Constructive Storytelling: A Peace Process

Excerpt These lines were written by Robert Desnos, a leading poet of the French surrealist movement. Surrealism was an artistic movement of 1924−1936 which valued the imagination, plumbing the wisdom of the unconscious, and a creativity unfettered by reason and convention. Desnos was known for his agile imagination and his experimental style. He was also a journalist, produced radio shows, and wrote advertising jingles

Cubismo Social Y Conflicto Social: Analisis Y Resolucion

Con el colapso del comunismo y del orden geopolftico de la Guerra Frfa, surgieron tres tendencias ligadas a la perdida del poder de las ideologfas basadas en la racionalidad moderna;\u27 la formaci6n de un nuevo orden transnacional con un sistema financiero integral, patrones de producci6n y de consumo; la deca- dencia relativa de estados centralizados y una soberanfa territorial moderna

Social Cubism And Social Conflict: Analysis And Resolution

With the collapse of Communism and the Cold War geopolitical order, three interrelated tendencies surfaced; the growing disempowerment of ideologies based on modem rationality,\u27 the formation of a new transnational order with an integrated financial system, standards of production and consumption; and, the relative decline of the centralized nation state, and modem territorial sovereignt

Introduction: Peacebuilding, Reconciliation, and Transformation

This introductory article in the special issue on Peacebuilding, Reconciliation, and Transformation highlights some of the central themes within the emergent field of Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS). The article discusses how this transdisciplinary field contributes to our understanding of some of the key issues that confront the PACS field in terms of analysis, theory building, and praxis. The contributors to this special issue provide a broad array of perspectives that explores conflicts and its transformation from a multidimensional perspective

The Six University Consortium Student Mobility Project: Promoting Conflict Resolution in the North American Context

This article focuses on the North American Conflict Resolution Program - a twenty-first century mobility consortium in which universities in Canada, Mexico, and the United States exchanged students of conflict resolution. Drawing on student perceptions and, in particular, the experiences of the universities of Manitoba and Louisville, the authors discuss the positive outcomes of mobilizing students to study conflict resolution abroad for the students themselves, for faculty members involved, for university and other communities, and for the field of conflict analysis and resolution

“The Problem from Hell”: Examining the Role of Peace and Conflict Studies for Genocide Intervention and Prevention

Genocide is one of the most challenging problems of our age. In her book, “A Problem from Hell:” America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power (2002) argues that the United States, while in a position to intervene in genocide, has lacked the will to do so, and therefore it is incumbent on the U.S. citizenry to pressure their government to act. This article reviews how the topic of genocide raises questions along the fault lines of the field of Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS). In this article, a framework is provided to examine genocide and responses to it. This includes a review of a multiplicity of factors that (a) facilitate genocide, (b) constrain action in the face of it, and (c) facilitate intervention. In this analysis, further consideration is given to the location of the actor either within the region of the conflict or external to it. Our goal is to situate the study of genocide in the PACS field and promote to the articulation of possibilities for intervention by individuals, organizations, and policymakers

Storytelling in den Vereinten Nationen: Mahbub ul Haq und menschliche Entwicklung

Ausgehend von der Beobachtung, dass Mitarbeiter der Vereinten Nationen eine wichtige Rolle in Prozessen des ideellen Wandels auf internationaler Ebene spielen können, beschäftigt sich dieser Beitrag mit einer bestimmten Form individuellem Einflusses – dem storytelling. Mein Verständnis von storytelling als Einflusstaktik kombiniert dabei kollektive Elemente der soziologischen Praxistheorie mit den reflexiven, akteursbezogenen Überlegungen von Michel de Certeau. Ich analysiere storytelling anhand von drei analytischen Elementen: einem (chronologischen) Plot, einer Reihe von Charakteren und einem interpretativen Thema – die jeweils ihre Wirkung im Zusammenspiel mit der Subjektivität ihres storytellers entfalten. Ich illustriere diese theoretischen Überlegungen mit dem Fall von Mahbub ul Haq, dem es als Sonderberater des United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-Administrators zu Beginn der 1990er Jahre gelungen ist, die Idee der menschlichen Entwicklung im System der Vereinten Nationen und der internationalen Entwicklungspolitik zu etablieren

Constructive storytelling: Building community, building peace

In the United States, in the past thirty years, there has been a self-conscious storytelling renaissance. Increasingly, people who embrace the label of storyteller tell stories in public settings. Many storytellers use stories in intentional ways towards goals of personal and social change. This study examines how these storytellers think about what they do. Storytellers themselves are central to the analysis, which involves in-depth interviews with forty storytellers from diverse ethnic, geographic, economic, religious, and educational backgrounds. These storytellers are seen as transcultural storytellers: While their storytelling may be grounded by a particular cultural background, they perform in cross-cultural contexts. A theoretical background in the sociology of language, folklore, gender studies, and peace studies informs this study. Storytelling is understood as cultural production involving a negotiation of meaning among storyteller, social context, story text, and audience. The storyteller is seen as a position of influence in the social construction of meaning. This study examines the role of language and the arts--here, storytelling--in the exercise of personal and social power. Folk stories, personal history, and cultural narratives encode meaning that has intellectual, emotional, and moral import. The development of such narratives is analysis and is a means to negotiate and establish collective understandings of identity, history, and desires. Participation in this process is empowering and is deep democracy. The findings of this study are significant for facilitating cultural spaces where people can participate in building relationships and defining their communities. Storytelling provides an accessible method by which people can inductively create projects that are self-driven and responsive to their contexts. This allows for storytellers to develop their agency and to address issues that are important to them. Further, storytellers use storytelling to develop relationships across identity barriers and to express aspects of their experience that they have been unable to express because of social constraints associated with a particular identity--whether that be a gender, ethnic, or class identity. Storytellers call for a shared identity as humans. This is not to erase cultural differences, but rather to argue for the full inclusion of all groups in public life

Transcultural Storytelling

Often storytelling is framed as being rooted in a particular culture and told by the flickering fireplace or campfire light. This has invited comparisons with storytellers telling in contemporary multicultural public contexts, such as schools, libraries, and community centers. This is often characterized as a difference between traditional and contemporary storytellers or between traditional and professional storytellers. Here these distinctions are questioned. Instead, a consideration of endocultural and transcultural storytelling is proposed. Zora Neale Hurston’s writing and career is discussed as demonstrating the positionality of a transcultural storyteller