.com What I want to do in this lecture is to define the category ‘post violence society’ and develop a typology that distinguishes between different kinds of post violence society. The taxonomy is used to identify one type of post violence society, that type in which peace accords based on consensus have been developed. This is the type we shall focus on in the course. Let me begin by saying that peace is not an issue to which the sociological imagination has been applied much in the past. Political science, international relations and human rights law are normally the subjects that dominate the field. However, there are some sociologists who have looked at some aspects of peace and peace processes but the literature is small and limited in different ways. Some focuses on the principles and practises surrounding reconciliation as a normative value, addressing the interpersonal and even spiritual grounds on which co-existence is feasible. This work is valuable but suffers from the failure to unpack the meaning of reconciliation and to address the broader policy context that makes it feasible. There is also research by sociologists on conflict resolution and mediation techniques, but this fails to explore peace processes at the societal level and to address the policy dilemmas that pertain there. Sociologists, amongst others, have contributed substantially to our understanding of the truth-recovery procedures that often follow peace settlements, and assisted in drawing attention to the relevance of restorative justice in post violence adjustments. However, as we shall see, the policy questions posed for peace settlements extend docsity.com post violence adjustments that some sort of learning be facilitated from the experiences of individual cases. In this vein we can identify three types of post violence society, distinguished by the basis on which peace was primarily achieved. 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; spatial separation-territorial integrity describes the degree to which former belligerents continue to share common land and nationhood; and cultural capital-annihilation addresses the level of cultural and other resources possessed by former belligerents. These axes will become clearer as we develop the taxonomy. Conquest is normally associated with conventional wars between nations, but there are historical instances where internal communal violence has been successfully terminated by conquest, such as colonial and civil wars. (I exclude from this analysis UN peacekeeping interventions, which might be construed as a form of military settlement, since the UN’s is clearly non-partisan intervention. What I am referring to here is clearly partisan violence.) Post-violence adjustments after conquest tend to be easier where there is relational closeness between belligerents, such as the American docsity.com and Spanish civil wars, since there are few differences other than the allegiance around which the conflict was based, although this should not be disparaged. Post- violence adjustments after conquest are more problematic where relational distance is greater (as with the ethno-cultural and religious differences between settlers and the indigenous population). In these instances, conquest usually succeeds at the cost of the cultural annihilation of the vanquished or their effective subjugation. Many forms of military conquest therefore impose peace in the short term only by coercion, which is sustained in the long term by social practices, belief systems and power structures that continually reproduce the subjugation and marginality of the ‘other’. Where the vanquished retain cultural capital, as a result of their numerical size, labour power and role in the economy, diaspora networks or access to social capital through education and other key resources, cultural annihilation is never complete and this type of post violence society becomes susceptible to renewed communal violence in the long term around decolonisation or the competing claims of communal groups; the long quiescence of Catholics in Ireland or Africans in South Africa disguised their cultural capital and eventually led to renewed conflict. There are examples of colonial conquest where the cultural annihilation has been complete, such as North and South American indigenous groups and Aboriginal peoples in Australia, although cultural annihilation often causes internally directed violence within indigenous communities which can create fear and anxiety amongst the dominant communities living in close proximity. Australia’s aboriginal community and the US native Indian communities have a great deal of inward directed violence against each other. docsity.com Nonetheless, conquest is rarely the organising principle of post violence societies in the modern world because it contravenes human rights principles in an international order where human rights constitute the dominant discourse. Another type of post violence society is peaceful now only because cartographers have redrawn national borders and new states or devolved regions have developed as a way of dealing with the social cleavages that formerly provoked communal violence. This suggests that post-violence adjustments are sometimes perceived to be easier where former adversaries are separated spatially. Accordingly, both partition and federal devolution are popular post-violence strategies for separating warring factions. However, the historical evidence for the effectiveness of partition is mixed; sometimes it works, as in Cyprus, on other occasions it merely delays the eruption of communal violence later, as with the partition of Ireland, or transforms it eventually into conventional wars between nations, as with the India/Pakistan conflict. Cartography is not feasible where the conflict is complex and straddles several social cleavages since it cannot be rendered into simple divisions of territory (notable examples are Indonesia and Sri Lanka). Nonetheless, imposing spatial separation continues as a peace strategy. The new Balkan states are good examples, with new territorial borders attempting to keep apart various ethnic blocs, and partition is proffered as the basis on which the Palestine and Israel conflict can be solved with the ‘two states’ road map. Kaufmann has made the strongest case for partition, arguing that conflicts that have been based on communal identity and which resulted in significant civilian casualties require spatial separation of the factions. docsity.com Overheads Sociological literatures on peace • The principles and practises surrounding reconciliation as a normative value, addressing the interpersonal and even spiritual grounds on which co-existence is feasible. • Conflict resolution and mediation techniques. • Truth-recovery procedures that follow peace settlements. • Restorative justice in post violence adjustments. • A case study approach of individual peace processes. Differences between post violence societies • Differ in their history of violence, both the scale of conflict and its nature, ranging from full-scale war to intermittent acts of communal violence. • Differ in who the victims were. Sometimes the violence was directed at the state, in other it was focused on members of other ethnic groups. • Differ in the lines of social cleavage that structured the communal violence (varying from ‘race’, ethnicity, religion, national origin and identity to political ideology). Types of post violence society Three types: ‘conquest’, ‘cartography’ and ‘compromise’. Three axes: Relational distance-closeness Refers to the extent to which former belligerents share common values and norms Spatial separation-territorial integrity Describes the degree to which former belligerents continue to share common land and nationhood Cultural capital-cultural annihilation Addresses the level of cultural and other resources possessed by former belligerents. docsity.com Types of post violence society more fragile Territorial integrity Cultural capital COMPROMISE stable peace processes unstable peace processes policy dilemmas addressed policy dilemmas unmet good governance poor governance human rights law no human rights law Relational closeness Relational distance CONQUEST stable coercion unstable coercion Cultural annihilation CARTOGRAPHY new homogenous states pluralist partitions Spatial separation more secure docsity.com