{"id":13148,"date":"2011-06-27T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T11:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=13148"},"modified":"2011-07-01T11:21:44","modified_gmt":"2011-07-01T10:21:44","slug":"what-a-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/06\/what-a-book\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Book!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Book Review:\u00a0<\/em>John Brewer (2010), Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach<\/em>. Oxford: Polity Press, 272pp., 9780745647777<\/span><\/p>\n

From Anglo-America the world is used to books about how what they see as Western attributes–rule of law, human rights, democracy–are not only sufficient to bring about peace, but necessary, indispensable.\u00a0 A country gets those three and peace is around the corner.\u00a0 That the USA, the UK, and Israel have much of that and yet are among the most belligerent countries in the world is handled not by reexamining the thesis, but by claiming self-defense, against the envy of those with deficits.<\/p>\n

Of course there is something to those three perspectives but they suffer from an obvious theoretical shortcoming: they are intra-state attributes, and although they may help explain peace at that level, any transfer to inter-state systems has to be argued.\u00a0 The rule of law is not only weakly institutionalized but against direct violence, not against flagrant inequalities that may play a role in that direct violence.\u00a0 Human rights suffer sharp declines across state borders, and UN democracy is ruled out by G5 veto power. The “democratic peace” thesis, based on the finding that democracies do not go to war against each other, can be explained by other attributes: they were, like USA-UK, members of a club of Christian-liberal countries ruling the world, with obvious interest in peace among themselves.\u00a0 There is no peace with non-club democracies.<\/p>\n

Brewer’s sociological approach is refreshingly different;\u00a0 contrasting (p. 206)\u00a0 “a social peace process, seeing healing, reconciliation and the restoration of the social bond as the goal” with “a political peace process that reproduces Western notions of democracy, market economics and justice”. And then the key chapter headings, with excellent introductions: Civil society, Gender, Emotions, Memory, ‘truth’ and victimhood.<\/p>\n

When I now focus on some differences between Brewer’s approach an my own it is more to emphasize some key dimensions in all their complexity, like anything human, ambiguous, than to argue positions for and against.\u00a0 Take “social bond”.\u00a0 We often hear the formula “mutual rights and obligations” focusing on the normative aspect of the key concept in sociology, interaction.\u00a0 For a social peace process I would insert “equal”, “mutual and equal rights and obligations”.\u00a0 Equity built into the social bond, meaning equitative justice, to land on a favorite term in Western parlance, not merely distributive and restorative even if both may be peace productive, and not punitive, the kernel of the Western justice concept, directed at he who throws the first stone, maybe because he is sat, and trampled, upon.<\/p>\n

Another word is parity, often used for structures where Brewer is more at home as a sociologist, marital and communal relations.\u00a0 It is more a necessary than a sufficient condition.\u00a0 Inequity engenders revolt or apathy, both loaded with violence.\u00a0 Equity may engender all kinds of conflict, but then they can meet as equals in dialogues and mediation processes in general.<\/p>\n

I am actually missing attention to mediation and dialogue.\u00a0 In my own subdivision of the field (see A Theory of Peace<\/em>, TRANSCEND University Press<\/a>, forthcoming 2011) I divide the field into reconciliation for the past, mediation for the present and construction of peaceful relations for the future. Brewer has the past and the future well covered, but there is also very much material scattered around in the book filling the gap.<\/p>\n

Conflicts have to be nipped in the bud; prevention is more than half the therapy.\u00a0 If not the frustration due to goals blocked by others also pursuing goals gives rise to aggression and deep emotions where, as Brewer says, reason is suspended.<\/p>\n

And there is no doubt that peace processes, political, social and otherwise (economic, for instance) are based on talk, like psychotherapy, as negotiations aiming at compromises, or as dialogues aiming at a new reality where incompatible goals have become more compatible. I believe in the latter, in conflict as a driving force in history when properly handled.\u00a0 But that talk must itself be peaceful, making mediators capable of empathy, creativity toward a new reality, of being constructive and concrete rather than critical and moralizing, a major resource in society.\u00a0 A status with its many roles or even better, as a capacity as common as, say, literacy or personal hygiene.<\/p>\n

Gender: I build more on Gilligan and her emphasis on compassion and its expression, as opposed to deductive reasoning as a female attribute.\u00a0 I generally find women more empathic with the Other, but sometimes less creative.\u00a0 We need both.<\/p>\n

Civil Society: maybe more emphasis on local authorities and traditional bonds, such as clan and kinship in general.\u00a0 They are strong, for good and for bad.\u00a0 Thus, Libya, a Western colonial construct, is ridden by an inter-clan conflict Western democracy would not know how to handle.\u00a0 Africans know better.<\/p>\n

Memory: a brilliant chapter, with rich references to the processes Brewer knows best.\u00a0 But collective memory, always to be revised, is only one of the sources of my “deep culture”, assumptions about reality in the collective subconscious considered so obvious that they are not articulated.\u00a0 They have to be understood through their many manifestations in public space, ways of talking, monuments, deep religion, etc.<\/p>\n

And this differs enormously from one culture to another.\u00a0 Brewer is a Westerner applying much of the wisdom of the non-West to conflicts in the West.\u00a0 A very promising approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach by John D. Brewer – From Anglo-America the world is used to books about how what they see as Western attributes–rule of law, human rights, democracy–are not only sufficient to bring about peace, but necessary, indispensable. That the USA, the UK, and Israel have much of that and yet are among the most belligerent countries in the world is handled not by reexamining the thesis, but by claiming self-defense, against the envy of those with deficits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}