PEACEMAKING AS HAVING AN ATTITUDE
September 28, 2016
In human motivation as in
physics, an attitude is an inertial force that governs the direction we move
from one moment of interaction within and among ourselves, and within the
ecosystem that sustains us. In social
science, any datum, offenses recorded for example, has no meaning in
itself. A quantity of personal or social
data means nothing without postulating what it has meant to those involved. As Newtonian (closed-system/determined) is to
quantum (open-system/stochastic) mechanics, so coding social data as implying
states of mind (as in mens rea), is to
inferring attitudes implied by the emergent substance during the course of what
we say and do, of what concerns us moment to moment. It is why Richard Quinney and I changed the
title for the book of writings we collected from Criminology as Peace to Criminology
as Peacemaking. The problem of unresolved conflict becomes a matter of
evolving process rather than of change of state—as well represented in everyday
discourse by talking about people having an attitude problem. In arguments, it is manifested as
determination to make a point, as by sentencing someone to extended
confinement.
Essentially, I call the difference between whether conflict is escalating
into homicide, confinement, exclusion, or war—that is, becomes entropic, heats
up; or synergizes (see Buckminster Fuller on Synergetics), that is cools down as parties to conflict build
honesty, trust and safety together (in larger terms, transform competing into
cooperating) warmaking and peacemaking.
In moments of conflict, a warmaking attitude prevails as long as anyone
persisting in trying to have his or her own way regardless of its adverse
effects on others. Peacemaking entails
balancing conflicting interests and concerns.
On one hand, it entails being able safely and openly to take one’s own
stand. On the other hand, giving
opposing parties the benefit of the same airing of grievances, without retaliation. As I entered a year in a Norwegian secondary
school back in 1961, I knew only one way to talk about teaching and learning in
the language—å lære
til (“to learn to”) and å lære av (“to learn from”). Learning as teaching reminds something I was
told growing up in the U.S. Midwest: “That’ll learn you!” A corollary expression attributed to Native
American elders is, “I’m still learning.”
Peacemaking in moments of conflict (as when teachers degrade students
for failing to have the right answers) entails balancing safe turns between talking
openly and listening—to establish balance in the conversation over, in effect,
someone doing all the talking and someone else doing all the listening. To do all the listening amounts implicitly to
martyrdom or oppression. To do all the
talking, to persist in making or proving one’s point, amounts to narcissism, or
in the extreme psycho-/sociopathy, individually and collectively. It is a process which, sparked individually,
can expand geometrically, so that for example the culture among actors in a
formally hierarchical, judgmental, punitive criminal justice process may grow
restorative.
We typically make peace in the face of conflicts throughout our daily
lives without noticing them. Conflict
becomes trivial when we’re getting along.
We don’t have to notice we’re making peace when do so. But to me, peacemaking only grows and
transforms a prevailing culture of domination and punishment into a prevailing
culture of power-sharing and mutual accommodation as we become conscious of how
it works, and more consciously apply it across all our relations, sustained
basically our own capacity to balance standing up for ourselves with hearing
back from them in their own terms. To
some degree, many if not most of us enjoy the freedom just to let go of or
abandon relations that don’t work out, including where and whom we live, work and
do business with. Trying to balance open
self-expression of a problem one has with someone else begins by recognizing
and acknowledging that a conflict exists, and by turns, allowing yourself free
self-expression, and hearing and somehow (not necessarily verbally)
acknowledging one’s recognition and acceptance that others mean what they say,
not what you want them to say, do or feel.
As I used to put it when I opened victim-offender mediation, peacemaking
entails refraining from name calling (aka labeling) and interruption, and being
willing to allow time for all issues to get on the table and discussed until no
one feels anything further needs to be said, and so letting go. From a subordinate position, peacemaking
entails finding a safe way to air one’s grievances. From a superior position, peacemaking means
seeking out and listening without to others’ grievances in their own terms without
retaliation; with a willingness to continue allow time for all involved to say
and deal with anything further that needs to be said. Peacemaking takes time and attention.
Methodologically, peacemaking is implicitly quantitative at the nominal
level. The transformation of violence
through peacemaking amounts to shifting our orientation toward our internal and
social gyroscopes, from one direction to another, as signified by what we say
and do, from being determined to make a point or establish an order, to taking
time to recognize and address the fear, pain and resistance it generates in
others. In mediation, shifting the
direction and terms of conflict involves reframing
of one’s own take on what the problem is, moment to moment, from issue to
remaining issues. Empirically, the
difference between whether violence is escalating or being transformed as peace
is made is manifested by changes in semantics, in what people are after, moment
by moment. Do participants persist in
driving home or making points, or do they make allowances for what matters to
others when they make their own points?
In theory, researchers could chart, then quantify and analyze emergence
and persistence of moments of divergence and convergence, and test their
effects on outcomes that emerge. In
retrospect, it is how and whether the aims and concerns of parties to conflict
remain fixed, or reorient themselves as parties achieve mutual understanding,
and allow their remaining differences to surface for discussion: it is
narrative method, it is ethnography.
Fortunately, in my experience, it isn’t that hard for people who don’t
already have the habit to recognize a choice in themselves whether to adopt a
peacemaking attitude, or hang onto our grievances and to getting what we want
from the outset, to keep fighting till we prevail. In moments of conflict, we teach by learning,
or we stand our ground (“put our foot down”).
You don’t have to learn from a textbook to notice the process when you
engage your own conflicts, to become aware of how what you are saying and doing
is interpreted as you observe and listen to others, to give yourself room to
establish your own position and allow room to gain understanding in turn of
where others are coming from as you reframe their responses and yours. It is how you feel when you get together with
friends and decide what to do next, let alone what to say next, which is to say
what happens when you enjoy doing things together. For that matter, it is probably how you deal
with moments of conflict in long-term friendships.
Unfortunately, most of the “empirical” social research I see defines the
meaning of the data produced by people they don’t know by what it means as
researchers define it for themselves.
Social inquiry only has validity to me, for all practical and
methodological purposes, insofar as I infer the meaning the datum has to its
producer, by inferring the story the informant is trying to tell, on his or her
own terms, as distinct from mine.
Peacemaking manifests itself “empirically” in shifting, intertwining
courses and direction of terms of agreement or settlement, moment to moment. But to do it, and teach it and discover it in
research, we have to notice when it happens and choose to adopt a peacemaking
attitude or definition of the situation and choices of response. In research as in practice, whether violence
escalates and hardens or gets transformed as peacemaking depends on our
attitude toward what matters and what to do about it. It’s our attitude toward learning and
teaching that counts. The attitude is
the method. Love and peace, hal
