Discourses on Reconciliation
Language may function as the cause of misunderstanding, a resource that is fought over, a weapon to use or the means by which conflict is resolved. This theme will explore the role of discourse and dialogue in peace building.
Speakers include:
- Ainley, Mary & Buckingham, Clare - Making-Up With Friends And Peers: Children's Strategies For Reconciliation And Restoring Peace In Interpersonal Relationships.
- Bagshaw, Dale - Challenging Discourses On Violence: From The Personal To The Political.
- Bellamy, Craig - milkbar.com.au: Memory And Place In A Digital World.
- Bornstein, Jackie - The Qualities Of Peacemakers: What Can We Learn From Nobel Peace Prize Winners About Managing Conflict?
- Cash, John - Reconciliation As A Social And Political Process.
- Conley Tyler, Melissa - "But I Can't See Them": The Theory And Practice Of Resolving Disputes Online.
- Doyle, Dominic - Ingendering Violence: The Impact Of Gender On The Shame - Anger Dynamic.
- French, Peter - Men, Masculinity, And Mayhem: Dominance, Justification And Futility.
- Johnson, David - Civil Political Discourse In A Democracy: The Need For Constructive Controversy.
- Lodge, Jodie - Educational Psychology: How Bystanders Affect Bullying And Verbal Abuse. Lusher, Dean - Masculinities And The Social Construction Of Violence.
- Morelos, Renaldo Performing The Presidency: Crisis And Doctrine In The Making Of Bush.
- Prior, Margot - The Qualities of Peacemakers: Children's Concepts of Peacemakers.
- Schaap, Andrew - Time And The Ethics Of Reconciliation.
- Singer, Peter - Keynote. International Peace And American Preeminence.
- Sparrow, Robert - Doing Justice To History: The Ethics Of Historical Narrative.
- Tan, Jaime - Using Electronic Mediums Of Communication To Negotiate: Research-In-Progress.
- Thompson, Janna - Justice And Reconciliation.
- Wayland,
Mark - Peace Education In The Era Of Globalisation.
Ainley, Mary & Buckingham, Clare
Making-Up With Friends And Peers: Children's Strategies For Reconciliation And Restoring Peace In Interpersonal Relationships.
When asked about peace children tend to refer to the absence of war (Hakvoort & Hagglund, 2001) and differentiate between international relationships and the relationships they have with peers. While they generally feel powerless to contribute to making or maintaining peace on the international scene they clearly see themselves as being active in making or maintaining peace in interpersonal relationships. In this paper we examine the responses of schoolchildren to interpersonal tensions. In particular we identify the types of strategies that children use to respond to fights and disagreements with peers. We explore the degree to which positive actions are seen to be required for restoring peace in interpersonal relationships.
Children were asked to describe a recent fight or disagreement and to report how the fight (or disagreement) ended. The answers were coded in terms of the type of actions taken to resolve (or leave unresolved) the interpersonal conflict. The codes included solutions such as compromise, withdrawal from the situation, aggression, and the intervention of external authorities both invited and imposed. There were also instances where it was clear that both parties were intent on keeping the conflict alive - this was coded as 'maintaining the rage'. Comparisons between the responses of children of different ages indicated that younger children were more likely to refer to external authority or resort to aggressive means to settle the dispute. Solutions that specifically mentioned looking at the issue from the other's point of view were generally only found in the responses of the older children. Gender differences in the types of solutions favoured have also been explored.
The apparent developmental differences in children's responses to conflict suggest a necessity for flexibility in conflict resolution schemes dependent on age. The implications of these patterns of response to interpersonal conflicts with peers will be examined, alongside prominent perspectives on understanding children's behaviour as represented in social information processing theories and theories concerning the development of aggressive behaviour. By understanding these processes we can make recommendations for strategies of conflict resolution, such as peer mediation and social skills training, which will be constructive and specific to the needs of the child.
Mary Ainley is currently lecturing at the University of Melbourne. Her areas of interest are curiosity, interest, engagement and learning, motivation in gifted and talented students, beliefs about aggression and appraisal of conflict. Her teaching area is developmental psychology. She is a member of a number of organisations and societies including the A.P.S and the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development. She has also published a variety of books and articles.
Clare
Buckingham is studying as an intern at the International Conflict
Resolution Centre. She is enrolled in a Psychology degree at Bath Univeristy,
England.
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Challenging Discourses On Violence: From The Personal To The Political.
Conflict is a product of social interaction and violent conflict is fuelled by the institutionalisation of difference. Social conflict at both micro and macro levels can be constitutively defined in terms of inclusion and exclusion. Violent conflict in schools, and war at an international level, involve a divisive process whereby parties 'dig in' to their respective positions and construct the 'other' as the 'enemy'. A normative discourse develops which justifies such formations, valorising the cause of one side and denigrating the cause of the other. Currently, binary discourses such as these are dominant at many levels in our global society, threatening our safety and our survival.
Discourse is a powerful force in determining our realities or 'truths', or whose 'truths' count in particular contexts. Dominant discourses are culturally bound and serve to construct the way we view the world. It is my intention in this paper to deconstruct some of the dominant discourses on violence that we have come to accept in our global society and to highlight how we, as mediators, can collectively play a powerful role in challenging these discourses - at micro-levels in our homes, workplaces and schools and at macro-levels in our various national and global institutions.
Violent conflict, whether it is in the school or in the broader international arena, can only be understood within a wider understanding of human action. Violent conflict is both a product and a constitutive part of the relationship between individuals and broader societal structures. Currently our focus tends to be on the management and regulation of interpersonal violence and war, which we have normalised or accepted as inevitable, rather than on its total elimination. This serves to legitimate violence and, in some situations, to justify it by labelling it as "just", "normal", "natural", "humane", or as a "necessary evil". We now have new vocabulary which captures this - "the new normals".
Most approaches to mediation generate a move away from violent confrontation towards mutual recognition and understanding. In general, the goal is for the mediator to recognise and enhance the transformative capacity of individuals, groups and communities and where possible foster tolerance and acceptance of difference between parties to a conflict. Much of the mediation literature and research to date, however, tends not to address or question the nature of conflict itself, or the institutions that support it. For mediation to be useful, our theories and practices must be critical and self-reflexive in ways that enhance creativity and change.
Mediators
need to generate a critical discourse on peace and situate it within the
mediation discourse if we are to really make a long-lasting difference
in our conflicted world. In short, our construct of peace in the schoolyard
and in the United Nations must incorporate and value differences and pluralities
of identity, recognise and address the cultural and situational embeddedness
of the mediator, and deconstruct and challenge discourses on violence
and their institutional underpinnings.
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milkbar.com.au: Memory And Place In A Digital World.
Milkbar.com.au is fundamentally an oral history project about Fitzroy, an inner city suburb in Melbourne, Australia. But it is not just an oral history project in the traditional sense as it utilises historical methodologies that may be more suited for delivery through the Internet. Although socially and economically determined, the Internet is perhaps one of the first truly 'global' medium (and is certainly one of the most participatory mediums). There is a link between a local geographical based history being communicated through the Internet, and a research methodology that frames its methodology within the local/global nexus.
What makes
this research different to other humanities computing projects, is that
it was conceptualised from the outset with its' delivery mechanism in
mind. In other words, every photo, every video interview, every question,
and every paragraph of text was gathered and cognitively framed with the
consideration of how it would be communicated through the Internet. Most
humanities computing projects deliver pre-existing archives to the web
through large scale digitisation projects, however this project not only
utilises the archival potential of the Internet, but has 'artefacts' that
were captured specifically for it. For lack of a better description, it
is a 'contemporary history', or an exploration of a small community within
Australia in the early stages of the new century to help us understand
how individual and groups resist or embrace the forces of the world.
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The Qualities Of Peacemakers: What Can We Learn From Nobel Peace Prize Winners About Managing Conflict?
This paper
describes what can be learnt from Nobel Peace Prize Winners about managing
conflict. The paper is based on a study conducted by Bretherton & Bornstein
(2001) involving the analysis of autobiographical material of eight Nobel
Peace Prize winners and semi-structured interviews with eight members
of Psychologists for the Promotion of World Peace (PPOWP). The aim of
this study was to discover and describe the qualities of peacemakers in
order to broaden research regarding conflict resolution. Nobel Peace Prize
Winners have been publicly acknowledged for their ability to bring about
positive change in the face of frequent and long lasting conflicts. Consequently,
in order to aid our analysis, we wanted to draw on a developmental theory
that acknowledges human experience as being characterised by conflict
as opposed to extended plateaus of stability. The developmental theory
we used is called Riegel's (1979) dialectical theory. Reigel's theory
asserts that development is ridden with conflict, contradiction and crises.
In addition, according to the theory a dialectically mature individual
will display the capacity to tolerate contradiction and acknowledge the
contradictory property of things, people and experiences. In order to
discover the qualities of peacemakers a qualitative data analysis technique,
known as Template Analysis, was adopted. This method was employed as a
means of developing categories representing recurring themes apparent
in the data. As a result of this process of analysis a list of categories
forming a 'template' was developed. These categories represent the qualities
of peacemakers apparent in the data itself. Categories were drawn directly
from the data itself, from literature on prior studies of peace activists
(Adams, 1995; Downton & Wehr, 1997) and from Reigel's (1979) dialectical
theory of development. This study found that Nobel Peace Prize Winners
exhibited qualities associated with Reigel's theory. PPOWP members were
less likely to exhibit these qualities. The qualities that were associated
with Reigel's theory, and that were identified as being characteristic
of Noble Peace Prize Winners, will be discussed. These qualities include
the need to create crises as a means to attaining peace, accepting that
life is characterised by crises/conflict, believing that the opposition/others
consist of contradictions and conceptualising conflict dialectically.
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Reconciliation As A Social And Political Process.
Reconciliation is a central motive and motif of a postcolonial moment that is an attempt at re-organising social relations in 'settler' societies such as Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Northern Ireland and Australia.
In Northern Ireland the contested, fraught and yet somewhat concerted attempt to re-organise social and political relations, in order to displace a politics of hatred and violence organised in terms of categories of ethnic identity, has been played out, as it were simultaneously, at both the level of the state institutions and within civil society.
In Australia a remarkably stable set of political institutions has been slowly prodded and shamed into addressing its foundational blind-spot; that which it refused to see while all the while becoming fixated on the sight of its absence. Such was the doctrine of terra nullius that declared Australia to be unoccupied by the human beings who inhabited its diverse lands and climates. Nomadic patterns of occupation became evidence for no real occupation at all. This total eclipse of reason (of capacities for reasoning and reasonableness) could only be supported by a perverse reason of law, the law of terra nullius.
In this paper I will draw upon both social theory and psychoanalytic theory to develop an analysis of the dynamics and dilemmas of the political project of reconciliation in the cases of Northern Ireland and Australia. The first part of my argument involves a radical critique of those approaches to reconciliation that construe significant change as a change that proceeds at the level of the individual subject. Such approaches generally rely on some version of a socialisation or re-socialisation process as the key transformation that is necessary for successful reconciliation.
While not entirely mistaken, such approaches are limited and partial. In particular, they fail to take account of the cultural or discursive field within which subjectivity is produced and enacted. It is my further argument that this error amounts to more than a mere conceptual mistake. More crucially, this blind-spot regarding the significance of the cultural or discursive field for the production of subjectivity itself creates a further impediment to analysis and understanding, because it also occludes the modalities through which a politics of reconciliation might be enacted.
One of the principal reasons for this, I will argue, is because the discussion of reconciliation so regularly returns to the ethical and affective subjectivity of individual citizens. This produces something akin to a morality play in which the 'soul' of the individual citizen comes to figure as the arena upon which the subjective process of reconciliation is thrown into contest.
We should
know better. For while it is clearly the case that subjectivity and intersubjectivity
are the domains upon which the drama of reconciliation is played out,
these domains are themselves framed and produced by the ideological or
discursive fields within which they are located. Reconciliation is a political
process that is, at once, about both the subjective and the social. The
process of reconciliation involves struggles to transform the instituted
imaginaries through which specific forms of identity and specific forms
of relatedness are discursively organised and preserved or transformed.
In all these respects it involves a battle within institutions, both civil
and state, over which particular social imaginaries will come to organise
the history of the present.
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"But I Can't See Them": The Theory And Practice Of Resolving Disputes Online.
This paper will present a survey of the current state of online alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and will look at its implications for conflict and dispute resolution practitioners.
ADR refers to processes other than judicial determination in which an impartial person assists those in a dispute to resolve the issues between them.
Online ADR refers to ADR processes assisted by information technology, particularly the internet. Online ADR has been available since 1996 and has gone through three broad stages of development:
- A "hobbyist" phase where individual enthusiasts started work on online ADR, often without formal backing
- An "experimental" phase where foundations and international bodies funded academics and non-profit organisations to run pilot programs
- An "entrepreneurial" phase where a number of for-profit organisations launched private online ADR sites.
The authors believe that online ADR is now entering an "institutional" phase where it will be increasingly adopted by governments and other institutions around the world.
The paper will present the findings of the most comprehensive study of online ADR undertaken to date. Conducted for the Department of Justice Victoria in February to March 2003, the study included:
- Completion of a literature review including 128 books, articles and online resources
- Analysis of 76 online ADR sites, including services offered, communication methods used, type of disputes dealt with, fee structure, privacy and security measures and current operations
- Selection and further analysis of five illustrative case studies of current online dispute resolution schemes · Public surveys and user focus groups
- Consultation with government agencies to assess their interest in online ADR.
The paper
will briefly present the process undertaken by the Department of Justice
in considering whether or not to introduce online ADR in Victoria as a
model for other organisations considering online methods. Factors considered
included public need for this service, fit with current ADR services and
implications for practitioners.
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Ingendering Violence: The Impact Of Gender On The Shame - Anger Dynamic.
Traditionally, the emotion shame was thought to play an important role in mediating the social consequences of anger. Shame is commonly understood as an emotion that inhibits socially maladaptive behaviours, including aggressive responses (Tangney, Wagner, Hill-Barlow, Marschall and Gramzow, 1996). However, there is now converging theoretical, clinical, and empirical evidence that suggests that shame may also be involved in destructive conflict and motivating anger and interpersonal hostility and aggression (Lewis, 1971; Averill, 1982; and Tangney, Wagner, Barlow, Marschall & Gramzow, 1996).
For example, in her clinical case studies Lewis (1971) traced sequences of emotion back from the moment anger first appeared and found that shame, caused by either real or perceived injury or injustice, always preceded anger. Furthermore, Averill provided empirical evidence for a direct link between shame and anger, commenting that a common cause of anger among his participants was a loss of personal pride or self-esteem - very likely shame-related experiences (Tangney, Wagner, Fletcher and Gramzow, 1992). Shame has also been linked to anger arousal and associated with maladaptive and unconstructive responses to anger in numerous studies (Scheff, 1987; Tangney et al, 1992; Tangney et al, 1996; and Ferguson, Eyre and Ashbaker, 2000).
However, despite the alarming prevalence of violent male behaviour and the fact that quick resort to violence appears a matter of consequence, if not a cultural expectation, for lower socio-economic class men, the impact of gender and class-based masculinities on the shame-anger sequence is yet to be explicitly investigated. Providing an interdisciplinary framework which linked social psychology with feminism, sociology and politics, the research I conducted was designed to explore the role of shame in the origins of violence, focusing on the links between affective and cognitive factors as potential influences on aggression. In addition to this, the impact of gender and class-based masculinities on the cognitive, motivational, and behavioural elements of the shame-anger dynamic was explored.
The results
yielded mix support for the hypotheses. Although, even though it was a
small study and issues regarding the representativeness of each group
constrain the generalisability of the results, three significant findings
emerged. Firstly, the results broadly support the conceptualisation of
shame and guilt as distinct affective processes with contrasting implications
for anger-related behaviour. Secondly, in contrast to previous findings
but informed by the theoretical rationale of the current study, the results
provide sufficient evidence to caution against aggregating groups across
lines of gender and socio-economic status in future research into the
shame-anger dynamic. Thirdly, an Incident Analysis, which evaluated a
situational episode of anger, provides further support for the causal
role of shame in motivating anger. This research, while exploratory and
not without shortcomings, will provide the impetus for an exploratory
discussion on the role of shame in destructive conflict and violence,
and the differential impact that gender and masculinities may have on
this relationship between shame and anger.
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Men, Masculinity, And Mayhem: Dominance, Justification And Futility.
Men are the primary agents of violence within society. Men are recruited by the State to agencies, such as the military, security, and the police, that legitimate violence. Men are considerably over-represented in murder and assault statistics, in gun ownership, in prison populations. On the field of battle, societies ascribe "hero status" to those who have asserted their masculinity in the cauldron of conflict, and have proven their worth as men.
While we may condemn acts of violence and abuse, the sad reality is that we live in a world where, at the macro level, governments predominantly ruled by men construct frameworks of meaning that allow them to plan for, to contemplate, and to justify the use of weapons of mass destruction, the use of frameworks of domination and oppression.
At the micro level family violence perpetrated by men occurs primarily due to the underlying inequality between men and women, and is justified and sanctioned through a traditional male bias in society that reinforces and replicates patriarchy, patrilineal descent and men's presumed superior status.
What men
need to realise is that this domination, through adherence to outdated
models of traditional masculinity, also comes at a considerable price
to their own relationships, wellbeing and longevity. The futility of this
dominance necessitates a challenge to, and a confronting of, the "taken-for-granted",
a questioning and a querying of the status quo, of the sense of entitlement
to deference, respect and superiority that many men have towards women.
Progressive standpoints and critiques of patriarchy, dominant masculinities,
male privilege, and violent and abusive male behaviours thus demand, as
Connell has suggested, "
disrupting men's settled ways of thinking".
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Civil Political Discourse In A Democracy: The Need For Constructive Controversy.
Political
discourse is the heart of democracy. Instead of the social rank within
which a person is born, the basis of influence within a democratic society
should be discourse in a free and open discussion characterised by conflict
among ideas and opinions. The purposes of political discourse include
(a) clarifying citizensı understanding of the issue, (b) helping citizens
reach their best reasoned judgment as to which course of action will solve
a problem, (c) increasing citizen participation in the political process,
and (d) socialising the next generation into the procedures and attitudes
they need to be active citizens. Over the past 30 years constructive controversy
theory has been developed to model political discourse, a program of research
has been conducted to validate the theory, and the theory has been operationalised
into a normative procedure that may be taught in schools. Constructive
controversy exists when one personıs ideas, information, conclusions,
theories, and opinions are incompatible with those of another, and the
two seek to reach an agreement. Engaging in constructive controversy results
in high-quality decisions characterised by higher-level reasoning, perspective-taking,
creativity, openness to influence, continuing motivation to learn about
the issue as well as create more positive attitudes toward engaging in
decisional conflict and participating in the controversy process. The
theory, the procedure, and a meta-analysis of the research will be presented.
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Educational Psychology: How Bystanders Affect Bullying And Verbal Abuse. Lusher, Dean - Masculinities And The Social Construction Of Violence.
Violence
prevention, including bulling, must be a priority for all who are concerned
about the health of children and youth. School bullying emerges as an
international issue, and we have increasing knowledge of its nature and
effects. Recent years have seen a shift in bullying research from a dyadic
focus on the characteristics of the Bully and the Victim, to the recognition
of the Bystanders in the process of victimisation. Bullying is collective
in its nature, based on social relationships. At a broader conceptual
level, the social systems and settings in which children are embedded
appear crucial to the well-being and coping of young people in bullying
situations. Focusing on the group process could provide feedback on why
the group allows or even encourages peer aggression. Likewise, a more
complete understanding of the social nature of bulling may go some way
to overcoming the obstacles for peers to intervene. A safe schools framework
is currently a national priority, with several organisations strongly
advocating the importance of the way children view each other. Bullying,
harassment, and violence are issues that are of great concern to school
communities and school authorities. From a public health perspective,
the time is now for concerted efforts to integrate an understanding of
and response to bullying into the larger framework of violence prevention.
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Performing The Presidency: Crisis And Doctrine In The Making Of Bush.
George W.
Bush delivered three televised speeches on the 11th of September 2001
following the attacks of that day. In these statements, the formulation
and declaration of the Bush Administration's doctrine in what would become
the "war against terror" served to provide both a context and a plan to
deal with the unfolding tragedy of that day. In that sense, the emotive
memory of those events, thus contextualised, became the foundation for
the performative and communicative acts that the United States, as a nation
and as an international coalition leader, became committed to and later
engaged in. This paper will examine these public performances of Bush
as president in response to that crisis. It will examine the ways in which
those performances were informed by and, in turn, invoked particular social,
cultural, and political processes that served to "define the situation"
historically and provided a blueprint for action, as a way of extracting
meaning from those events and harnessing national identity. These processes
thus became the frames within which the authoritative narratisation, performed
as presidency, compelled a course of action within the context of conflict
in a social drama, that is shaping our present and future world.
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The Qualities of Peacemakers: Children's Concepts of Peacemakers.
A UNESCO funded pilot project conducted in association with UNESCO's Associated Schools Project Network (ASPnet) will be discussed. The aim of this project was to explore children's concepts of peacemakers in order to contribute to the development of teaching materials for teachers in Australia and the South East Asian and Pacific regions who are delivering peace education programs in schools. Action based research was conducted with children (late primary school and early secondary school age) from participating ASPnet schools. The methodology involved children discussing, scripting and performing plays centred on resolutions of conflicts and the qualities of those who played peacemaker roles. A role-play worksheet was developed to assist student's discussions and to retain a written form of children's ideas. Discussions were audiotaped and later transcribed and analysed using a qualitative data analysis technique. The Qualities of Peacemakers Vote/survey was also developed to enable the collection of multiple forms of data. This survey was based on prior research on the qualities of Nobel Peace Prize winners (Bretherton & Bornstein, 2001) and on children's concepts of war and peace (Ilse Hakvoort & Solveig Hagglund, 2001). Analysis of the data indicated that children's concepts of peacemakers are associated with positive peace, i.e. peacemakers make peace and are prosocial, and negative peace, i.e. peacemakers stop war, don't fight and are not antisocial. In their descriptions of effective peacemakers, children also placed an emphasis on fairness. The younger children tended to describe peacemakers as persons who acted fairly by equally dividing resources or taking sides with the party who was 'in the right'. The older children described peacemakers as persons who treated people fairly by seeking to understand the different points of view of those involved in the conflict. In addition, the younger group was more likely to identify an effective peacemaker as a person who puts an end to conflict quickly and may use methods of force or direct instruction in order to achieve this aim. The data also revealed that physical violence and the conflict in Iraq were frequent discussion themes.
Professor
Margot Prior currently works in the psychology department of the University
of Melbourne. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia,
in October 2001 spent three weeks in Hanoi on a Fellowship jointly funded
by the Academies of Humanities and Social Sciences in Australia and the
Centre for the Social Sciences and Humanities in Vietnam. Margot has published
many articles and books, and lists her research interests as autism spectrum
disorders, temperament and behavioural disorders and early language and
literacy development.
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Time And The Ethics Of Reconciliation.
I will consider
the relation between time, politics and reconciliation. The possibility
of politics, I will suggest, depends on our freedom to call the world
we share with others into question, to view what is given in the light
of what might otherwise be. Reconciliation is an inherently political
project insofar as it is concerned with the ethical constitution of a
"we" to underwrite the legitimacy of shared institutions. But the aspiration
to reconcile may either sustain or undercut politics depending on the
temporal modality in terms of which it is conceived. Reconciliation is
often thought of in relation to a restorative ideal, according to which
it entails overcoming alienation between individuals or groups occasioned
by wrongdoing. I will argue that it is a political mistake to think of
reconciliation in this way. For this over-determines the terms in which
a reconciliatory politics might be enacted by re-presenting community
as a regulative ideal, as a given which must be restored. By contrast,
recognising community as a contingent, historical possibility imports
an awareness of the fragility of the "we" a reconciliatory politics seeks
to realise. Recognising community as always not-yet at once politicises
reconciliation and helps to sustain a reconciliatory politics because
it makes us aware that community is not inevitable but depends upon our
acting in concert in the present.
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International Peace And American Preeminence.
The explicit policy of the Bush administration to assert and maintain American preeminence creates a new situation for international peacekeeping and for humanitarian intervention. In order to understand this situation properly, this paper will lay out the case for American preeminence, as made by Bush and his supporters. The American approach fits well within the framework developed by Thomas Hobbes. I shall consider objections to this view, as well as alternatives to it. This will involve discussion of the UN and its peacekeeping role.
Peter
Singer was educated at the University of Melbourne and the University
of Oxford. He has taught at universities in England, America and Australia,
and is now DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for
Human Values at Princeton University. He first became well-known internationally
after the publication of Animal Liberation. His other books include: Democracy
and Disobedience; Practical Ethics; The Expanding Circle; Marx; How Are
We to Live?, Rethinking Life and Death, A Darwinian Left, One World: Globalization
and Ethics and most recently, Pushing Time Away: My Grandfather and the
Tragedy of Jewish Vienna. He is the author of the major article on Ethics
in the current edition of the Encylopaedia Britannica. Two collections
of his work have been published: Writings on an Ethical Life, which he
edited himself, and Unsanctifying Human Life, edited by Helga Kuhse. Peter
Singer was the founding president of the International Association of
Bioethics and, with Helga Kuhse, founding co-editor of the journal Bioethics.
Outside academic life, he is president of Animal Rights International,
and of The Great Ape Project.
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Doing Justice To History: The Ethics Of Historical Narrative.
This paper
examines the role of historical narratives in the construction of both
the present and the past and the consequences of adopting new narratives
through which to understand Australian history. Just as future events
may change the way in which we understand our own historical moment, by
acting now we can change the historical narratives in which past events
are embedded and thus the nature of those events themselves. In this way,
the past is not closed to us; we can, within certain limits, alter it.
But doing so requires more than a new subjective understanding of history,
it requires actions that disrupt and/or destabilise existing narratives
and which demand new narratives to incorporate them. Facts about the past
also place limits on our ability to construct new narratives. (Furthermore,
because historical narratives are often implicated in group identities,
rewriting them may raise important questions of justice.) My aim here
is to discuss the limits of our ability to transform history in this way,
and the ethics of doing so, with particular reference to the significance
of an apology for historical injustices committed against the Aboriginal
peoples of Australia.
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Using Electronic Mediums Of Communication To Negotiate: Research-In-Progress.
Through a
critical review of both established literature, as well as current research
to date on negotiation and conflict resolution, this paper aims to outline
a model for understanding negotiations that engage the use of electronic
mediums of communication. Specifically, the authors will focus on discussing
the impact of using such media on the process and outcome of negotiation,
namely through the re-examination of assumptions that apply to traditional
(face-to-face) negotiation. Empirical evidence that is currently under
analysis will also be presented.
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Justice And Reconciliation.
There are
two discourses about what is owed for injustices. The first is legalistic
and backward looking. It is concerned with restitution or compensation
for past wrongs and entitlements and obligations for these acts of reparation.
The second discourse is 'theological' and forward looking. It is concerned
with apology, forgiveness, remorse, atonement, and reconciliation. I will
argue that the proper approach to reconciliation is to bring these discourses
together. I will define what it means to arrive at a 'just reconciliation'
and will show how this concept can be applied to some international and
national issues.
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Peace Education In The Era Of Globalisation.
This paper discusses the importance of peace education in the context of rapid globalisation. As education becomes internationalised the need to ensure that areas of education that are fundamental in the active preservation and pursuit of a peaceful world, such as peace and conflict resolution, keep pace with this rapid evolution. While globalisation opens up new possibilities for economic expansion, consumerism may challenge traditional values and roles. Tapping into the very mechanism that is fundamental in revolutionizing communication and thus a driver of globalisation, this paper discusses the use of the Internet as a tool in education for peace. The UNESCO Culture of Peace News Network (CPNN) and more particularly the Chinese site are used as examples.
Mark Wayland: Psychology graduate from the University of Melbourne and Australian Youth Ambassador for Development (AusAid) working at Nankai University, Tianjin on the UNESCO Cultures of Peace News Network project.
Di Bretherton:
Director of the International Conflict Resolution Centre, University
of Melbourne.
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