Paul Wehr - Conflict Regulation
UNIVERSIDAD DE COLORADO
Sociology 2505: Peacemaking/PACS 2500: Intro to PACS
From Raising Children Nonviolently by Pat Patfoort (forthcoming)
Introduction
In this book, I expand ideas introduced in "Uprooting Violence,
Building Nonviolence" (Patfoort, 1995) Here, I write for those
who wish to apply specifically in child-rearing the models of
nonviolence I presented in that earlier work. For those who have
not read "Uprooting Violence," I begin with a summary of the
theory upon which I have built the practice of nonviolent
childhood education.
Many responses to "Uprooting Violence" , particularly from
parents and teachers, have led me to write this book. Some
readers wanted more clarity on specifically what nonviolence is
and what nonviolent solutions to problems contain. Others wanted
to apply the nonviolent system but didn't know exactly how they
would use my models in everyday situations. Still others
hesitated to use the system without concrete examples of possible
consequences the methods might have. Thus, I felt it necessary to
illustrate more concretely the nonviolent approach and its
results in everyday life.
In conversations with people at my lectures and workshops, I
often encounter deeply rooted prejudices and habits harmful for
children. For instance, in the usual practice of child-rearing
much more importance is given to children's studies (their
intellectual performance at school and at home), to their being
"on time" (in bed, at school), and to their eating habits (eating
certain things and in certain amounts) than is given to dealing
with their emotions and values. Of course, the first are
important. But the second are equally so. The two emphases in the
lives of children should be more in balance with one another. In
rearing our children, caring much more to give space and time for
communication within the family, being together, sharing with one
another, listening to one another, and to what is often
disparagingly called "chatting" or "wasting time." "Chatting"
with our children often goes last on our everyday agenda, after
everything else. It is the first to go when time is short, or
when Father assumes child-rearing responsibilities from Mother
working outside the home. This has important consequences. not
only for our children but our society as well, especially for
antisocial and even criminal behavior.
Childhood education, especially its early phases, and
particularly the "chatting" time with children is too often
undervalued in our society. Therefore, parents and educators are,
as a rule, not conscious enough of the importance of their roles
for the well-being of child and society. In these pages, I hope
to contribute to changing this, so that our child-rearers would
feel more supported and rewarded in their work. I hope also to
help those who undervalue child-rearing become more conscious of
its importance, thus supporting those doing it full-time, playing
a more active role in it themselves, relating more completely and
constructively with their own and others' children, and working
to adjust social institutions so to facilitate professional
child-raisers.
Everyone who interacts with children should have basic knowledge
of nonviolent child-rearing. Many elemental mistakes with
important consequences for the child and society could thus be
avoided. It is a pity that many fathers see no reason to reflect
on or question what they believe they know about raising
children, though they regularly interact with them. I would hope
that this book may find and stimulate the interest of male
readers.
The examples I use in the following pages are drawn from personal
experience, either that with my own children or that of
participants in my workshops. For the privacy of those
participants and so their stories read better, I have modified
them slightly, taking care not to weaken their authenticity.
This book could facilitate nonviolent child-rearing in several
ways. For instance, parents and their children could read
together one of the problem situations it describes between a
parent and a child. In a classroom setting, a story about a
playground situation could be discussed. After reading the story,
the different viewpoints about it could be shared, first with one
another, then possibly using the review which follows the story
in the text.
Too often, children are born to parents who are quite unprepared
for the enormous responsibility parenting involves. I would like
this book to contribute to helping future parents with that
preparation so that fewer children would grow up in situations
harmful, first for them, and later for the society in which they
must live.
This book concerns itself with building happier and more
harmonious relationships between parents and children, between
teachers and pupils, and among children themselves and thereby a
more healthy society. The way of thinking which opens the path
toward nonviolent child-rearing is to stop thinking it is
impossible or even wondering if it is possible, but rather ask
oneself how one does it.
This book is the first in a series on nonviolent child-rearing.
In subsequent works I will go more deeply into the connections
between how children are raised and their behavior as adults
which leads to serious social problems.
A. Theoretical background
1. What is nonviolence?
There are many ways to define nonviolence. The most useful one
for the concrete, everyday situations of child-rearing is one
that I illustrate in Figure 1.
(Figure 1 about here)
Nonviolence and violence both originate in an inevitable human
condition which in itself is not problematic at all: with two or
more people there will inevitably be differences between or among
them of characteristics, behavior, beliefs, points of view. The
most common way humans deal with these differences is to use what
I call the Major-minor or M-m model: each tries to present their
own attribute, behavior or point of view as better than the
other's. Each tries to be in the right, to score highest, to win.
In other words, each seeks to gain the M-position while putting
the other in the m-position.
This Major/minor dynamic has three possible violent consequences.
- internalization, as the one placed in the m-position does
violence to self
- escalation, as we attack the person who puts us in the m-position
- displaced aggression, as the person in the m-position does
violence to a third person, thereby creating a chain of violence
The M-m approach to human differences seems so normal, so common
to us that we tend to assume it is the only one...simply "human
nature." We assume that approach is a natural response to "the
way we humans are." Nonviolence in both theory and practice
challenges this assumption.
I believe that while the M-m dynamic is not "natural" to human
relations, what is inherent in us is an "instinct" or need
rather, for self conservation. This need naturally leads each of
us to avoid the m-position, a position that is harmful to us. It
is indeed humanly natural to want to protect oneself, to survive.
The M-m dynamic is one, but only one, of the possible ways to
defend oneself and at first sight seems to be the easiest. It is
therefore, in most human societies, taught to children and is
thereafter reinforced and encouraged in all possible ways in
adult life.
Another way to deal with the inevitability of human diversity is
with the model of Equivalence, the E model. This is the model on
which nonviolence is based. This model also responds to the
essential human need for self conservation, permitting us to
avoid the m-position. The E model permits us to defend ourselves
but not at the expense of the Other, not in an aggressive way as
does the M-m model. The E model also produces defensive results
every bit as real as the M-m model. The M-m model, however,
offers no way out. It locks us into an escalatory dynamic. Every
time we defend ourselves with it, we must do so in an offensive
way with the Other feeling compelled to defend themselves
likewise, once more provoking us or someone else to aggressive
response, and on and on it goes.
How the M-m and E models work
First, we will look at the case where the different positions two
(or more) parties occupy in an interaction are points of view.
Their opinions diverge, they disagree. When the M-m model is
used, that situation is known as "conflict." We will focus on
disagreement since it is more obvious and accessible, easier to
resolve than are conflicts at deeper levels which involve
differing characteristics rather than opinions.
In the M-m model, arguments are stated by the parties in
conflict, each using them to put oneself in the right.
Three important kinds of arguments are used:
1) positive arguments: one presents positive aspects of one's
point of view to strengthen it and move one toward the M-position.
2) negative arguments: one mentions negative aspects of the point
of view of the Other to devalue it, moving Other toward the m-position.
3) destructive arguments: one cites negative characteristics of
Other to disempower them and their point of view, moving both
toward the m-position.
Among the disempowering devices used are racist, ageist and
sexist remarks. A way in which Other differs...skin color, youth
or age, gender...will be presented as negative and used to
devalue the other's point of view, a view usually unrelated to
the attribute referred to.
Arguments stimulate an escalation of the conflict, feeding the
fire so to speak. Both parties use whatever they can find to
strengthen their point of view in opposition to that of Other and
to surmount it. One simply expands the conflict from above,
feeding fuel to the fire.
By contrast, the E model works with foundations, not arguments.
Foundations are the reasons why both parties have the points of
view they do: the motivations, needs, feelings, interests,
objectives, values. These elements can be either rational or
emotional. They are revealed through "Why" questions. "Why do I
have this point of view?" "Why does the other have theirs?"
Through exploring foundations, one understands the conflict in
depth rather than simply feeding it at the surface.
Foundations of differences are often unexpressed. People may not
be conscious of them. Nevertheless they are present and
identifying them is essential.
How arguments and foundations are related.
1) One transforms one's foundations into positive arguments by
presenting them attractively as "the good ones." This is done
with words, tone of voice, glance, sarcasm, or by using the
presence of a third person.
2) The foundations of one's opponent can be converted into
negative arguments by coloring them negatively. They are
presented as wrong, stupid, unworthy of reasonable consideration.
Again, this is communicated in all manner of ways.
3) The third type of argument, the destructive one, is completely
unrelated to foundations. Those are directed at the opponent with
no reference to the disagreement itself. Their only purpose is to
weaken the other person, thereby putting oneself in the right.
How divergence of opinion is resolved.
Disagreement is handled in totally different ways by the M-m and
E models of resolving conflict. With the M-m model,there are only
two possibilities. Either I am right or you are. We are in a
two-dimensional system and each solution proposed or arrived at
stimulates the same response: "You see? I was right."
By contrast, the E model leads us to 1001 solutions. They emerge
from a way of thinking which transcends the two-dimensional
restriction. They are created by understanding all of the
foundations of both parties involved in the conflict. While with
the M-m model, finding a solution is predominant, with the E
model, the process is most important. Those in conflict enter
that process by revealing all foundations of both sides,
acknowledging and respecting those of the opponent as much as
one's own, then following a series of steps toward solution.
The three steps toward a nonviolent solution
1) To adopt an Equivalent approach toward others we must
understand the foundations of both parties. That requires that we
sharpen certain personal capacities.
We must learn how to use our power, those means we have to
influence others. While we must take care not to misuse that
power, neither must we leave it unused. We have to use it
skillfully, in its various forms.
Therefore, we have to work on self-knowledge, recognizing what
those forms of power are, why we take certain points of view,
what motivates us, and who we are.
To be able to accept who we really are, it is often useful to
build a more positive self-image of ourselves. We need
affirmation from others that will help us develop our
self-knowledge and accurately assess our own power. Affirmation of us
by others will also help others to do this for themselves,
building their self-confidence and inner strength.
This inner strength will enable us to show humility and peace of
mind, to take the time necessary for others, to control our
emotions, to consider facts and problems not in a narrow,
self-centered way, but with a wider perspective as part of a
relationship, a social group, a society. As our inner strength
grows, we can give space to Other, to accept Other as he or she
is, to avoid putting and pushing Other down.
1) The first step in the Equivalence process involves our
putting ourselves in an Equivalent position vis a vis the other
person, using those skills just mentioned. We will need to
identify as much as possible our own foundations and make space
for those of Other.
2) Secondly, we identify, communicating with Other, the
foundations of both parties. Therefore, we must express our own
foundations as clearly as possible, neither from an M-position
nor an m-position. We must take care for how we communicate, our
intonation, gestures, facial expressions, and where we do it, he
setting, the presence of a third person, and so on. We must also
open ourselves to the foundations of Other, listening, accepting,
tuning in to all the ways that person is communicating.
In this second step, we must hone our skill in communication, in
all its modalities, both for the sending of messages and for
receiving them.
After the second step, a break from the process is helpful:
taking some time to reflect, to absorb the foundations of Other,
to meditate on them, to "sleep on it."
3) The third step focuses on the foundations themselves. Having
identified all the foundations of both parties, solutions must be
found which satisfy both and to which neither object. If the
first two steps have been properly done, often a solution will
appear naturally. But sometimes, the solution must be, so to
speak, "conjured up," created. Therefore, we must develop the
skill of creativity as well.
The solution emerging from this process should never be compared
with the original opposing points of view. That would shift us
from the in-depth Equivalence process back to the superficial M-m
process. Should that shift occur, one or the other party would
try to present the solution as theirs. Ownership of the solution
must be fully a joint one.
Unilateral nonviolence
Can one apply the E model of conflict resolution when the Other
does not understand it, does not cooperate in it , or even works
against it? Is it possible to introduce the E model into a
relationship unilaterally?
If the E model is accepted by both sides in a disagreement, the
process will surely run more easily and agreeably. Still, it can
be implemented by one side. There is much one can do on one's
own.
Regardless of Other's behavior, we can:
- avoid transforming our foundations into positive arguments
to achieve the M-position, or threatening Other with an m-position;
- refuse to convert Other's foundations into negative
arguments to threaten them with an m-position;
- build up our inner strength, our self-confidence, our
positive self-image, thus better
defending ourselves against
attack, criticism, threat, and m-status. In this way, while we do
not offer an M-position to Other, neither do we seek
one ourselves.
- avoid hurling destructive arguments at Other, who will
thereby not feel pushed into an m-position.
We can control our own behavior in these four ways regardless of
Other's responses. If we try this out, we will notice that what
one would in theory expect to happen actually does. Because we
force Other into the m-position less or not at all, they are less
or unlikely to raise themselves to M-status. But we do not permit
Other to achieve an M-position either. We progressively shift
Other into the E-position. We radiate Equivalence.
As we motivate another toward the M-position by trying to achieve
it ourselves, so do we radiate Equivalence when we practice it
ourselves. The natural reciprocity of social relations is brought
into play.
Paul Wehr
Self-limiting Conflict:The Gandhian Style
I have mentioned two basic categories of conflict regulation scholarship. In the
preceding section we concerned ourselves with the first, specialists engaged in
third-party intervention research and experimentation-intermediaries, negotiation,
conciliation, communication control and modification. The second involves the
study of ways of waging conflict that tend both to keep it within bounds and to
limit its intensity or at least the possibility of violence-nonviolent social
movements, nonviolent resistance on the part of individuals and groups,
nonviolent alternative national defense strategies. Let us look at conflict
processes that are self-regulating in nature, i.e., that have built-in devices to keep
the conflict within acceptable bounds and to inhibit violent extremism and
unbridled escalation.
Socialization is an important determinant of the style and effectiveness of
conflict regulation in any society. If Tolley (1973) is correct in placing the
formative period for attitudinal and behavioral patterns concerning peace/war
issues and conflict regulation styles at ages 4-12, then learning creative
approaches to conflict regulation through family, school, mass media, and other
primary learning environments is essential. There are a few sources dealing with
this problem (Nesbitt, 1973; Abrams and Schmidt, 1972).
There are societies and groups within societies that socialize their members in
effective conflict regulation. Bourdieu (1962) describes Berber Kabyles of North
Africa as a society held together by a process of balanced and strictly controlled
conflict
56 Self-Limiting Confllict
in which members are socialized to avoid violence. Elise Boulding (1974) observes that
there are certain types of family environments and child-rearing practices that tend to
produce persons with nonviolent proclivities and creative response patterns to conflict.
Ultimately the socialization process, political socialization in particular, is probably the
most important conflict regulation device. We should soon learn some interesting things
about the impact of a decade of involvement in an unpopular war on the attitudinal and
behavioral patterns of America's youth.
Etzioni's self-encapsulation concept is very useful here. It is a process in which certain
conflicts are increasingly limited by their own nature and by the nature of the host system,
so that the "range of expression of the conflict is curbed." Certain modes of conflict and
weapons are excluded by mutual, sometimes tacit, consent, and the conflict becomes
ritualized-the game is played by the rules, so to speak. Dahrendorf's analysis of the
institutionalization of labor/management conflict over the past half century is an excellent
illustration of selfencapsulation. In the United States, encapsulation occurred as a
consequence of third-party intervention, when the federal government decided to protect
labor's right to strike. It was also self-propelled encapsulation to some degree, as both labor
and management decided that it was rational to place strict limits on their conflict-in other
words, to maximize gains and minimize losses all around.
The Gandhian Model of Self-Limiting Conflict
Self-encapsulation can also occur through both ideological restraints and tactical
approach. If at least one of the parties to the conflict develops an ideology that by
its very nature limits the weaponry and violence used in the conflict, it is in an
important sense self-encapsulating. Mahatma Gandhi's satyagraha (a word taken
from Sanskrit, meaning "insistence on truth") movement in the first half of this
century used such techniques, and other movements for social justice and
selfdetermination have developed variations on this theme of nonviolent direct
action. The Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez movements are the best
examples in recent North American history, though there are interesting Latin
American nonviolent movements as well.
The satyagraha movement was a series of direct action campaigns aimed at
calling into question the validity and moral legitimacy of the dominancedependence relationships existing in India and South Africa. The movement
challenged white rule in South Africa, British rule in the Asian subcontinent, and
the caste structure of Indian society itself. As do all ma'or social movements,
Gandhi's had a discrete ideology, well defined roles, a strong leadership, and
clear goals. It challenged a set of social structures with highly inequitable
distribution of privilege, access to authority, and life chances. The movement's
primary objective was to refine a technique
for making latent conflict manifest and waging it without violent means or
consequences.
Specific political goals included the winning of political independence of the
subcontinent from Britain, the liberation of oppressed minorities such as the
outcastes, and the creation of a new and appropriate model for Indian economic,
political, and social development. There were philosophical objectives as well.
The search for social and spiritual truth gave form and direction to Gandhi's
strategic and tactical approaches. The concepts of ethnic, religious, and social
community were also central to the movement's ideology.
The Gandhian Conflict Style
We will focus on the Gandhian techniques of waging conflict that served to limit
the hostility-to inhibit the "runaway processes" within conflict dynamics, as
Coleman (1957) terms them. How was Gandhi able to successfully propel yet
control a movement that had such great potential for massive violence and
reactive repression? In large measure the answer lies in both the strategy and
tactics of confrontation that Gandhi developed and in the movement's ideological
bases.
Step-wise Strategy. Perhaps the most obvious self-limiting aspect of Gandhi's
confrontation style was its step-wise rather than spiralling escalation. Each
satyagraha campaign involved a series of steps, each more challenging to the
opponent than the preceding one. It would begin with negotiation and arbitration.
This would be an extremely elaborate and lengthy stage including (1) on-site
accumulation and analysis of facts, with opponent participation; (2) identification
of interests in common with opponents; (3) formulation of a limited action goal
acceptable to all parties and mutual discussion of same; and (4) a search for
compromise without ceding on essentials (Naess, 1958). Gandhi did much to
avoid further escalation; at this preliminary stage he established the close,
cooperative, personal relationships with opponents that would later limit the
antagonism normally generated by the escalation process.
If the conflict was not resolved at that initial level, the satyagrahis would prepare
for direct action, then move on to agitation, ultimatum, economic boycott and
strikes, noncooperation, civil disobedience, usurpation of governmental
functions, and the creation of parallel government (Bondurant, 1965:40). If in
any of these stages, the conflict was resolved, those subsequent would be
unnecessary. After each new step, however, there was a built-in period of
withdrawal, reflection, and analysis of one's own and one's opponents' positions
and tactics. Missing was the escalation of normal conflict, in which a hostile
response evokes an even more hostile response in an unbroken upward spiral.
This strategy maximized the role of rational and conciliatory action on the part of
all concerned, while providing for an intensification of the confrontation as
needed to achieve the goals of the movement. The step-wise approach and the
interaction of reflection and action allowed the movement leadership and rankand-file participants to control, channel, and direct the dynamics of the conflict
situations they had created. One might say that the movement's peculiar "selfconsciousness" served to gauge the impact of each step in a campaign, to
continually reassess its effectiveness and nonhostile intent, and thereby to
maximize its selflimiting capacity.
The step-wise approach suggests that Gandhi's model of the conflict process is
phasic rather than cyclical, with a confrontation proceeding through a series of
escalatory steps. In the Gandhian perspective, the conflict should lead the parties
to a new level of truth, not back to the point where they began.
Ideological Self-Limitation. An essential concept in the Gandhian model of selflimiting conflict was ahimsa or nonviolence. Each satyagrahi had to give
unqualified commitment to nonviolent action and was resocialized for this by
movement leadership. Although the nonviolent ethic in Hinduism, Jainism, and
Buddhism did reinforce satyagraha's nonviolent belief system, satyagrahis from
these and other religioethnic sects who were accustomed to battling each other
violently had to be resocialized into new forms of confrontation.
The internalization of this ideological commitment gave satyagraha a unique
form of self-control. No tight commandand-control system existed within the
satyagraha movement. The leader and participant roles, individual and collective
behavior, the influence of norms and peer expectation were all rooted in
individual and group self-control. It was primarily because of this personalized
self-control that such a massive movement developed with surprisingly little
violence. Resocialization was essential to this self -control-where it was
incomplete, violence would often erupt and Gandhi would halt a campaign.
Nonviolence is by its very nature an ideology that moderates the intensity of a
conflict. An inherent theoretical assumption is that a nonviolent act will elicit a
similar response from an opponent and will thereby increase the chances for
conciliation. In practice, however, the dynamic is much more complex. In his
analysis of nonviolent action as a form of interpersonal behavior, Hare (1968),
using Homans' exchange theory and Bales' interactional analysis, shows how
nonviolent protestors may evoke violent responses from police and bystanders.
The nonviolent actors usually intend to take downward (submissive), backward (advocating
social change), and positive roles in their confrontation with others, especially those in
authority. When they can maintain this role they seem to be able to "pull" a dominantpositive response which may lead to social change. However, if they become negative, or
appear to be negative, then they pull a hostile response. (Hare, 1968:12)
Small group experiments (Shure et al., 1965; Bartos, 1974) have also suggested
the potential risk that pacifist or conciliatory responses may increase the
aggressiveness of an opponent. The point to be made here is that the training and
discipline of nonviolent actors and their understanding of the interpersonal
dynamics of nonviolence are important. Socialization into and internalization of
the role of nonviolent actor is critical for the self-limiting capacity of nonviolent
action.
Controlling the Dynamics of Escalation. Social scientists are now aware of
certain growth dynamics of conflict-dynamics that in most conflict situations are
unobserved and uncontrolled. Perhaps the most thorough analysis of the
dynamics of intensification is that of J. S. Coleman (1957). 1 will describe a
number of these dynamics and suggest how Gandhian conflict techniques tended
to control them-particularly the "runaway responses" to which Coleman refers.
In community conflict situations certain changes normally occur as the conflict
develops:
1. Movement from specific to more general issues and from original to new
issues. This shift sets the stage for a wider and more intensive conflict as it alerts
more potential parties to the controversy, uncovers fundamental cleavages and
differences in the community, and clouds the basic issues. All of this, for obvious
reasons, makes conflict resolution more difficult. Where a social movement like
satyagraha is involved, such an issues diversification dynamic increases its
opponents and inhibits its focus and sense of achievement. The Gandhian tactic
for controlling this dynamic was to tie each campaign to a single issue and a
sharply limited arena. The limited issue in each campaign, however, was subtly
and cleverly tied into larger questions like the end of colonial rule. The effect
was to limit the potential allies of the opponent, to retain as much issue clarity
and simplicity as possible, and to insure moderate and continuous success
feedback in limited increments. With each limited success, the nonviolent action
device gained credibility both with its adherents and its opponents. This tended to
encourage both increased commitment to nonviolence and more conciliatory
attitudes on the part of opponents.
2. Movement from disagreement to antagonism as the conflict develops. Issuebased conflict is transformed into ad persona hostility-the conflict is
personalized. Attacks are no longer on opposing positions but on those who hold
them. This naturally heightens the conflict parties' sense of perceived threat and
intensifies the conflict; it increases the "life-stakes" involved, so to speak.
The Gandhian model of conflict-waging inhibits the conflict personalization
process. It reduces threat by stressing the maintenance of good personal relations
with opponents while pressing the issues. An exemplary case was the
Ahmedabad Satyagraha during which Gandhi maintained close friendly relations
with several millowners while persuading them (and finally coercing them
through fasting) to make concessions. Gandhi, by personalizing his relationships
with his opponents, often accomplished individual "conversions" to his position.
By this process of separating the person from the issue, he was able to shake the
loyalty of opponents to their respective groups (e.g. millowners, members of the
Brahmin caste), to sufficiently break down group identification and increase
opponents' propensities toward conciliation. This technique was often employed
to limit antagonism in satyagraha campaigns.2
The Gandhian model recognizes both the necessity and danger of polarization.
Without it the issues cannot be clarified. The challenging movement needs it to
survive and grow. Yet, in Gandhian conflict theory, confrontation is not a
zerosum or even a positive-sum ame as much as it is a 'oint process of truth
seeking, with the settlement emerging from that process. Gandhian conflict
simultaneously provides for confrontation and maximizes the potential for
conciliation. Gandhi developed a delicate mix of polarizing and conciliatory
tactics that both produced and moderated confrontation. His view of conflict as
the joint pursuit of truth rejected absolute ideological and tactical positions,
thereby restraining the
polarization process.
3. Distortion of information. As the conflict grows, according to Coleman,
informal communication modes supplement and may even replace formal media
as a result of an increased demand for information by more people who are
alerted and involved. Rumor, slander, innuendo, and inaccurate data tend to
aggravate the conflict. The sense of threat is heightened between the parties as
they become more secretive. What is the other side planning? The worst is
imagined. Information that contradicts threatening images of opponents is filtered
out. Gandhi's conflict style, countering this dynamic, maximized the flow of
information between the movement and its opponents. His techniques and tactics
were openly discussed. Steps in the campaign were made known to opponents
beforehand. He used the mass media to acquaint everyone with movement plans.
Misinformation and secrecy were eliminated, reducing perceived threat among
opponents and lessening public fear and ignorance.
4. Mutual reinforcement of response. Coleman emphasizes the process of
reciprocal causation, the stuff of which conflict escalation is made. Cycles of
hostile response develop and feed the polarization process. Negative images of
the other party are continually confirmed. Hostile acts call forth hostile responses
that in turn evoke more hostility and so on. Conflict resolution is largely the
discovery of a means to break into escalatory reciprocal causation and reverse its
direction. Oberschall (1973:266) notes that reciprocity is also the basis for
dispute settlement. The "ethic of symmetry" requires that each give as well as
take, and refrain from taking unreasonable and extreme positions.
The Gandhian conflict style uses positive reciprocal causation. Nonviolent action
theoretically calls forth a nonhostile response from one's opponent. As I noted
earlier, this principle may not always operate-where nonviolent actors are poorly
trained, for example. Even when the nonviolent actors are disciplined, the initial
trauma of an unexpected nonviolent act contravening established custom and
threatening privileged status may anger and frustrate opponents and encourage
them to respond violently, as was often the case in the early months
of the sit-in movement in the South (Wehr, 1968). The theory of nonviolent
action asserts that while an opponent's initial response may be hostile, nonviolent
response to that hostility will increasingly modify and ultimately transform it.
The experience of the Gandhian and similar movements tends to len . d
supportive evidence t'o this proposition, although, as Bondurant observes, police
excesses were common in official response to satyagraha.
An American journalist, Webb Miller, reported that after one
raid on a salt depot he counted, in a hospital, 320 injured, many
still insensible with fractured skulls, others writhing in agony
from kicks in the testicles and stomach. (Bondurant, 1965:97)
5. Emergence of extremist leadership. To curb the operation of Gresham's Law of
Conflict (Coleman, 1957:14), by which extremist leaders increasingly replace
moderate ones as the conflict heats up, Gandhi selected his first- and secondlevel leadership carefully, and, as Sharp (1973:470) notes, they were disciplined
and trained thoroughly in preparatory periods before each campaign. Wherever
possible, Gandhi would lea d a campaign personally, with his stature as a leader
permitting him to control access to leadership positions. His pledge of
nonviolence acted as a brake on extremist elements. The Gandhian principle of
self-reliance also helped the movement to stay clear of alliances with other
political forces that did not share its commitment to nonviolence. The emphasis
on cooperative, constructive programs in each satyagraha campaign reinforced
the positive, creative aspects of the conflict technique. One was not challenging
established norms and structures without exemplifying alternatives. The habits of
cooperation in improving sanitation, nutrition, and education were essential
dimensions of the satyagrahi's role.
Other Limiting Aspects. The principle of self-realization in satyagraha was a
conflict-limiting device in two respects. (1) Any conflict was viewed as a selfrealization process for all parties involved. Such a view sees the opponent as one
to be persuaded or one to be persuaded by, not as one to be elimi- nated,
humiliated, or bested. (2) For the satyagrahi, the conflict was an empowerment
process. Satyagraha as a technique gave the hitherto powerless a strength, a
unique identity and status vis-@-vis their opponents. This identity-producing
dynamic encouraged a symmetry in the conflict that reinforced its selflimiting
qualities. Violence is often a product of desperation and asymmetry in a power
relationship. Satyagraha provided both a power balance that facilitated eventual
conciliation with minimal violence and a concern for the opponent as someone
with an identity deserving of respect.
Coleman identifies a number of factors working for moderation of conflict in
communities-cooptation of the opposition, resort to normal techniques of
handling problems, the existence of preconflict relationships that cross-pressure
participants, identification with and investment in community institutions.
Though Gandhi exploited these factors wherever possible, he was primarily
concerned with institutionalizing new conflict processes, creating new rules by
which conflict might be waged-encapsulating the conflict, to refer again to
Etzioni's concept.
We find, then, in Gandhi's model of conflict built-in inhibitors of violence,
rancorous escalation, and extreme polarization-three processes that facilitate
destructive consequences in normal conflict waging. The specific self-limiting
aspects discussed above are rooted in a conception of conflict as a truth-seeking
process in which the objective is not to win, but to achieve a fresh level of social
truth and a healthier relationship between antagonists. This is what Bondurant
called the Gandhian dialectic.
In every case of satyagraha the conflict is to be understood in dialectical terms.
The immediate objective is a restructuring of the opposing elements to achieve a
situation which is satisfactory to both the original opposing antagonists but in
such a way as to present an entirely new total circumstance [emphasis mine].
(Bondurant, 1965:195)
This rather innovative view of struggle, then, insured that the
techniques of waging it would be self-limiting. The conception of struggle as truth seeking produces in Gandhian conflict an escalating
dynamic somewhat different from the normal one, which Kriesberg has
described:
Having expressed hostility and coercive action against another party, the alleged reason for
it assumes importance commensurate with the action taken. The cause is endowed with
additional significance and there is increasing commitment to it. In addition, as the other
side reciprocates with coercion the threats and injuries suffered also induce feelings of
loyalty and commitment [that justify] increased effort toward their attainment and the
willingness to absorb, without yielding, the coercive efforts of adversaries. (Kriesberg,
1973:155)
In the dynamics of Gandhian escalation, to the contrary, persuasion in theory
replaces coercion, though, as Klitgaard (1971) notes, this did not always occur.
The escalating commitment is not to "winning" but to the discovery of the truth
of social justice, a commitment that admitted the possibility of the opponent's
truth.
Gandhian philosophy does not exclude compromise as a device for the
accommodation of differing positions at a point where conflict has not become
explicit and basic principles have not been challenged. But once conflict
materializes the Gandhian technique proceeds in a manner qualitatively different
from compromise. What results from the dialectical process of conflict of
opposite positions as acted upon by satyagraha, is a synthesis, not a compromise.
The satyagrahi is never prepared to yield any position which he holds to be the
truth. He is, however, prepared-and this is essential-to be persuaded by his
opponent that the opponent's is the true, or the more nearly true, position. In the
working out of the Gandhian dialectical approach, each side may, of course, yield
through dissuasion any part of its position. But this is not compromise. When
persuasion has been effected, what was once the opponent's position is now the
position of both antagonist and protagonist. There is no sacrificing of position, no
concession to the opponent with the idea of buying him over. Non-violent
resistance I 'I persuasion has carried the conflict into must continue until
mutually agreeable adjustment. Such adjustment will be a synthesis of the two
positions and will be an adj'ustriient satisfactory to both parties in the conflict.
There is no victory in the sense of triumph of one side over the other. Yet, there
is no compromise, in the sense in which each side would concede parts of its
previous position solely to effect a settlement. There is no "lowering" of
demands, but an aiming at a "higher" level of adjustment which creates a new,
mutually satisfactory, resolution. (Bondurant, 1965:197)
What unfolded in the Gandhian dialectic was a process similar in many ways to
the consensus formation traditionally used by Quaker bodies and in certain
traditional political systems (Bourdieu, 1962). No one wins or loses. Antagonists
arrive at a "meeting of the minds," so to speak.
Gandhi was ostensibly one of the opponents in the satyagraha campaigns, but his
style and commitment to the process made him, in a sense, a third party to the
conflict. Kakasaheb Kalelkar, one of Gandhi's satyagraha leaders, has called him
a
a "master in the art of synthesis. " This skill at facilitating a convergence of
positions among antagonists is, unfortunately, impossible to analyze in any but a
superficial way here.
Applicability of the Model
Is the Gandhian model as a conflict regulation device transferable, in part or
whole, to other conflict arenas? In fact, it has been adopted and adapted for use in
other social movements-e.g., the Martin Luther King, Jr. (1961) and Cesar
Chavez (Matthieson, 1970) movements for equal rights in the United States and
the Danilo Dolci movement in Sicily (Mangione, 1972). Its tactics were
borrowed by wartime resistance movements in Norway and Denmark and by the
movement in Czechoslovakia in 1968, to cite the most prominent cases. It has
been used effectively by groups and individuals not ideologically committed to
nonviolence but who have recognized its practical value. Gandhian self-limiting
conflict may provide future tactical possibilities for both liberation movements
and civilian defense programs.
Of equal interest is the potential applicability of parts of the
model for conflict regulation in marital conflict, community disputes, and
international peacemaking. Its transferability will be greatest where conflict
involves the total identity of the opponents, where a restructuring rather than a
mere reallocation of values is called for. Yet in most conflict situations the
information maximization tactic would tend to reduce threat and encourage
conciliation. Training people who are likely to be involved in intergroup conflict
how to break into an escalating spiral with a nonhostile response would help to
regulate conflict. Training people to distinguish between antagonist and issue in
their conflict waging is a third Gandhian tactic that would help limit conflict.
One final conflict-limiting mechanism in the satyagraha a pproach that mi ht be
used effectively in conflict regulation training is that of timing. Conflict is rarely,
if ever, waged "on schedule." Gandhian confrontation was self-limiting partly
because it was well timed. Runaway processes were precluded by careful, selfconscious weighing of each action and the opponent's likely response to it. Even
in conflicts where maximization of gains is the primary objective for each party,
training both parties and third-party intermediaries in timing and scheduling
could increase the potential for conciliation.
Satyagraha has several prominent weaknesses, however. For one thing, it is quite
culture-rooted, with concepts like selfsuffering and nonviolence difficult to
transplant. Yet the Gandhian method of creative confrontation is not as
culturebound as is popularly believed. The research of Sharp (1970) and others
suggests that many of the techniques of satyagraha were borrowed from Chinese,
Russian, and Irish nonviolent resistance movements. While a major part of its
genius lay in the way it was skillfully shaped out of Indian tradition, as a means
of struggle it has had substantial cross-cultural transferability.
The Gandhian movement was fueled by the charismatic leadership of one man,
though it produced other men of somewhat lesser stature like Ghaf fir Khan and
Vinoba Bhave. When that leadership was withdrawn, the movement declined rapi
idly. Whether nonviolent movements are any more susceptible to such a dynamic
than other movements is a debatable point, but with Gandhi and King, movement
dependence on their leadership was both strength and weakness.
A third possible weakness concerns the vulnerability of satyagraha to cooptation
by opponents. The confrontation/ conciliation mix is an extremely delicate one
and the movement may take much less than it could get from opponents in order
to maintain the balance. Most revolutionaries would argue that compromise has
no place in a struggle movementthat it is only diversion.
Finally, Gandhi's methods did not always work for even Gandhi himself. A
number of satyagraha campaigns were abortive or produced violent
confrontations. It will be interesting to see how successful the current resurgence
of the satyagraha movement in India will be. It has had some major successes in
confronting corrupt governments in Gujarat and Bihar and the Desai government
is committed to Gandhian principles, but it is too early to measure lasting impact.
JUSTICE WITHOUT
VIOLENCE
edited by
Paul Wehr
Heidi Burgess
Guy Burgess
Lynne Rienner Publishers
Boulder & London
5
Violence, Nonviolence, and Justice
in Sandinista Nicaragua
Paul Wehr & Sharon Erickson Nepstad
A society undergoing massive discontinuous change such as Nicaragua in the 1980s is not
where one would expect to find the achievement of justice without violence. Political
revolutions have been generally characterized by considerable violence. Successful
insurrections move quickly to consolidate their power, leaders compete for constituencies,
scores are settled, and elements opposed to radical change may challenge the revolutionary
regime. Violence in Sandinista Nicaragua was, however, unusual on two counts. First, it
was stimulated and executed to a very large degree from the outside. Second, it was limited
by a number of constraints on violence having both practical and theoretical implications
for justice attainment.
Assessing the violence-justice relationship in Sandinista Nicaragua is considerably more
difficult than in more repressive and less equitable Guatemala, for example. Social justice
was a guiding principle of Sandinista policy and, since losing power in 1990, Sandinista
organizations have struggled to preserve the agrarian reform and social welfare structures
they put in place in the 1980s.
Despite- its intention to make Nicaraguan society more just and peaceful, the Sandinista
revolution did give rise to deep conflicts over perceived injustices. There were regions and
groups within Nicaragua with real grievances against the Sandinista state. Where these
grievances produced open conflict, those opposing the state used both violent and
nonviolent means to achieve what they felt was justice. Our focus in this study is upon the
nonviolent methods used on all sides.
Those justice conflicts had diverse origins. Sharp ideological divisions developed rapidly
after the fall of Anastasia Somoza in 1979. Marxists of every persuasion struggled both
with one another and with democratic socialists. Mainstream Catholics took on liberation
theologians, and both of them had uneasy relations with Protestant groups along the
Atlantic Coast. Political pluralists resisted creation of a unitary state while pacifists
criticized the growth of a militarized state. Those of the privileged class who had remained
fought the Sandinista government as it confiscated property, developed mass education and
health programs, and organized agricultural and industrial cooperatives.
Political and economic destabilization from the outside was a second major stimulator of
conflict. The U.S. government's policy to derail the Sandinista revolution may have been
the most intensive national destabilization program in history. The Contra resistance,.and to
a much lesser degree the Yatama movement, were supplied and organized from the outside.
A third stimulator of violence was the constant militarization going on in Nicaragua in the
1980-1988 period. This factor was largely a reflection of East-West military competition in
Central America-the United States in sharp opposition to Sandinism and other armed
insurrections, and Cuba and the Soviet Union supporting them. Whatever their origins,
political conflicts in Nicaragua rapidly became armed conflicts as weapons spread
throughout the population. More military and paramilitary forces and armed civilians
intensified the potential for violent challenges to state authority and equally violent
responses.
A number of additional factors increased the potential for violence in Sandinista Nicaragua.
There were residual class divisions. Though much of the privileged class had left
Nicaragua, some remained to protect their interests. A second group of privilege was
created by the revolution itself as leaders in the Sandinista party, administrative apparatus,
and armed forces gained economic and social advantage. Geographical separation
aggravated racial and ethnic divisions on the Atlantic Coast as the Sandinistas sought
forcibly to integrate it. The general grinding poverty in Nicaragua and the unpopularity of
military conscription, begun in 1983, elevated political tensions in the country, increasing
the likelihood of intergroup and interpersonal violence.
Despite the estimated fifty thousand casualties resulting from the Contra war alone, there
occurred less political violence than one might have predicted given the radically disparate
justice goals pursued, the number of armed citizens, and the level of economic and social
restructuring going on at the time. This lower-than-expected incidence of violence is
explained, we think, in the violence-inhibiting, conflict-moderating, justice-producing
constraints operating in Nicaraguan society. Our purpose here is to identify the more
important constraints and to show how they supported resolution of the two most serious
conflicts, the Contra war and the Atlantic Coast resistance. We will, in conclusion, suggest
some implications of the Nicaraguan experience for justice attainment without violence.
Justice Through Nonviolent Means
We must obviously qualify our description of the two struggles as achieving
justice nonviolently because both were characterized initially by armed conflict.
But nonviolent means were later used, and those means did lead to settlement of
justice grievances. Each conflict, however, produced only partial justice as
defined by the challenging parties. The Democratic Resistance, commonly
known as the Contras, did see political pluralism introduced and its forces were
repatriated. But three years after repatriation, many had yet to be settled on land
of their own. The indigenous peoples of the Atlantic Coast did achieve political
and cultural autonomy in principle but are still pressing the national government
to develop workable autonomy structures. In both cases, however, the challenge
groups appear to be better off than they were when they pursued goals through
violent means. In both cases, violent conflict was ended within the framework of
Esquipulas, the regional peacemaking structure.
The Sandinista-Atlantic Coast Conflict
The conflict between the Nicaraguan government and the Indian and Creole
peoples of the Atlantic Coast began soon after the Sandinistas came to power in
Managua. The Atlantic Coast had been largely isolated from both the Somoza
repression and the Sandinista insurrection. When the Sandinistas sought to
integrate the region politically, economically, and administratively, there was
quick local resistance. The government sent the national army to impose its
control over the region. There followed extended military occupation, the harsh
treatment of indigenous communities, armed rebellion by loosely allied
paramilitary groups, and mass flight of thirty thousand refugees into neighboring
Honduras and Costa Rica.
The grievances of the Atlantic Coast resistance groups against the government
were numerous: the killing and imprisonment of community members;
destruction of crops and churches; violation of traditional tribal property rights
and ethnic cultures; restriction of human rights including the right to refuse
military service; and the denial of local self-government.
By 1984, realizing the errors of its coercive policy, the Sandinista government
began a two-track conciliation strategy. It first initiated talks with Atlantic Coast
political and cultural leaders. These consultations ,would subsequently result in a
National Autonomy Commission (1984), elected local peace and autonomy
commissions (1986), the drafting of a National Autonomy Law, and its
ratification by a Multi-Ethnic Assembly (1987).l Certain Atlantic Coast
Sandinistas trusted by both the government and indigenous leaders were central
figures in this autonomy-building process.2
The second track involved government negotiation with the Indian resistance
leaders in exile. Having formed Yatama in 1987, the latter's goal was the
restoration of historical territorial rights, not the multiethnic regional
independence permitted in the Autonomy Law. For the Sandinista-Yatama
conflict, then, the Esquipulas process provided a conflict management
frameworks Within Esquipulas, Nicaragua created a National Reconciliation
Commission to resolve the larger Sandinista-Contra conflict and a Conciliation
Commission to mediate the more limited Sandinista-Yatama disputes. The
Moravian Church, the primary religious organization in the East, acted as the
intermediary. In the early 1980s, the Moravians had lost pastors, churches,
schools, and hospitals in the Sandinista-Indian war. From 1983 on, however, the
Moravian Provincial Board and the Sandinistas had worked together in arranging
for cease-fires and in autonomy consultations. The Conciliation Commission
consisted mainly of people from the Moravian and Mennonite churches, both
known for their traditions of pacifism and conciliation.
From early 1988, the commission mediated the conflict under the most difficult
conditions. Oliver North and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were doing
their best to inhibit a Sandinista-Indian agreement. That agreement would
preclude the united resistance to the Sandinistas the United States sought to
build. The mediators had to overcome kidnapping threats, assassination attempts,
and.competition among Yatama leaders to craft a settlement. In September 1989,
a full agreement was reached with the eleventh-hour intervention of former U.S.
president Jimmy Carter.
Thus, the Atlantic Coast challenge to state repression shifted from initial armed
response to the nonviolent approacheslof consultation, negotiation, and mediation
along both the internally.initiated autonomy track and the externally assisted
conciliation track. Certain justice goals -,were achieved through that shift:
refugee repatriation; regional self-govern 'me:nt; military demobilization; and
reintegration of resistance leaders into the national political system.
The Sandinista-Contra Conflict
The civil war between the Sandinistas and the Contras had quite different origins
from the Atlantic Coast conflict. The Contras were not seeking ethnic justice and
autonomy as were the Atlantic Coast challengers, but rather the replacement of
the Sandinista state with a more conservative, pluralist one. Contra grievances
were as diverse as the paths by which Contra leaders came to resist. Many were
former National Guard officers seeking a return to something resembling
Nicaragua under Somoza. Others were disaffected Sandinistas, fallen away over
ideological differences with former insurgent colleagues. They sought a more
pluralist social democracy. Most of the Contras were peasants, some forced to
serve against their will.
Whatever their personal motives, all but a few of the Contra leaders were
organized, armed, and paid by the U.S. government. Its policy of low-intensity
warfare was designed to destabilize the Sandinista regime and end its support for
other Central American insurgencies.4 With genuine grievances against a radical
government and its uncompensated property seizures, Contra leaders were bo
ught off with large amounts of U.S. funding.
By 1983, the United States was establishing Contra bases in Honduras and Costa
Rica. For the next five years, Contra troops carried economic warfare and
political assassination to the Nicaraguan countryside. The Sandinista government
responded with military conscription, large increases in military expenditures,
and the widespread arming of civilians through local Committees for the Support
of the Sandinistas. Military activity was at high levels through the end of 1986.
,,,,,Three sets of external events served to reduce the level of violence in ,the
'Sandinista-Contra conflict after 1986. The first were the Iran-Contra hea rings in
Washington in 1986-1987, which obstructed the Reagan administration's
Nicaragua policy. The Contras could no longer be supplied. Second, the growing
cooperation between the United States and the USSR in arms control and conflict
mitigation reduced East-West competition in Latin America. Nicaraguan proxies
for that rivalry became increasingly superfluous.
Finally, the Esquipulas peace process from 1987 on was providing both impetus
and framework for negotiated settlement of the conflict. Esquipulas called for a
National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) to resolve each civil war in Central
America. The Nicaraguan NRC was the first to become operational.
Chairing the Nicaraguan NRC was Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo. The
Catholic Church played the same central role in the Sandinista-Contra conflict as
did the Moravian Church in the Sandinista-Atlantic Coast conflict. The
commission worked to implement the peace agreements negotiated in the
Esquipulas summit meetings of 1988-1989. Sandinista and Contra negotiators
first met under O,bando's auspices early in 1988. Several months of bargaining
'produced the Sapoa agreement and a de facto cease-fire. Esquipulas agreements
were subsequently reached for: internationally supervised elections;
demobilization and reintegration of Contra forces; and United Nations (UN) and
Organization of American States (OAS) monitoring. Faithful implementation of
those agreements produced what we believe to be one of the most successful
peacemaking cases of modern times. That process will be more fully explored
below.
Although the goals of the challenge groups-local autonomy, political pluralism,
demilitarization of the state, an end to conscription, and land to work-were in
principle met through the 1990 elections, they had not been fully realized even
two years later. In the West demobilized soldiers re- verted to armed threat, as
recontras (former Con tras) and recompas (former Sandinista military), to press
their demands for land and jobs. On the Atlantic Coast, the indigenous peoples
pressing for implementation of the Autonomy Law have not generally reverted to
armed threat in their conflict with the national government. By April 1992, all
opponents in the East and West were resolving their disputes through negotiation
and disarmament agreements.5
Conflictant Power Mixes
One way to analyze how these challenge groups achieved justice is to v iew their
power strategies and those of the Sandinistas as mixes of Boulding's three forms
of power-threat, exchange, and love (that is, integration). .Most often challenge
groups use a mix of these three strategies.6 At any given moment, an extreme
approach on the threat end may appear to eclipse integrative efforts at the other.
The exchange (that is, negotiation) elements should keep the mix in workable
balance-for example, the threat may be kept merely implicit or nonviolent and
the integrative force incomplete or tentative.
We would argue that in a conflict, the less violent the mix of power strategies,
the more successful the challengers will be in achieving justice. There must be, in
such a strategic mix, sufficient threat to escalate changeproducing conflict. That
threat, however, need not take the form of violent action. On the other hand, the
love, or integrative, inclination cannot be too strong or creative conflict will not
occur. The exchange in the mix is the means by which threat and integration are
kept at sufficiently moderate levels to permit movement toward justice-oriented
change.
Each resistance group and the Sandinista government had a mi.x of power
strategies they were using toward their opponent(s). The power mixes of the
opponents shifted as the two wars continued. Initially, the mixes were all heavy
with threat characterized by violent force. Then, over time, the exchange portions
in the mixes expanded, violent sanctions in the threat sector were increasingly
supplanted by nonviolent ones, and the integration portions were expanded as
negotiation agreements were implemented.
We further propose that such movement toward a less violent strategic mix is
encouraged or discouraged by the larger context of a conflict. In Nicaragua, that
context was influencing the opponents' strategic mixes away from armed force
and consequently was moving the two justice conflicts toward negotiation and
settlement.
The Conflict Context
Three types of factors were instrumental in moderating conflict and limit-ing
violence, as justice was pursued in the two conflicts: (1) institutional
constraints; (2) normative restraints; and (3) innovative use -of conflict
management.
Institutional Constraints
The political and legal systems in Sandinista Nicaragua tended to limit the
coercive capacity of the state. Constitutional guarantees of human and civil
rights, judicial grievance procedures, and a popular army close to the people all
served to limit any inclination the state might have had to use violence. Though
there were attempts at times to silence opposition and restrict political space
available to Sandinista challengers, open repression wag rare. When the state did
repress, the psychological and political costs to it were so great that it had to
retreat and publicly apologize. The political culture of Sandinism would not
tolerate much repression.
Socioeconomic structures built by the Sandinistas had violence-inhibiting
consequences. Their serious efforts at life-chance redistribution through national
health, agrarian reform, education, and basic-needs prograins not only
measurably reduced social inequality but provided mediating organizations that
could respond to individual and group justice claims. The primary intermediary
organizations were the branches of the Sandinista party and its mass
organizations built around rural and industrial labor, professionals, women, and
students. Of special importance were the cooperatives 7 and the Base Christian
Communities within the People's Church, both of which have been important
mechanisms for participatory democracy throughout Latin America.8 Such
organizations provided multiple grievance channels and safety-valve mechanisms
that tended to reduce violent conflict and preserve system legitimacy. These
mediating organizations increased social justice, but their influence was to a
degree offset by the development of a Sandinista "new class," which tended to
distance national leaders from local problems. Still, the organizational density
providing for two-way communication and influence between levels of
Nicaraguan society probably outweighed any class alienation.
A third set of structural factors were the extensive integrative affiliatioris
encouraged by Nicaraguan society and Sandinista organizations. There were
cross-cutting religious, political, and social ties that bridged existing cleavages.
Religious, family, and friendship links cut across political affiliations to moderate
conflict. A notable example is the family of Violeta Chamorro, two of whose
children were Sandinistas and two members of the United Nicaraguan Opposition
(UNO). Chamorro used family solidarity as a base to build national solidarity as
a conflict-moderating device. Nicaraguans, for her, were all members of the
national family. Such safety-valve institutions and cross-cutting affiliations can
lead to identification and mitigation of grievances and greater societal solidarity.
Where conflict is thus limited, its associative functions can strengthen both the
social system generally and specific units within it.9
Finally, violence was reduced in the two justice struggles in question by the
relations Nicaragua developed with two external facilitators of justice and
nonviolence-the regional peacemaking machinery of Esquipulas 11 and the
international movement of solidarity with the Nicaraguan people.
Esquipulas pushed the Sandinistas and their civil war opponents toward
negotiated settlement. Most important, it removed the SandinistaContra war from
U.S.-Soviet competition. Its summit agreements, its International Commission
for Verification and Support (CIAV), and its sponsorship of reconciliation
commissions in member countries moved violent conflict into negotiation. The
Esquipulas agreement of 1987, "Process For Establishing a Firm and Lasting
Peace in Central America, created the framework for bringing signatory
governments and their insurgent opponents together.10
The Esquipulas agreement set objectives and prescribed specific measures:
demilitarization of conflict through cease-fires; refusal of support for and use of
territory by insurgents; national reconciliation through negotiated settlements,
amnesty for insurgents, and repatriation of refugees; democratization of political
systems through free and open elections, ending states of emergency, and
protection of human rights; and continuing regional consultation through periodic
summits and a parliament.
The attention of the successive Esquipulas summits was almost entirely on
resolving Nicaraguan conflicts. Each meeting produced additional steps toward
their peaceful resolution: San Jose (1988), a Sandinista-Contra cease-fire and
negotiations; San Salvador (1989), agreement on elections and Contra
demobilization/repatriation; Tela (1989), supervision o demobilization by the
ICVS and request for UN monitoring; Montellimar (1990), postelection transition
and Contra disarmament procedures. Nicaragua, then, was at the center of a
violence-reduction, justice-producttion process that built a momentum for
reducing threat and for increasing exchange and reconciliation in the strategic
mix of the opponents.
Nicaragua was also set within an international solidarity and support network that
by its very nature discouraged violence and encouraged justice. Through it came
international volunteers; material, technical, and financial aid; and pressure from
external support organizations on behalf o nonviolence and justice. Its North
American segment pressured the U.S. Congress away from military aid. Very
important was the physical presence of this network's "sympathetic third
parties."12 Working and watching throughout Nicaragua, they served to limit
violence and rights violations on all sides.
We have discussed some institutional and structural characteristics o the national
and regional settings where Nicaraguan justice struggles were taking place.
Those dimensions were damping political violence and encouraging the
mitigation of justice grievances. Those constraints were a
Normative Restraints
Conflict in Sandinista Nicaragua was also moderated by ethical commitments to
reconciliation and justice within the revolution itself. Those commitments were
not always honored, but sincere efforts were made to do so. Upon taking power,
the Sandinistas abolished the death penalty, prohibited torture, set about to
correct the worst of the social injustices, and welcomed reconciliation with
dissidents., The Sandinista revolution was gentle as such movements go. Reason
not coercion, conciliation not division, nonviolence not violence were to be its
guiding principles for transforming society. A good faith effort was made by the
Sandinistas to apply those principles. Countering such ethical restraint, however,
were sharp ideological and theological conflicts. Marxism confronted
conservative Christianity, and the Hispanicized West rejected the religious,
political, and racial separatism of the Atlantic Coast. In the face of these sharp
conflicts, twlo@ factors were particularly influential in reducing violencereligious values and the participation of women.
Religious values. Elements of both the Catholic and Protestant churches were deeply
involved in the justice conflicts in question. Liberation theologians and lay -Catholics
helped create the Sandinista state and the theoretical, ideological, and cultural bases for
transforming Nicaraguan society.13 The values of religious solidarity, social justice, and
nonviolence were therefore tempering policymaking and the state's use of force. An ethical
tone was established that afforded political space for nonviolent protest. .
There are numerous documented illustrations of how practicing Christians active in the
revolution restrained its violence.14 The Sandinistas acknowledged that involvement in
their official statement on religion.
[Christians were involved] to a degree unprecedented in any other revolutionary movement
in Latin America and perhaps in the world. The fact opens new and interesting possibilities
for the participation of Christians in revolutions elsewhere, not only in the phase of struggle
for power, but in the phase of building a new society.15
Time and again, the spirit of reconciliation was evident in the way Sandinistas dealt with
their opposition. By way of illustration, Interior Minister TomAs Borge came upon a
National Guard officer who had only months before the Sandinista victory tortured, raped,
and killed Borge's wife. He took the officer out of the line, who undoubtedly feared he
would be executed immediately. Instead, according to the account, Borge told him, "My
revenge will be to.pardon you."16
Perhaps the most direct influence of Christianity on reducing violence and facilitating
justice occurred in the Base Christian Communities. Through their overlapping
membership with Sandinista mass organizations, they worked to "Christianize" the
revolution at the local level.
As the Sandinista-Contra war intensified, Christians were using active nonviolence for
peace and justice. Father Miguel D'Escoto, Nicaraguan foreign minister in the mid-1980s,
led this nonviolence movement. In 1985, D'Escoto launched a nonviolence campaign,
Evangelical Insurrection, with a month-long fast during Lent. It was an insurrection, he
explained, because Christians of all persuasions could rise up against war, repression,
hatred, violence, external intervention-from wherever they came. It was evangelical
because he believed nonviolence to be the essence of the Gospel. After Easter, D'Escoto
spread his campaign through the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross), a two-week, two-hundredmile walk across Nicaragua. Its purposes were to heal conflict internal to Nicaragua and to
move U.S. Americans to work for a conciliatory U.S. policy. As D'Escoto told one
interviewer: "This uprising, this protest, uses a different arsenal, with weapons different
from the traditional, conventional. . . . The weapons that the Lord wants us to use are
nonviolent weapons. The most obvious ones are fasting, prayer, and walking."17
D'Escoto and other priests in the Sandinista government constrained revolutionary excess,
constantly urging moderation and nonviolence. D'Escoto was personally intrigued with the
potential of nonviolent sanctions. This interest led him to invite to Nicaragua in July 1988 a
team of specialists in social defense-the use of nonviolent resistance against either external
attack or internal repression. The concept, as an alternative or supplement to military
defense, was discussed with government leaders, mass organizations, and the political
opposition. 18
Catholic nonviolence was matched from the Protestant side by a, constant search for
conciliation. In 1986, partly in response to D'Escoto's insurrection of the year before,
Nicaragua's evangelical church council barked on the "Campaign of Fasting and Prayer for
Peace and Justice in Nicaragua." Prayer vigils for peace were held throughout the nation,
culminating in an all-night vigil by ten thousand in Managua in October.19 Nicaragua's
international solidarity community used nonviolent action against violence. Witness for
Peace (WFP), for example, had a physical presence from 1983 onward in the war zone,
where it had observed that Contra attacks were reduced when international volunteers were
present. WFP representatives challenged U.S. warships off the coast in unarmed boats,
sailed along border rivers to protest attacks on civilians, and obtained hostage releases.20
The most enduring effort to minimize violence in Nicaraguan conflict, 9
however, was the tradition of pacifism and conciliation among the Moravians and
Mennonites. The Moravian tradition of peacemaking stretches back to the Czech
reformation of the fifteenth century. Their reconciliation work with the Sandinistas and
among the numerous ethnic groups in the
East was a most important force for violence reduction. By 1992, the Moravian leaders in
the East were once again mediating conflict, this time between the UNO government and
local groups calling for implementation of the Autonomy Law.
The Mennonites' tradition of conscientious refusal to participate in war brought them into
direct conflict with Sandinista military conscription. Refusal to bear arms led some
Mennonites to officially sanctioned conscientious objector status, others to alternative
service, some to imprisonment, and still others to flee the country. Such principled
resistance to war and military service presented a complication for Sandinista militarization
policy. It may have inhibited Contra recruitment as well. The Mennonites' pacifism also led
them to urge that nonviolent resistance be explored as an alternative to military defense
against the Contras.
The role of women. Women have been a force for conflict moderation and making in
contemporary Nicaragua. They may have a natural inciination toward nonviolent personal
and group relations. They have also been a disadvantaged group even during the Sandinista
period and thus more sensitive to justice issues being raised by aggrieved groups generally.
Such women as Violeta Chamorro, Hazel Law, and Myra Cunningham demonstrated their
peacemaking and justice skills in high positions. Elsewhere, women applied those skills in
cooperatives and local government and as family heads.
Women appeared to vote heavily against the Sandinistas in the 1990 elections. They did so
first because they felt it would end the war. As mothers, they wished to lose no more
children to it. A UNO victory, the U.S. government had promised, would end the war.
Second, Nicaraguan women are often single parents and managers of the family economy.
The economic decline in the later Sandinista years, whatever its causes, was particularly
burdensome for women responsible for feeding their families.
Finally, women had grievances against the Sandinistas. Although they had made some
gains under Sandinism, its promises of sexual equality, full- political participation, and
protected gender rights remained largely unfulfilled.21 The promises of a woman-led UNO
coalition to end the war and improve the economy appeared to be sufficiently compelling to
women voters. Their voting in itself served to reduce violence levels, at least in the short
term.
Conflict Management Experience
A third conflict-moderating force in Sandinista Nicaragua was the skill at conflict
settlement that developed there. Nicaraguans learned to innovate while drawing
on their own peacemaking traditions. They learned to use third parties to
negotiate settlements and to invent solutions where past experience provided
none.
Third-party approaches. Nicaraguans quickly learned a good deal about thirdparty intervention. Use of the insider-partial to mediate disputes appears to be a
tradition in Central American societies. The insider-partial is one chosen fr6m
within the conflict, known to be more sympathetic to one side but trusted by both
because of their personal distinction and institutional prominence.22 Cardinal
Obando began such an intermediary role during the rebellion against Somoza. In
1974 and 1978 he mediated hostage negotiations successfully despite his open
antipathy toward the Somoza regime.23 Ten years later, with his hostility
redirected against the Sandinistas, he was still accepted as head of the National
Reconciliation Commission. He mediated the Sapoa cease-fire, the Toncontfn
demobilization agreement, and the 1990 electoral transition process.
Violeta Chamorro has played a similar insider-partial role since the 1990
elections. As UNO president, she was obviously anti-Sandinista. Yet, she headed
a family representing both sides and chose to retain Sandinista Humberto Ortega
as defense minister. In post-election Nicaragua, she built the presidency of the
republic into a mediating force, trying to lead the Sandinista and right-wing
groups into a concertaci6n process to review and negotiate the conflicting claims
of expropriated landowners and those given land titles by the revolution.24
One could even claim that Oscar Arias, the architect of Esquipulas, played an
insider-partial role for Nicaragua. He was known to be hostile to Sandinism. As
president of Costa Rica, then having border and ref pe problems with Nicaragua,
he was a party to the conflict. Yet his stature as Nobel Laureate and head of a
traditionally neutral state made him acceptable as mediator.
The Nicaraguans also used outsider-neutral mediators-those brought in from the
outside who were ostensibly impartial in the conflict. The United Nations
Observer Group--Central America (ONUCA) monitored the Contra
demobilization process that included a precedent-setting "swords into
plowshares" weapons destruction. Jimmy Carter, representing the Council of
Freely Elected Heads of State, mediated and monitored the power transfer
process after the 1990 elections.
Negotiation. Nicaraguans on all sides learned to negotiate effectively. In both
civil wars, negotiation success required that opponents conceive a preferred
outcome that did not require the elimination of either side. In the SandinistaContra conflict, internationally supervised elections transformed a win-all/loseall struggle into one where each side's goals would be at least'partially met
regardless of electoral victory or defeat. In the Sandinista-Atiantic Coast conflict,
the indigenous peoples retained their cultural identity and local autonomy but
within the unified national state required by the Sadinistas.
Perhaps the richest illustration of how well Nicaraguans had learned the
negotiation game was the peaceful transition from Sandinista to UNO
government. Georg Simmel might easily have been referring to that transition
process when he wrote: "The ending of conflict is a specific enterprise. It belongs
neither to war nor to peace, just as a bridge is different from either bank it
connects.... Such forms in which a fight terminates ... constitute interaction not to
be observed under any other circumstances."25
In that tense and ambiguous period of March-April 1990, settlements were
negotiated for a series of complex issues-Contra demobilization and
reintegration, transfer of governmental power, protection of smallholder property
rights, and transformation of security forces. How those agreements were
achieved and implemented will be the subject for more than one doctoral
dissertation.
Invention. Nicaraguans often used conventional peacemaking approaches but c
ombined them with their own original ideas. The Atlantic Coast autonomy
process and the 1990 transition procedures are cases in point. There just seemed
at the time to be no historical precedents either in indigenous rights protection or
in revolutions relinquishing state power peacefully. The Nicaraguans had to
"write the handbook" as they went. That handbook was still being written in
1993. Atlantic Coast regional governments must resolve conflict both between
themselves and the national government over autonomy and natural resources,
and among leaders of ethnic minorities who continue to compete for power and
influence.
The need for conflict improvisation hardly diminished in the postSandinista
period. Class, political, and ethnic conflicts seemed to intensify with further
economic decline and the trauma of a system shift. The most immediate
postelection tasks were military demobilization and disarmament. The Sandinista
forces, already reduced dramatically from ninety thousand to twenty-eight
thousand in 1990, had to be further cut and the twenty thousand Contras
disarmed. All those demobilized had to be economically reintegrated. In the
initial stage, the UN disarmed fourteen thousand Contras and destroyed their
weapons. By March 1992, seventy-four hundred recontras and recompas had also
been disarmed through a weapons buy-back plan.
Equally difficult was the problem of civilian disarmament. In the last years of the
Contra war, anticipating a U.S. invasion, the Sandinistas had distributed weapons
to Sandinista defense committees around the nation. After military
demobilization, an estimated one hundred twenty thousand weapons remained in
civilian hands.
The Nicaraguans have experimented with different approaches to weapons
collection. In 1990, thirty thousand weapons were seized through unannounced
vehicle searches and destroyed in a public ceremony. Such a scheme works only
once. In 1991, a plan to buy back weapons was devised with funding by the U.S.
government. A national commission on disarmament was created with the
disarmament plan jointly supervised by a CIAV-OAS team. Nicaragua continues
to rely on external third parties for disarmament monitoring. Buy-back prices
range from fifty dollars for a handgun to three thousand dollars for an antiaircraft
missile-substantial hard currency incentives in a depressed economy. Those who
"snitch" on others get police protection, and those who lead the government to
arms caches receive 50 percent of their total value.26
Yet another foray into uncharted territory was concertaci6n. UNO and the
Sandinista opposition sought agreement on such issues as rights to confiscated
and redistributed property, with Chamorro as insider-partial mediator. In the
immediate postelection period, there developed a restructuring of political
relations in which the two political forces struggled for dominance within the
National Assembly and local governments. Their conflicts were and in 1993
continue to be mediated by the presidency. Each side has de facto control of part
of the state-the Sandinistas the security forces and their opponents the
administrative machinery.
The Sandinistas, as the political opposition, have used nonviolent sanctions to
apply their power. Through strikes they have resisted government moves to
dismantle the Sandinista social welfare system and to privatize state firms
without worker consent. Marches and mass rallies are also frequently used. The
civic strike, a total withdrawal of cooperation from a despotic regime, has often
been used in Latin America, though contemporary Nicaragua does not present
conditions for such an action.27
Will Nicaraguans use more or less violence as they continue to struggle over
widely disparate justice goals and equity conceptions? Our prognosis is a mixed
one. The distributive justice structures developed during the Sandinista period
have been severely weakened. Economic life for the average Nicaraguan has
deteriorated. Yet, citizen-government relations continue to be mediated through
organizations that facilitate grievance expression. The depoliticization of the
armed forces permits a milieu congenial for the use of nonviolent sanctions by
aggrieved constituencies. The churches continue to work for justice and
reconciliation. There has been some real progress made in weapons reduction.
The Esquipulas process and Nicaragua's global solidarity network, although they
have declined in influence, continue as moderating factors. Political restructuring
had, by 1993, produced a left-center-right balance and has made a conflict
management forum of the National Assembly. An unrestrained press encourages
creative release of tension in a political system. Add to all of this the conflict
management experience accumulated in Nicaragua, and there remains potential
for achieving justice without violence there. A failing economy, a high birth rate,
a resurgence of class interests, and personal political rivalries, however, appear to
make that increasingly difficult.
Conclusion
We have said that antagonists in Nicaragua's justice struggles learned from
painful experience to shift from threat-heavy power strategies to more balanced
ones. A conflict-moderating context facilitated those shifts. We have considered
the power strategies of threat, exchange, and integration not as mutually
exclusive but as complementary elements in an opponent's overall strategy. In
theory there may be pure threat, exchange, and integrative strategies. But in
practice, a mix of them operates in any relationship.
Both of the challenge movements initially responded to Sandinista policies with
threat-heavy strategies that were ineffective for their pursuit of justice. By 1984
the leaders of the Atlantic Coast resistance were in exile with their forces
scattered as refugees. By 1988 the Contras were essentially defeated, a fact
increasingly clear as the U.S. government withdraws its support. Pure threat had
been costly and ineffective for both groups.
As the element of exchange increased, and extreme threats were mod-erated and
reconciliation first appeared, the altered strategic mix encouraged the emergence
of peace and justice. On the Atlantic Coast the autonomy agreement was
constructed. A Sandinista-Contra cease-fire was followed by agreement on new
elections, demobilization, and reintegration. In each conflict, one side or both
decided to change their strategic mix with positive consequences for peace.
It is in the exchange process that threat reduction and conciliation enhancement
are actively pursued. As opponents communicate, clarify positions and interests,
and trade concessions, threat is reduced. Mere civility may give way to genuine
mutual respect.
We have suggested there may be certain conditions necessary for the right
threat/exchange/conciliation mix to emerge. In the Nicaraguan case, we
identified institutional, normative, and experiential factors in the national context
encouraging such strategic mixes conducive to settlement. External intervenors
from Esquipulas, the international solidarity community, the United Nations, and
the OAS all reinforced internal factors.
Can we extract a "power mix" model for nonviolent justice attainment from the
Nicaraguan experience? Could not societies and their governments learn to
consciously structure their challenges and responses to reduce armed force in the
threat component, perhaps replacing it with disciplined nonviolent sanctions?
Could they not learn to enhance the role of love in the integrative element,
through religious values, national solidarity, and other integrative forces? Could
they not increase the exchange capacity of their nation, using both indigenous
and foreign conflict resolution techniques.
It might be argued that challenge groups must initially use threat to attract
attention, to define issues, to build unity, and to force negotiation. Were not the
Sandinistas brought to the Esquipulas and autonomy bargaining tables by the
military threats of their adversaries, one might ask? Evidence does not support
that argument. The Contra and Yatama military threats had been largely
neutralized when the Sandinistas began conciliatory moves. What the evidence
does suggest is that exchangeheavy power mixes and contexts encouraging them
are important elements in nonviolent justice attainment.
What does our analysis imply for justice struggles in developing societies? First,
rapid resort to violence within a threat strategy seems counterproductive for both
governments and challengers. In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas, the indigenous
peoples, and the Contras all paid heavy costs in their civil wars. Such wars
usually become "proxy wars," with major states using the resources of client
states for their own political advantage. In Nicaragua, the Atlantic Coast
resistance was somewhat successful in avoiding U.S. control. The Contras, by
contrast, were not. And the Sandinistas became militarily dependent on the
socialist bloc. Militarization of such conflicts, as developing nations have sadly
learned, is the shortest route to external control.
In summary, what appears most important is for justice opponents to be flexible
and diligent in using available conflict-moderating resources and to create them
where they do not exist. The Nicaraguans used institutional constraints,
normative inclinations toward conciliation, and conflict management, learning all
in a timely fashion. They were quick to use Esquipulas, U.S.-Soviet detente, and
international mediators to moderate their conflicts. They effectively adjusted
their power strategy mixes to context-transforming events such as the Sandinista
electoral defeat. While
Nicaraguan conditions will hardly be reproduced elsewhere, much of it conflictmoderating experience we think may have general applicability.
Notes
1. Sollis, "The Atlantic Coast."
2. Freeland, "Nationalist Revolution and Ethnic Rights."
3. Gomariz, Balance de una esperanza.
4. That policy and strategy were clearly laid out in the report of the Com-mission on
Integrated Long-Term Strategy, Discriminate Deterrence, pp. 16-17.
5. See "An Arms Deal" and Cuadra.
6. Boulding, Three Faces of Power.
7. Sandinista agricultural cooperatives are analyzed in some detail in Ortega,
"La gestion de los traba . adores."
8. Berryman, "Base Christian Communities."
9. For an examination of conflict functions and limiting mechanisms see
Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict. For a study of how such mechanisms worked for
Polish Solidarity, see Wehr, "Conflict and Restraint."
10. The Esquipulas agreement in its entirety is to be found in Arias Sanchez, El camino de
la paz, pp. 411-426.
11. Wehr and Lederach, "Mediating Conflict."
12. This unusual third-party role is discussed in Wehr and Lederach, "Third-Party
Intervention." See also Everett, Bearing Witness.
13. See Girardi, Faith and Revolution.
14. Randall, Christians in the Revolution.
15. Berryman, "Base Christian Communities," p. 38.
16. McManus and Schlabach, Relentless Persistence, p. 169.
17. Ibid., p. 159.
18. The social defense team's evaluation is presented in Muller and Boubault,
"Nicaragua."
19. McManus and Schlabach, Relentless Persistence, p. 166.
20. Griffin-Nolan, Witness for Peace.
21. Gottschalk, "The Nicaraguan Election."
22. For an elaboration of the insider-partial concept see Wehr and Lederach,
"Mediating Conflict."
23. Christian, Nicaragua, p4 212.
24. Flakoll Alegria, "Cesar Legislates Instability."
25. Simmel, Conflict and the Web, p. 1 1 0.
26. Selser, "Plan to Disarm Civilians."
For a competent treatment of the civic strike see Parkman, Nonviolent rection.
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"An Arms Deal." Barricada Internacional 11 (347) (March 1992): 6-8. Berryman, P. "Base
Christian Communities and the Future of Latin America."
Monthly Review 36 (3) (1984): 27-39.
Boulding, K. Three Faces of Power (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1989).
Christian, S. Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family (New York: Random House,
1985).
Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy, Discriminate Deterrence (Washington:
USGPO, 1988).
Coser, L. The Functions of Social Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1956).
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M. Bearing Witness, Building Bridges: Interviews with North Americans Living and
Working in Nicaragua (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1986).
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(341) (September 1991): 4-6.
Freeland, J. "Nationalist Revolution and Ethnic Rights: The Miskito Indians of
Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast." Third World Quarterly 10 (4) (1989): 166-190. Girardi, G.
Faith and Revolution in Nicaragua (MaTyknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989).
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Costa Rica: FLACSO, 1988).
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Westminster/John Knox, 1991).
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Latin America (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1991).
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Actualiti 19 (November 1988).
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Ciencias Sociales 40/41 (1988): 25-37.
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Peace Review 8.-4 (1996), 555-561
The Citizen Intervenor
Paul Wehr
In the wake of the Somalian, Rwandan and Bosnian crises, and on the brink of the Burundi
conflict, we should consider not whether the outside world should intervene to moderate
civil violence in such cases, but how it should do so. Governments and nongovernmental
organizations (NGOS) quite simply must expand the world's capacity to protect civilians
from violence, whether internal or external.
Military institutions, whose past interventions have usually been aggressive, now
sometimes seek socially useful and ethically justifiable missions. There is certainly a role
for them, interposing themselves to prevent armed conflict, as they currently do in Bosnia.
U.N. and regional peacekeeping forces are muddling through similar missions in Liberia
and Haiti.
For several reasons, however, humanitarian military intervention undermines Fits good
intentions in practice. First, military forces are popularly perceived more as the perpetrators
rather than the deterrents of violence against civilians. Bosnia, Chechnya, and Rwanda are
only the most recent contemporary historical instances that come to mind.
Second, the success of armed intervention, regardless of intentions, depends primarily on
the threat or actual use of force. Such methods coerce rather than persuade. In the longer
run, they produce fear and instability rather than security and stability. Even with the most
favorable conditions and benevolent intentions, armed humanitarian intervention can only
succeed in the short term. With time, the temptation to use greater force overcomes caution,
as indigenous resistance to the external presence inevitably escalates.
Third, the inexorable trend toward more remote and destructive weapons further removes
military forces from the caution, nuance and sensitivity so necessary for a successful
humanitarian intervention. Given the limits imposed by the naturc and purpose of military
institutions, their role in humanitarian intcrvcntions must necessarily be a limited one.
Of course, non-military intervention also exists. Diplomacy provides an example, although
it is more often used in conjunction with threats to use military force. Another example is
the humanitarian relief agency, which usually works independent of military force. When it
does associate too closely with the military, its effectiveness quickly diminishes, as we saw
with U.N. involvement in Somalia and Bosnia.
Can we develop other, more effective forms of non-military humanitarian intervention?
Arguably, yes. Private citizens represent an untapped resource for effective humanitarian
intervention. Their disciplined and structured participation could supplement and enhance
the established agents of inter-vention. Actually, the tradition of the citizen intervenor (CI)
in human history is a long and notable one; thus, we need not start from scratch. That
tradition has already produced an organizational base around the world that could be better
mobilized to reduce violence across national boundaries in the 21st century.
For nearly two centuries, peace activists have assumed that "peace is too important to be
left to the experts." Citizen efforts to advise those experts can be traced back at least to
William Penn's prototypical charter for a European peace zone, a document he modestly
shared with heads of state in the 17th century. The tradition of civilian intervention as
peacemakers grew substantially in the 19th century. Elihu Burritt's life-long campaign for
an international peace regime included his extended residence in Western Europe capitals
as a citizen lobbyist. Such early interventions were often welcomed by governments.
By the 20th century, lay peacemakers found their efforts less well received. Heads of
government usually dismissed them out of hand. Jane Addams and her coworkers in the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom labored mightily to deter World War
I. But as citizen intervenors they were rebuffed, even vilified for meddling in "affairs of
state." They were women, bad enough. They were ordinary citizens, worse yet. Woodrow
Wilson found them annoying, to say the least, and Theodore Roosevelt thought them
"dangerous."
Since World War II, direct intervention across national borders by NGOs and individuals to
relieve suffering and deter violence has grown significantly. Post-war reconstruction and
work camp programs such as those of the Quaker and Mennonite service organizations
were models for later governmental programs like the Peace Corps, the Scandinavian
development agencies and the French "cooperants." My own experience as a Quaker
"intervenor" in such a program during the Algerian Revolution marked me greatly, setting
me firmly on a life path of conflict scholarship and peace action.
Usually such civilian initiatives have had official blessing but occasionally, as when U.S.
Quakers delivered evenhanded humanitarian aid to both North Vietnam and South Vietnam
in the 1960s, they have met governmental condemnation and punishment. Gradually,
citizens in organizations such as Amnesty International, Medecins sans Frontieres, and
Sister Cities International have assumed a major responsibility for reducing violence across
national borders. As we move into a new century, there's a solid tradition, and at least some
governmental acceptance, for the civilian's right and responsibility to intervene.
That tradition expanded in the 1980s, from an explosive growth in citizens claiming the
right to participate in transnational humanitarian intervention. Two movements in
particular-nuclear pacifism and Central American solidarity produced some important
citizen experiments. A Women's Walk for Nuclear Disarmament moved for months
through Northern European nations, meeting many citizens and government leaders. In the
Americas, numerous caravans with humanitarian aid went from North America to El
Salvador and Nicaragua despite harassment from hostile governments along the way. .
Witness for Peace and Peace Brigades International developed the practice of protective
presence. Their multinational teams would live, work and travel with Central Americans at
risk-human rights activists, coffee harvesters, border villagers. The simple presence of
foreigners-particularly U.S. Americans-was thought to be a deterrent to armed attack.
Some communities intervened through city twinning. Boulder, Colorado, for example,
linked with Dushanbe in the Soviet Union and Jalapa in Nicaragua. Reciprocal visitations
and cultural exchanges have developed from those projects that have outlived both the Cold
War and the Contra War. An elementary school in Jalapa and a Tadjikistani tea house in
Boulder are lasting monuments to that citizen intervention.
The Carter Center initiatives provide another, unusual example of citizen Tdiplomacy.
Jimmy Carter is, of course, a citizen with special status and experience. Still, his
intervention as a private mediator in international crises in Haiti, Bosnia, Nicaragua, and
North Korea has produced ambivalence and sometimes hostility among professional
diplomats. Nevertheless, Carter's efforts have promoted the cause of direct private citizen
involvement in transnational peacemaking.
Further developments have come in the last few years. First, regional and local leaders from
areas of great tension are being trained in conflict moderation methods, and linked together
through interorganizational networks. Londonbased International Alert, for example, has
developed a crisis management network, linking regionally with groups like the
Coordinating Committee for Conflict Resolution Training in Europe. Other networks have
grown out of university programs, at Uppsala and George Mason, for example, and have
trained scores of young professionals from the developing world in conflict management.
Likewise, the Global Commission to Fund the U.N. has pressured the Security Council to
form Anticipatory Risk-Mitigation Peace-Building Contingents, which would provide an
"in-place, on-call network of professionals already engaged in [trust-building,
reconstruction, conflict resolution, risk mitigation and confidence building] activities in
many countries." They would be a resource for the peace-building function the U.N.
peacekeeping forces cannot perform.
The peace team movement has also been active in the 1990s, training citizens with religious
and humanitarian motivations in crisis settings. According to Elise Boulding, it includes
faith-based groups-the Quakers, the Mennonites, the Swedish Life and Peace Institute, the
World Council of Churches-and secular organizations, in a network of about 50 groups. In
recent years, exploratory peace teams have been sent to crisis zones in Bosnia, Haiti, and
the Persian Gulf, revealing both the potential and the barriers of private intervention.
A related outgrowth has been the increasing demand by NGOs for more citizen
participation in the U.N. This has included proposals for a people's counterpart of the
General Assembly, which would also sponsor parallel intervention efforts in the field.
Citizen intervention against war and violence also has an academic track. Peace and
conflict study and research have deepened the conviction that knowledgeable citizens can
learn to reduce violence in our conflicts. Scholars know a lot about peace and justice
activism, about moderating conflict, and about nonviolent action for self-defense and social
change. The development of the International Peace Research Association, and peace and
conflict sections in social science organizations, suggest an increasing institutionalization
of these perspectives. A parallel growth has occurred in conflict management and dispute
resolution as professions. And alternative (to the courts) dispute resolution has become a
growth industry in the U.S.
The tradition of private citizen intervention has broadened in scope and deepened in
conviction. It began as humble advice to government. Then it became the insistence on a
citizen's right to be included "at the table." Subsequently it became massive intervention to
alter the government's violenceproducing policies. Finally, it has become a training and
direct involvement initiative, officially acknowledged as part of global peacemaking.
Now, the citizen intervenor (CI) (to reduce violence) is one who: lobbies government on
foreign policies such as arms sales; invests capital with informed social responsibility;
trains in conflict moderation techniques; uses nonviolent action to thwart violence; and
participates in domestic and transnational peace team missions.
How can we promote greater citizen intervention to confront violence? First, we can take
advantage of a growing citizen inclination worldwide to challenge institutional policies and
structures. Grassroots citizen action is indeed alive and very well. A global organizational
infrastructure to promote intervention against violence and injustice might already be said
to exist.
Second, we now have a substantial conflict knowledge pool available to the Cl. The
concepts and methods of conflict moderation are becoming simpler, are being translated
into world languages and disseminated through citizen travel and electronic exchange: the
emerging peacemaking discourse will touch people at all levels of society. An Internet
conflict resolution course and exchange seminar we are developing at the Universltv of
Colorado (with U.S. Institute of Peace support) will help promote this initiative.
A growing pool of older persons in affluent nations now have the time, money, inclination
and life experience to be trained and deployed as intervenors. And younger persons
increasingly have families who will "stake" them in violence intervention missions. They
may work in their home communities or alternate locales with transnational involvement.
Organizations like Pangaea are responding to the increased demand for personal and
peacemaker development.
While others might call these initiatives wild dreaming, they stem from well-grounded
speculation about the new possibilities for citizen intervention. Certainly, some global
forces might discourage such initiatives. First, political, commercial and technological
interests are now arming the world at a frightening rate: this may simply overwhelm
nonmilitary intervention. The anti-personnel mine and the Pentagon's proposed arsenal
ship, for example, are two diabolical, relatively cheap devices that further distance human
perpetrators from the consequences of their violent acts, rendering them more difficult to
deter.
Second, political and bureaucratic interests may resist private civilian intrusions into their
preserve, even if ways were found to complement rather than complicate the crisis work of
peacemaking professionals. To confront this resistance, citizen intervenors-among other
things-would have to speak, at least minimally, the local language, and be sensitive to local
peacemaking constraints.
Third, we neither fully understand nor can we fully predict the dynamics of external
intervention. Neutrals intervening for humanitarian purposes may be regarded suspiciously
in the "target" society, and may even be taken hostage. They may be ill-uscd by one side or
another to demonstrate commitment or ruthlessness. Still, humanitarian organizations have
accepted such risks for decades; their experience could continue to guide future citizen
interventions. Ideally, organizational teams could be devised with coordinated in-country
and intervening counterparts. City twinning, for example, might provide a structure for
such violence reduction partnerships, not unlike NATO's logistical "forward positioning."
Most problematic would likely be the relationship of the CI to armed peacekeeping forces.
If those forces were not perceived as completely neutral, civilian intervenors would also be
tainted, as has occurred recently in Bosnia. Probably only by totally disconnecting the two
will the CIs be viewed as neutral and non-threatening. At the very least, their missions
would have to be distinct, and a special relationship would have to be established to permit
independent, effective interaction.
Despite the obstacles, countervailing conditions and institutions are now also providing
greater support for direct citizen intervention in violence-ridden situations around the globe.
They include expanding networks of conflict management, nonviolence and peace-building
NGOS; a growing number of violence-attentive citizens; more research and teaching on
violence reduction; and improved transnational electronic communications, permitting new
forms of exchange and intervention.
The physical intervention of private citizens in high-risk areas of tension will likely
increase only gradually. Both the would-be intervenors and the target societies must be
protected. Rigorous training, apprenticeship and qualifying exams for such involvement
may be necessary. Perhaps prior experience in violence reduction in one's own country
should be a prerequisite for participation abroad.
Besides preparation, we need clearly defined missions. A simple presence of intervenors,
supporting themselves and doing things communities need done, might be one approach.
The Shanti Sena, of the Gandhian movement in India, provides such a model. The
brigadista coffee pickers in Nicaragua provide another.
Other energy sources for the citizen intervenor movement also exist. First, it can draw from
the wealth of intervention experience accumulated by humanitanan organizations since
World War II. Relief, development and human rights groups should be tapped for that
knowledge.
Second, we should view citizen intervention as multidimensional. Working to humanize a
government's land mine and firearms policies, for example, constitutes-even if indirectlyintervention for violence reduction in Bosnia, Cambodia, Angola, South Los Angeles, middle America, or in affluent Europe. Electronic
communication can also help transnatioiialize such initiatives, promoting a kind of
"intervention by idea." The modern is mightier than the sword. Peace and humanitarian
organizations should learn from Amnesty International, which has refined citizen
intervention with the pen, the cable and the computer. Current electronic advances should
encourage the citizen activist to intervene everywhere.
Third, people could become more directly involved in group and national defense. The
concepts of strategic nonviolence and nonmilitary defense have been evolving at least since
1960. Creating one's own defense rather than relying on -armed protection by others may
well be a citizcn's most effective future security. In Western Europe, such thinking entered
serious defense policy debates, notably in Germany, Scandinavia, and The Netherlands.
Non-military and non-provocative defense preparations may be important components of
national and regional defense in the future.
With the "clarity of hindsight," how might citizen intervention have made a Nvdifference,
for example, in moderating the Bosnian civil war? With more developed citizen
intervention in place, this scenario might have evolved: European, North American and
other governments having economic, political and military leverage in the former
Yugoslavia, would have done everything possible to slow down the breakup process,
beginning by refusing to immediately recognize the independence of the Yugoslav
republics. Citizen intervenors would have counselled caution against precipitous actions.
Such intervention would have permitted time for: wiser decisions; government and civilian
intervention networks to mobilize to protect at-risk minorities; resident observers to deter
war crimes; community exchange programs and jointly run relief centers to allay
interethnic hostility; developing interethnic solidarity networks across geographical ethnic
lines- and training in nonmilitary community defense.
The communication structure for this mobilization would have been partially in place
through the earlier development of city-twinning programs, hot-response crisis
management centers in the republics, and Internet peace action exchange groups. Yugoslav
emigre volunteers from intervenor states might have been trained in multi-ethnic teams as
negotiators, mediators, community organizers and other peacemaking roles.
By early 1992, a sufficient transnational and transrepublic civilian presence might have
existed in Bosnia to weaken the pull of Croatian and Serbian nationalism, and their
militarist proponents. That might well have permitted multi-ethnic Bosnian nationalism to
withstand those centrifugal tendencies, as it very nearly did on its own.
The CIs of the future would be entrepreneurs. They would mobilize reTsources-knowledge,
motivation, and personal and organizational funds-to intervene for violence reduction at
different levels and in diverse settings. A global set of interconnected networks is now
emerging to promote that intervention. Citizen intervenors will be limited only by their
personal availability, motivation, and imagination.
In the 21st century we will see private citizens, individually and collectively, assume a
more important role, working beside state diplomats, humanitarian relief professionals and
military peacekeepers, as a force againt violence around the world. Citizen intervenors will
intervene directly with their physical presence, and indirectly with their efforts to stem
weapons proliferation and other policies that encourage state violence. With an exploding
population straining its political, economic and natural resources, the future world will need
to develop to the fullest its best potential for benign intervention.
RECOMMENDED READINGS
Ackerman, Peter and Christopher Kruegler. 1994. Strategic Nonviolence. Westport, CT:
Praeger.
Burrowes, Robert. 1996. The Strategv of Nonviolent Defense. Albany, NY: SUNY.
Downton, James Jr. and Paul Wehr. 1996. The Persistent Activist. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Gourley, Scott. 1996. "Arsenal Ship." Popular Mechanics (June).
Griffin-Nolan, Edward. 1991. Witnessfor Peace. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox.
Patfoort, Pat. 1995. Uprooting Violence. Freeport, ME: Cobblesmith.
Paul Wehr tcaches Sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder and is currently
studying the determinants of long-term peace activism. Correspondence: Department of
Sociology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. Email:
wehr@spot.colorado.edu.
Journal of Peace Research, vol. 28, no. 1, 1991 pp. 85-98
Mediating Conflict in Central
America
PAUL WEHR
Department of Sociology, University of Colorado
JOHN PAUL LEDERACH
Department of Sociology, Eastern Mennonite College
The Esquipulas peace process in Central America is examined
as process, structure and context. It is found to be an
innovative effort in regional conflict resolution. The
study focuses on how mediation has been used in conflict
management within Nicaragua. Trust- or confianza-based
mediation has assumed special importance in the Nicaraguan
case. The emphasis on the confianza relationship in Central
American societies produces a type of mediator known as the
insider-partial, who emerges from within the conflict
situation itself. It differs markedly from the outsider-neutral third
party common to post-industrial society. Its
legitimacy and effectiveness come from the continuing
personal connection of the mediator with the conflict
parties before, during and after the intervention. The
conflict between the Sandinista government and Atlantic
Coast Indian leaders is analyzed to illustrate the use of
confianza-based mediation and its effectiveness when
combined with intervention by outsider-neutrals. The
authors recommend a broadening of the concept of mediation
to include intervention by insider-partials. Their
continuity within and knowledge of the conflict situation
effectively complement the outsider-neutrals' objectivity
and lack of connection with conflictants. Mediator teams
should be carefully selected to include both types,
particularly for interventions in the developing world. It
is recommended, additionally, that mediators attend more to
modifying the mediation context to render it more supportive
of their interventions. The authors conclude that
Esquipulas represents a rich store of mediation experience
for conflict research.
1. Analytical Approach
A regional process of conflict resolution has recently
evolved in Central America the principal framework for which
has been the Esquipulas II agreement of 1987. In this paper
we analyze mediation within Esquipulas, first from a region-wide
perspective, then as it has been used to moderate and
resolve conflicts within Nicaragua. How mediation has been
applied in this historical case may have implications for
how students and practitioners of third party intervention
conceive of the role of mediator.
We begin with a discussion of mediation as a
theoretical concept and how our analysis of the Esquipulas
case and our personal involvement in Nicaraguan mediation
has influenced our conceptualization of the role of
intermediary. We develop the concept of
the Insider-Partial as a
mediator type. We then proceed to discuss the
development of mediation within Esquipulas as an historical
process that moves through time, and produces, responds to
and transforms events. Process implies action and in mediation third parties act to move conflict toward
settlement. Since mediators create this process, who they
are and what they do is necessarily of concern to this
paper. Oscar Arias Sanchez, for example, has been a key
mediator-negotiator in Esquipulas.
We go on to examine the Esquipulas mediation in terms
of the structure it has created for conflict resolution the rules, agenda, principles, timelines and organizations
fashioned to move conflictants toward settlement. The
principle of simultaneity of implementation (Hopmann, 1988)
and the commissions for carrying it out illustrate the
structure of Esquipulas mediation.
We next discuss the Esquipulas mediation as context,
the larger environment influencing third party efforts.
Conflict research has addressed the importance of the
immediate mediation setting for inducing settlement. Just
as important is@the wider context or environment influencing
the conflict toward or away from resolution. In the case of
Esquipulas, that context appears to have been of special
import. The change of US presidential administrations and
the presence of international volunteers and nongovernmental
organizations are noteworthy examples of contextual
determinants of mediation success in Nicaragua.
Our paper concludes with a discussion of some
theoretical and practical implications of the outsider
neutral and insider-partial mediator roles illustrated by
Esquipulas mediation. Our major recommendations are for a
more inclusive set of mediator types and more systematic
selection of mediators to reflect that range. Mediators, we
conclude, must become more aware of the influence of context
on mediation outcomes and how it can be made more supportive
of mediation efforts.
2. Concepts of Mediation
Our concept of mediation has been very much influenced by
our on-site involvement as observer and practitioner in
Central American conflict resolution. One of us spent a
year as mediator of one of the two major conflicts in the
Nicaraguan civil war. The role of mediator has been
characterized in numerous ways in the mediation literature,
reflecting the various levels at which mediators work and
the quite different personalities, skills, attributes and
positions they bring to their work. Our experience in
Central America leads us to add to those characterizations a
model of mediation we see as having particular relevance for
third party intervention in developing nations. We will
first discuss some of those roles and definitions of
mediation, then how our concept relates to them and how it
could expand the concept of mediation.
2.1
The Outsider-Neutral
One
common conceptualization of mediation roots the
mediator's effectiveness in externality (coming from outside
the conflict situation) and neutrality (having no connection
or commitment to either side in the conflict). In the North
American field of intergroup and interpersonal conflict
management, for example, mediation is commonly defined as a
rather narrow, formal activity in which an impartial,
neutral third party facilitates direct negotiation.
Mediator neutrality is reinforced by their coming from
outside the conflict, facilitating settlement, then leaving.
In North America this distance of mediator from disputants
is heavily emphasized. Mediators are referred to as 'third
party neutrals'. Ethics codes bind mediators to that
principle. Mediators' neutrality protects the legitimacy
and authority that are created primarily through their
professional role, position and function - a rational-legal
type of authority as Weber (1922/1957) described it. This
neutrality-based intervener is what we call the OutsiderNeutral.
The outsider-neutrals maintain distance from the disputants
(see Fig. 1). They are chosen because they have no
connection with either side that will affect the outcome and
are thereby judged to be unbiased. Outsider-neutrals are
connected to disputants through the conflict alone, relating
to them only during the mediation process in ways relevant
to the function of mediation. Only small parts of the lives
of conflict parties and interveners intersect: those related
to the conflict.
According to this view, the assurance of neutrality in
mediation creates the necessary perception of mediator
legitimacy, professionalism and fairness. The mediator
works to present a neutral self, to perform credibly in a
way that defines the situation in which the
mediation/negotiation performance takes place as neutral and
impartial (Goffman, 1959). Neutrality and impartiality are
defined negatively, in terms of what the mediator is not.
The third party is not connected to either disputant, is not
biased toward either side, has no investment in any outcome
except settlement and does not expect any special reward
from either side (Moore, 1986, pp. 15-16).
2.2 The International Mediator
International mediation is conceived with much greater
breadth and diversity than is the North American view of
intergroup and interpersonal mediation. The complexity of
international and intercultural disputes calls forth perhaps
a greater variety of mediator roles. And so we find the
mediator-broker (Touval, 1982) and the mediator-conciliator
(Yarrow, 1978) among many others. Each conceptualization
emphasizes a different role played or function performed by
international third parties. Touval's able discussion of
the different mediator roles and conceptualizations suggests
that the concept of international mediator remains somewhat
open. There are other terms that from our review of the
third party literature appear similarly imprecise.
Neutrality, for example, is on occasion to be translated as
evenhandedness, or even balance, as in Yarrow's
characterization of Quaker conciliation as 'balanced
partiality'.
Theorists generally do not see mediator neutrality and
impartiality as requisites for successful international
mediation. In fact in some cases mediator connectedness and
bias prove to facilitate settlement. We do find in the
theory, however, a strong assumption of the importance of
externality for mediation success. The successful mediator
must intervene from outside the conflict situation.
2.3 The Insider-Partial
We suggest an additional mediator role (one that may be
particular to more traditional societies) whose
effectiveness depends
neither on externality nor
neutrality but on quite the opposite attributes internality and partiality. We further suggest, from our
observations of Central American mediation, that the
insider-partial mediator complements quite usefully those
interveners who bring neutrality from outside the conflict
situation.
The insider-partial is the 'mediator from within the
conflict', whose acceptability to the conflictants is rooted
not in distance from the conflict or objectivity regarding
the issues, - but rather in connectedness and trusted
relationships with the conflict parties. The trust comes
partly from the fact that the mediators do not leave the
postnegotiation situation. They are part of it and must
live with the consequences of their work. They must
continue to relate to conflictants who have trusted their
commitment to a just and durable settlement. Such a
mediator is more likely to develop out of more traditional
cultural settings where primary, face-to-face relations
continue to characterize political, economic and social
exchange, and where tradition has been less eroded by
modernity.
In a recent ethnographic study, Lederach (1988) found
that neutrality is not what Central Americans seek for help
in resolving conflict. They look primarily for trust, confianza. In the confianza model (see Fig. 2), authority to
mediate is vested in the third party through a personal
relationship with the disputant(s), rather than by a
secondary role such as external intervener. This is what
Weber (1922/1957) called traditional authority.
Trust-based mediation assumes accumulated, sometimes
intimate knowledge shared by helper and helped. One who can
'deposit confianza' in another knows that person well. They
are connected in many ways, not just through a limited
service performed. As Simmel wrote, 'the more we have in
common with another as whole persons, the more easily will
our totality be involved in every single relation to him
[sic]' (1950, p. 44). In just that sense, the insider
partial does not relate with the conflictants simply through
an intervention. Their trust relationship permits them to
resolve the conflict together.
With respect to trust, the insider-partial is
not the polar opposite of other models. Personal trust is
always a concern in selecting any mediator. But with
insider-partials it is the primary criterion for selection.
They. are recognized above all as having the trust of all
sides. Unlike the outsider-neutral chosen for the absence
of connection with disputants, the insider-partial is
selected precisely for positive connections and attributes,
for what they are and do: they are close to, known by, with
and for each side. This confianza ensures sincerity,
openness and revelation and is a channel through which
negotiation is initiated and pursued.
We propose, then, to add the insider-partial to the
taxonomy of types and roles of international mediators. Its
potential for useful combination with outsider-neutrals and
other types will, we trust, become apparent as we show how
several of them were combined in Esquipulas mediation.
3.
The Esquipulas Process
Esquipulas is the most recent of a series of historical
efforts to resolve interstate conflict and promote regional
integration in Central America: the Central American
Confederation, 1823-38; the Central American Court of
Justice, 1907-17; a regional federation all but ratified in
1923; the Central American Common Market from 1960 onward.
There have been counterforces as well: border conflicts such
as the 1969 so-called Soccer War between El Salvador and
Honduras; the Filibuster Wars of the nineteenth century;
military governments that have favored national over
regional identity. When the Sandinista movement overthrew
the Somoza regime in 1979, such counterforces were holding
in check the region's long-standing desire for self-determination.
The Sandinista revolution radically altered social and
political conflict throughout Central America, most of all
within Nicaragua itself. There it moderated though did not
eliminate class conflict, but it created two new conflicts.
First, the Sandinistas' effort to integrate by force the
Atlantic Coast peoples into a revolutionary state stimulated
armed resistance in the East. Second, the Sandinistas'
Marxist ideological approach to governance and nation-building encouraged
defections from their own ranks. Many
of these dissidents became, along with Somozista elements,
the raw material for a US-organized Contra insurgency after
1982. The more conservative elements in Nicaraguan society,
led by the Catholic hierarchy and those of the upper class
who had remained, came to oppose Sandinista policies and to
give some support to the Contra movement.
The Nicaraguan revolution became increasingly
militarized with the aid and involvement of the USSR and
Cuba. The USsponsored military buildups in El Salvador and
Honduras completed the prospect of a region headed toward
the abyss. As the Contra activity expanded into Honduras
and Costa Rica it inevitably drew those nations into the
Nicaraguan conflict. This transformation of national
conflicts into a regional superpower confrontation moved
neighboring states such as Mexico to initiate formal peace-making
efforts.
3.1 Contadora
Contadora, begun in January 1983 by Panama, Mexico,
Venezuela and Colombia, was an experiment in collective
mediation. Its goal was to detach Central American conflicts from larger US-Soviet competition and to shift them
from military to political and diplomatic levels. The
Contadora Group, consulting with a Central American Group
(presidents of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa
Rica, Honduras) and a Contadora Support Group (Peru, Brazil,
Argentina, Uruguay) had produced a draft treaty by
1986. The draft was a blueprint for demilitarizing Central
American conflicts and resolving them through negotiation.
Contadora reached an impasse in mid1986.
Honduras, under pressure from the Reagan Administration with
its growing military presence there, declined to sign the
treaty (Buvollen, 1989a). The USA had alternately ignored
and criticized Contadora while pursuing its military options
throughout the region. The USA was, therefore,
simultaneously subverting the Contadora process
diplomatically (Bagley, 1987) and intensifying the conflicts
Contadora sought to moderate.
While Contadora fell short of its objectives,
viewed within the larger peace process it was considerably
more productive than would appear. Contadora created bases
on which Esquipulas could build. It provided a consultative
history and framework, and a comprehensive and accurate
diagnosis of the region's conflicts. Most important,
perhaps, it was an example of Central American regional
independence. Contadora happened not only without but in
spite of US policy.
Actually, we find much of Contadora in Esquipulas.
Eight Contadora documents are acknowledged as precedents in
the Esquipulas treaty (Gomariz, 1988, p. 355). Contadora
states have subsequently participated in both the
International Verification and Support Commission and the UN
Observer Group-Central America peace-keeping force. It
appears to us, then, that Esquipulas was not a break with
Contadora, as some (Robinson, 1988) may see it, but a
continuation of it within an exclusively Central American
framework.
While Esquipulas built upon Contadora, it was also
motivated by the latter's failures. One such stimulus was
the refusal of Honduras to sign the Contadora Act, a failure
whiich led to Congressional resumption of military aid to
the Contra insurgents. That alarming development motivated
Oscar Arias Sanchez, newly elected president of Costa Rica
to make a new initiative. Arias had been involved in the
final Contadora consultations. With a four-year term before
him in the region's most stable political system, he had
many of the resources needed by an international
intermediary (Young, 1967).
Arias set to work simplifying negotiation objectives.
Contadora's preoccupation with security issues had produced
proposals too complex to work. Arias set aside security as
a temporarily insoluble problem. He circulated a simple
draft agreement among his fellow presidents, Ortega
excepted. His success at simplification is suggested by the
comparative lengths of the 'Acta de Contadora' (22 pp.) and
the Esquipulas agreement (6 pp.).
3.2 The Time Path
By February 1987, Arias was receiving encouragement from his
presidential counterparts. That was met over subsequent
months with increasing opposition from the Reagan
Administration. Its release of the 'Wright-Reagan Plan' two
days before the August Central American Group summit meeting
was perceived by the group as an attempt to undercut the
peace process. Hopmann (1988) credits that perception with
motivating the five presidents to sign the agreement. They
were also urged to sign by certain members of the US
Congress. With the signing of 'Procedimiento para Establecer la Paz Firme y Duradera en Centroamerica' (Gomariz,
1988, pp. 355-361), a framework was created for mediated
negotiation both among the signatory governments and between
them and their respective insurgent opponents.
The agreement set objectives and prescribed specific
measures: demilitarization of conflict through ceasefires,
refusal of support for and use of territory by insurgents;
national reconciliation through negotiated settlements,
amnesty for insurgents, repatriation of refugees;
democratization of political systems through free and open
elections, ending states of emergency, protection of human
rights; continuing regional consultation through periodic
summits and a parliament. Subsequent summits assessed
interim progress, adjusted timetables, invited third party
participation and renegotiated agreements. The San Jose
meeting (1988), for example, led to a Sandinista ceasefire
and negotiations with the Contras. The San Salvador summit
(1989) produced agreement on Nicaraguan elections and Contra
demobilization and repatriation. The Tela agreement (1989)
firmed up the demobilization schedule and its supervision by
the International Commission for Verification and Support.
The Montelimar summit (1990) ratified and reinforced the new
Nicaraguan transition and Contra demobilization agreements
that guided both the transfer of power from the Sandinistas
and Contra disarmament.
By April 1990, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador all
had national reconciliation commissions in place and
operating. In Nicaragua, the peace process had produced
some striking precedents: an internationally supervised
election and a peaceful transfer of power, the
transformation of a revolutionary government into a
reasonably loyal opposition; a procedure for disarming and
reintegrating insurgents into civilian life. In Nicaragua,
the Esquipulas process had been faithful to the intentions
if not the implementation timetable of the agreement. Elsewhere in Central America, however, Esquipulas had produced
no real peace.
3.3 Leaders in the Process
Three of the Esquipulas participants were responsible for
getting it to work: Oscar Arias of Costa Rica through his
orchestration and mediation; Vinicio Cerezo of Guatemala
through his organizing and hosting of the initial summit,
his insistence that Nicaragua be included as a full
participant, and his subsequent role as its reliable supporter within the group; and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua
through his negotiating flexibility and important
concessions at key points.
Arias was a central figure as a mediator-negotiator.
Since Costa Rica was already in compliance with
'Procedimiento', he had a special status in the group. He
appeared to combine the erogenous and endogenous approaches
to conflict management (Bercovitch, 1984). Arias's secure
tenure in Costa Rica and his status as Nobel Laureate were
resources to be drawn on. He used a number of obvious
intermediary tactics (Robinson,1988): early private
confrontation of Ortega on the need for Nicaraguan
flexibility; building momentum toward agreement to enlist a
reluctant Honduras; using deadlines and timing of meetings
to preclude US subversion all to produce the Esquipulas II
agreement.
4. The Esquipulas Structure
Three principles determined the structure for implementing
the agreement (Hopmann, 1988): simultaneity (eliminating the
'who goes first' problem - a thorny one with respect to
Contra demobilization and elections); calendarization ('who
does what by which dates'); and transparency ('how we know
that they are doing it'). Commissions were created to apply
those principles: a region-wide Commission for Verification
and Support; a National Commission of Reconciliation in each
nation; subnational Conciliation Commissions where necessary
(see Fig. 3). Commission members were selected for their
moral leadership, for useful connections they had with the
conflicting parties, and for their experience as intermediaries. They illustrated the connected, trusted insider-partial third
party. These commissions came to use
outsider-neutral mediators as well and were in turn used by
them. We next examine how the Esquipulas structure was used
rather successfully in Nicaragua.
4.1
TheNationalReconciliation Commission
Because of its international and military impacts, the
Contra-Sandinista conflict was the major concern of
Esquipulas. Cardinal Obando y Bravo was chosen to head the
NRC. He was not selected for his neutrality. His hostility
toward the Sandinistas was well known. But his status as
spiritual leader, his close connections with resistance
elements, and his visibility as a national symbol all
suggested his usefulness as intermediary. The two sides met
under Obando's auspices early in 1988. Several months of
negotiations produced the Sapoa agreement and a subsequent
government ceasefire, though direct talks were then broken
off by the Contras and not resumed for over a year.
Obando's mediation became more instrumental as the 1990
national elections and Contra demobilization approached.
Several sets of delicate negotiations were necessary,
involving at various points the Contra commanders, the
verification and support commission, the Sandinista
government, the UN, the OAS, the UNO opposition and, after
25 April 1990, the Chamorro government. Throughout the
difficult period between the March elections and the April
transfer of power, Cardinal Obando was the most visible
intermediary. It is not clear how active or directive his
mediation was but each time he intervened - Sapoa,
Toncontin, transition negotiations - a major, durable agreement issued from the negotiation.
4.2
The Conciliation Commission The second mediation
effort involved the Sandinista government and the Atlantic
Coast resistance. The Indians and Creoles had historically
been isolated from the Hispanicized Pacific Coast. British
and US manipulation of ethnic divisions had encouraged that
isolation (Brooks, 1989; Hale, 1988). The costenos,
therefore, had been relatively unengaged in the anti-Somoza
rebellion and hardly welcomed a revolutionary Nicaragua.
Sandinista attempts to integrate the East Coast were
met first with suspicion, then with resistance. The
situation swiftly degenerated into armed conflict that sent
30,000 refugees into Honduras and Costa Rica and caused much
destruction particularly in the Miskito northeast. By 1984,
realizing its past errors, the Sandinista government began a
twotrack conciliation strategy. The first track initiated
talks with Atlantic Coast leaders. These would subsequently
result in a National Autonomy Commission (1984), local
ceasefires, elected Peace and Autonomy Commissions (1986),
the drafting of a National Autonomy Law, and its
ratification by a Multi-Ethnic Assembly (1987) (Buvollen,
1989b; Sollis, 1989). This lengthy consultative process
reflected the Atlantic Coast's complex ethnicity, with six
groups speaking four languages. Though these groups numbered only 300,000, a tenth of Nicaragua's population, their
region represented well over a third of its land area and
much of its natural resource base.
Essential in this autonomy-building process were
certain well-regarded persons from the East who were
sympathetic to the revolution , thus trusted by both the
Sandinistas and the indigenous leaders (Freeland, 1989, p.
178). Such intermediaries as Myra Cunningham and Humberto
Campbell sustained the dialogue to ultimate agreement. They
are further examples of those insider-partials whose
reservoir of trust and mutually recognized stature among
conflictants, and crosscutting affiliations with both sides,
are so substantial as to permit a mediating function.
The second track involved Sandinista negotiations with
the leaders of the armed resistance who were in exile and
who had joined to form YATAMA in 1987. Their objectives
were the restoration of historical Indian traditions and
territorial rights, not the multi-ethnic regional
independence made possible by the Autonomy Law. Esquipulas
provided a new mediating structure for the Sandinista-YATAMA
conflict.
Whereas the Catholic Church had an important mediating
role in the Sandinista-Contra conflict, here the
intermediary was the Moravian Church. It is the primary
church on the Atlantic Coast just as Catholicism is dominant
in the West. Rooted within the Miskitos, Ramas, Sumos and
Creoles, it had the trust of the various resistance leaders
and was the logical intermediary. In the early 1980s the
Moravian Church, seen as antirevolutionary by the
Sandinistas, had suffered greatly, losing pastors, churches,
schools and hospitals in the SandinistaIndian war. From
1983 on, however, the Moravian Provincial Board and the
Sandinista government had worked to improve relations.
Church leaders had facilitated ceasefires and autonomy
consultations. Board members had been schoolmates of key
resistance leaders and had maintained those ties.
It was not surprising, therefore, that YATAMA asked
Moravian leaders to mediate Sandinista-YATAMA negotiations.
The government, too, accepted the Moravians in this role,
while acknowledging that they were neither neutral nor
impartial. As Interior Minister Tomas Borge put it, 'They
are more there than here'. With some balance provided by
appointees from the West, the team began mediating direct
talks in January 1988. The Moravian Provincial Board,
Gustavo Parajon of CEPAD (a Protestant relief organization)
and member of the National Reconciliation Commission, and
John Paul Lederach of the Mennonite Central Committee
(another relief and development agency) were named members
of this Conciliation Commission.
Throughout 1988 the Commission mediated under serious
constraints. The North/CIA Contra operatives were doing all
possible to inhibit a Sandinista-Indian agreement, since
that would preclude a united Nicaraguan resistance. The
mediators were kept on the move by CIA-funded kidnap ping
threats and assassination attempts against them as they went
about their work. Competition among YATAMA leaders and
Sandinista indecision also slowed progress, but by late 1988
agreement had been reached on 60% of the issues. Not until
September 1989, however, was full agreement publicly
acknowledged with the added intervention of former US
president Jimmy Carter.
The Conciliation Commission mediation reflected the
confianza-inspired, insider-partial model discussed earlier.
Its success depended not on neutrality or externality but on
continuing relationships of trust its members had with the
conflictants. During face-to-face negotiation phases,
Commission members lived side by side with YATAMA leaders.
They ate and relaxed with both sides together. Their
knowledge and connections were used by each side to explain
its views and objectives to the other. The Commission,
therefore, was much more connected to disputants than in
neutrality-based mediation.
Its functions were broad rather than narrow. Its
range of tasks stretched from arranging travel and daily
schedules for disputants and resolving their family problems
to negotiating a ceasefire in a war involving several
national governments. Such a diverse mix is not beyond the
scope of international third party intervention (Pruitt &
Rubin, 1986), but it suggests the multidimensional role of
the insider-partial rather than the narrower specialized one
of the outsider-neutral. The commissioners' legitimacy as
mediators came not from their distance from the conflict but
from their personal connections that inspired the
disputants' trust. That trust relationship with the
conflict parties created safe negotiating space.
The Commission's legitimacy as third party also issued
from the duration and depth of their functions., The
outsider-neutral usually leaves a conflict soon after
settlement. The insider-partial, the confianza model of
mediation, implies a continuing mediator-disputant
connection. The Moravians and CEPAD have continued to work
with both sides in peace development ever since the 1988
ceasefire.
The Commission's multiple functions were carried out at
different levels of the conflict. They worked on Peace and
Autonomy Commissions, thus connecting with that process at
the local level. They accompanied exiled leaders to their
home villages as part of the reconciliation process. At the
national level, the Commission mediated the SandinistaYATAMA
negotiation. Internationally, it worked with Nicaraguan
refugees in Honduras and Costa Rica and brought East Coast
exiles together from three nations to form the YATAMA
negotiating team. Given these multiple and continuing
conciliation functions at several levels, Commission
mediators were generalists rather than specialists. Their
effectiveness depended equally on who they were in relation
to the conflictants (not who they were not) and what they
did (not what they did not do).
Insider-partial mediation had produced a tentative
settlement. But final and public agreement was facilitated
by an outsiderneutral, Jimmy Carter who, as chair of the
Council of Freely Elected Heads of State, had come to
Nicaragua to monitor the 1990 elections for fairness and
legitimacy. He offered to mediate any remaining Sandinista-YATAMA
differences, maintaining that Indian leaders had to
be free to return to participate in the electoral campaign.
Carter asked that YATAMA be offered the same
conditions for political reintegration extended to the
Contras - renounce armed struggle, participate in the
political system, encourage demobilization of all armed
insurgents. The sides agreed publicly to conditions earlier
arrived at and within a week of the Carter-Borge meeting,
Brooklyn Rivera and other leaders were returning to
Nicaragua. Carter made good use of his leverage - the
Sandinistas very much wanted his certification of the
elections. Timing was also working for him. The pressures
of the impending election and its high visibility in the
world produced disputant flexibility that was absent a year
earlier. Carter went on to serve other useful third party
functions, as a monitor and conciliator during the elections
themselves, and in the difficult post-election transition
period.
In the resolution of the Sandinista-YATAMA
conflict we have seen how insider-partial and outsider-neutral
intermediaries were used at different times and in
different settings. The autonomy conciliation relied
heavily upon those intermediaries who were trusted by both
sides because they belonged to both. Within Esquipulas, the
Conciliation Commission pursued the Sandinista-YATAMA
conflict with considerable success as 'mediators from
within' who had the trust of both sides. Finally, the
Carter intervention broke the impasse, permitting YATAMA
leaders to return, thus further ing the democratization and
demilitarization goals of Esquipulas. These disparate
approaches to mediation were mutually complementary. All of
them required considerable trust in the mediators. The
evenhanded external mediator combined with the trusted
intermediaries engaged in long-term peacemaking within
Nicaragua to moderate that conflict. All may well continue
to intervene, for intercoastal, interethnic and interpersonal conflict in Nicaragua has no end in sight.
There is a second set of outsider-neutrals that we
should mention here. These were the mediating agencies
structured into the conflict through the International
Commission of Verification and Support, provided for in the
Esquipulas agreement but not actually created until the Tela
summit of August 1989. This Commission carried out the repatriation, disarming and resettlement of Contra troops.
Represented on the ICVS were the Organization of American
States, the Contadora groups and the UN Observer Group-Central America
with its contingent of 800 Spanish and
Venezuelan peace-keeping troops. Structured into Esquipulas
to validate and monitor its achievements, then, were three
international governmental organizations with a major
concern for the plan's success - the UN, the OAS and the
Contadora Group. By June of 1990, the commission had
disarmed 11,000 of 15,000 insurgents and guaranteed a
peaceful Sandinista-to-opposition transfer of power, surely
one of history's most successful peace-keeping operations.
5. The Esquipulas Context
We have presented Esquipulas mediation both as a process
over time and in terms of the intermediary structures
developed to implement it. A third perspective for understanding it is through its broader conflict environment.
That context was created largely by actors not directly
involved in the mediation.
Certainly Reagan's Contra option rapidly lost momentum in
the waning of his second term. Civil wars in Central
America quickly lost their East-West cast as the Reagan-Gorbachev
friendship began to thaw the Cold War. Decisions
in Washington and Moscow to end military aid to the Nicaraguan conflictants did much to reinforce the efforts of
Esquipulas mediators.
When Reagan left office in 1989, his Central America
policy team went with him. That group had labored mightily
to sink Esquipulas and discredit Oscar Arias. Arias
mistrusted Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams. It
was reported by a key Costa Rican official that he had
postponed an Esquipulas summit meeting until Abrams had left
office.
The US Congress influenced the mediation context both
in its encouragement of Contadora through Jim Wright,
Christopher Dodd and others, and by opening space for the
Arias initiatives through its Iran-Contra investigations in
the summer of 1986. Precisely when Contadora had stalled,
those revelations exposed the deep divisions in
congressional opinion over Reagan Central America policies divisions which renewed the regional search for
alternatives. It also permitted a progressive decoupling of
the Sandinista-YATAMA conflict from the Contra war, a
separation which made both easier to resolve. Senator
Kennedy, at the request of Indian rights organizations,
pressured the Sandinistas to be more flexible on the rights
of the indigenous peoples. The American Indian Movement's
involvement was influential though ambiguous in its
consequences for settling the Sandinista-Atlantic Coast
conflict.
Arias's Nobel Peace Prize gave Esquipulas new
legitimacy. It heartened the mediators, renewed support in
the US Congress for negotiated settlement, and further
engaged European governments and publics in the peace
process. The award punctuated the substantial support for
both Nicaraguan development and Esquipulas that was already
coming from Europe.
The United Nations came to influence the Esquipulas
context more and more toward negotiated settlement. The
General Assembly resolution of 27 June 1989 stimulated
agreement at the Tela summit on a 'Joint Plan for the
Voluntary Demobilization, Repatriation and Relocation of the
Nicaraguan Resistance'. Subsequent UN funding and staffing
of the UNOG-Central America and its peace-keeping contingent
proved invaluable in disarming and reintegrating Nicaraguan
insurgents. Its third party presence must be given much
credit for the peaceful transfer of power in Nicaragua in
1990.
Citizen volunteers from North America and Europe were
important shapers of the mediation context. They worked
from both ends of the problem, at home and in the field. In
the USA, peace activists influenced government policy
directly toward political and diplomatic settlement and away
from military confrontation. The Central America peace
lobby in the US, through such groups as Friendship Cities,
Witness for Peace, Sanctuary, Pledge of Resistance and
CISPES helped build public and congressional support for
Esquipulas.
In Central America, such peace movement organizations
provided a sympathetic third party' presence that worked to
moderate conflict. Thousands of people visited and lived in
Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala as volunteer
generalists, technical experts, human rights escorts and
representatives of municipal governments and labor unions.
This citizen third party presence moderated conflict,
producing a more supportive mediation environment. It
encouraged flexibility of Central American governments, who
wished to appear reasonable and non-violent. It reduced
violence through its on-site reportinglaof military and
paramilitary action. It represented to Central Americans a
larger citizen movement in North America and Europe that was
pressing for policy changes and sending direct assistance to
alleviate suffering. The reaction to the Contra killing of
US volunteer Benjamin Linder in 1987 suggested the
importance of such a presence for restraining
militarization.
Many of these persons were working.in Nicaragua under
the auspices of nongovernmental organizations. These NGOs
had a longstanding presence in the region, responding to
conflict in the usual ways of lobbying for policy changes
and providing civilian war relief. But we saw emerging in
the Esquipulas context a broader, more active NGO role in
peace-making, notably mediation by Protestant and Catholic
representatives, and secular organizations like the Carter
Center in Atlanta. The Moravian Church, CEPAD and the
Mennonite Central Committee provided mediators and sites.
They channeled resources for the negotiation from a
mediation support network including the World Council of
Churches. The Moravian Church in Nicaragua has been still
more broadly engaged in conflict transformation (Lederach,
1990) - the continuous involvement of sympathetic third
parties to move a conflict from latent to overt and
negotiation stages. That is a long-term effort involving
empowerment of weaker parties, trust-building, conflict
skills development and other requisites for transforming a
conflict situation into sustainable peace.
6.
Theoretical Considerations and Practical
Implications
By mid-1990, Esquipulas had been only partially
successful in moving the region toward stable peace.
In El Salvador and Guatemala, civil conflict and state
repression continued to undermine economies and kill
thousands, though there were preliminary insurgentgovernment negotiations underway in both cases.
Critics of Esquipulas will point out that Nicaragua has
been the focus for change. Conflict-producing
conditions in other participating states have received
little attention at Esquipulas meetings. The principle
of simultaneity has not been applied in that respect.
The Nicaraguan conflicts, on the other hand, appeared
to be well on their way toward successful management. An
end to military confrontation, disarming and reintegration
of insurgents, the end of conscription and major reductions
in military forces, a classic pluralist election and
peaceful transfer of power, an autonomy process for
integrating Atlantic and Pacific regions. All of those
achievements were reached within or with the help of
Esquipulas. It may be that a conflict management model had
to be developed in Nicaragua before other Esquipulas states
with more deeply rooted problems with social conflict and
state violence, could open to the process. Time and events
will tell.
Our study of Esquipulas raises some theoretical and
practical issues. Should the conceptualization of mediator
roles be broadened to embrace developing world variants such
as the Insider-Partial? Should identification and selection
of mediators be more systematically done, with greater care
for drawing upon and creatively mixing the external and
internal conflict moderation resources available? Should
more attention be given by international mediators to modifying the wider context to be more supportive of their
intervention?
6.1
Expanding the Mediator Concept
Our study suggests that the field would do well to agree on
a simple, inclusive definition of mediation, differentiating
the mediator roles as research and practice reveal them. We
prefer to define mediation simply as third-party-facilitated
negotiation, and the mediator as one(s) 'who attempts to
help the principals reach a voluntary agreement' (Pruitt &
Rubin, 1986, p. 166). Within such a simple, inclusive
definition a hundred flowers can bloom, so to speak.
Esquipulas has produced some variations on the basic
mediation theme that we have not found in the literature.
We have suggested the concept of the insider-partial to
reflect a type very visible in Nicaraguan mediation. We
distinguished that from the outsider-neutral concept characterizing mediation in North America, and from
international mediator roles which generally assume that
third parties must come from outside the conflict situation.
We have shown how the I-P and O-N polar opposites interacted
synergistically in Nicaraguan mediation. It may be,
however, that externality and neutrality are dimensions, or
continua, along which every mediator falls. Those
dimensions may be independent of one another, rather than
interdependent as the types we suggest imply.
If the O-N and I-P types are valid, however, each
bringing different strengths to the same conflict, as did
Jimmy Carter and the Conciliation Commission, what practical
consequences might issue from teaming them up as
counterparts in a mediation? They might not work together
physically, but would consult, divide up functions, coordinate interventions and, the like. If these are distinct
types, each of which performs different but equally
important functions in mediated negotiation, that would
influence the mediator selection process. In any event, it
would seem useful to explore the I-P concept further.
Though we have presented it here as a region-specific,
culture-determined model, it might have equally useful
functions in the postindustrial.societies of the world.
Esquipulas suggests other additions to the range of
mediator roles. We noted the way Oscar Arias appeared to
act as both mediator and negotiator. He, too, was internal
to the conflict situation, had the trust of all parties, yet
had a status apart. The mediator-negotiator of Esquipulas
appears to have some precedents in the Kissinger of the Yom
Kippur War negotiation (Rubin, 1981) and the Walesa (1987)
of Polish Solidarity, both of whom seem to have played such
a dual role. If it is not a new genre, should it at least
be included in the range of mediator types? Would there be
a place as well for the mediator-legitimizer characterized
by Obando y Bravo, whose role went much beyond providing
good offices. The full weight of the Church's moral
authority in his person appears to have legitimated such
negotiation and guaranteed the implementation of its
outcomes.
One question raised by such a discussion is whether
mediator selection in such cases should not be more
conscious and deliberate than it normally is, according to
mediator functions required and persons and agencies
available? If, for example, the Carter and Conciliation
Commission interventions had been coordinated, each
performing different, complementary functions, a year of
time might have been saved. We are suggesting that the
selection of mediators could and should be a more systematic
and informed process.
6.2
Modifying the Mediation Context
Our study has suggested the importance of the mediation
context - the events, persons and attitudes influencing the
mediation from a distance. Time and again in Esquipulas
negotiation was transported out of impasse by a context
transformed. A striking example was the agreement of August
1989 between the Sandinista government and the United
National Opposition for free and open elections. It was
reached in a televised marathon negotiation reminiscent of
that which legitimized Polish Solidarity in 1980 (Wehr,
1985). The Sandinista-UNO accord triggered the breakthrough
three days later for the Tela agreement on. Contra
demobilization. The context had been transformed to permit
this.
Both supportive and obstructive forces in the mediation
context, while not controllable by mediators, are amenable
to their influence. If the larger environment were seen as
more integral to mediation success, third party interveners
could map that context to identify key influentials, a
preliminary step to creating more support for negotiated
settlement. Could mediators have a more direct influence on
mass communicators, for example, who frame the issues,
characterize the actors, present the options and largely
determine whether a context encourages or discourages
mediated settlement? The mass media were exceptionally
influential in the context of Nicaraguan mediation (Chomsky,
1987). Should a mediation team include someone with
exclusive responsibility for mapping the context for ways to
render it more supportive of the intervention?
An important mediation-supportive element in the
Esquipulas context was the presence of conflict moderators,
the 'sympathetic third parties' described earlier. Conflict
moderation is the third party's most important function. It
is a more realistic goal than permanent resolution, which is
rarely possi'ble (Touval, 1982). Does the Esquipulas
experience show the conflict moderating sympathetic third
parties to be so useful in the mediation context that a
conscious effort should be made to include them as a desirable component of international third party interventions?
6.3
Mediation from within the Conflict
Esquipulas has revealed to us how rich may be the indigenous
resources for conflict moderation and negotiated settlement
in developing areas of the world. The insiderpartial, the
mediator-negotiator, the mediator-legitimizer, the
sympathetic third party are conflict management roles that
are probably useful beyond Central America as well. The
effective combining of such local resources with external
third parties in Esquipulas can be seen as a contribution to
the theory and practice of international third party
intervention. We suspect that international mediation would
be more effective were the various external and internal
mediators and the moderators within the
context tobe systematically identified and enlisted: a
deliberate citizen volunteer
presence, a mixed team of outsider-neutrals and insider-partials, a
resident conflict transformation group working
on a deep-seated conflict situation.
It remains to be seen whether the Esquipulas innovation in
conflict management will produce positive results in other
Central American states as it has in Nicaragua. Continuing
involvement of the UN and other international interveners
will help determine those results. Thus far, however,
Esquipulas represents a major step forward in regional
conflict management, a model well worth the attention of
scholars and practitioners alike.
Persistent Pacifism:
How Activist Commitment is Developed and Sustained*
JAMES DOWNTON, JR. & PAUL WEHR
Department of Sociology, University of Colorado, Boulder
* This study was supported by the Council on Research and
Creative Work, University of Colorado. Some of the points made
in this article are discussed at greater length in Downton & Wehr
(1997). The interview guide used in this research is available
at [http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/activist].
Abstract
How and why do activists persist in their commitment to a
social movement beyond its initial mobilization phase? How do
they manage their commitments? What role does creativity play in
helping them keep their peace commitment intact over the long
term? These are questions explored in this study. Based on
extensive interviews with thirty persistent peace activists, a
theory of sustained commitment is developed. It encompasses how
people become available for peace activism and how political and
social contexts affect their willingness to join and stay. It
also identifies important social and personal factors that help
to sustain commitment. These include creating an activist
identity, integrating peace work into everyday life, holding
beliefs that sustain activism, feeling bonded to a peace group,
cultivating opportunities for action, sharing a peace vision with
other activists, and managing responsibilities, criticism, and
burnout. Persistent peace activists are rational in selecting
courses of action, but also creative in the way they fashion
their lives, manage their conunitments, avoid burnout, and design
and carry out projects. This creativity is an important factor
contributing to pacifist persistence, yet it is a topic that has
been largely neglected in collective action research. The
authors argue for a stronger emphasis on 'creative action' in
future research about activists and how they sustain their
commitment in the face of many odds.
1. The Peace and Social Justice Movement
In recent decades, the peace and social justice movement has
expanded noticeably, particularly in North and Latin America and
Europe. For example, of 139 peace movement organizations in the
USA surveyed in 1992, 82% had been formed in the 1970s and 1980s
(Colwell & Bond, 1994:17). While some of those organizations
have expired with the Cold War, many continue.
The movement has also changed in character. It has evolved
from one of largely northern and western peace organizations
responding to particular wars and social grievances, into a
global movement of many groups at different levels using
nonviolent action to resist violence and injustice (Wehr et al.,
1994). In some cases, as with SERPAJ in Latin America, the
movement has changed government policy from the outside. In
others, such as the German Green party and the Serbian democracy
movement, it works partly from within. These diverse groups now
form a loose global network of nonviolence organizations working
for change, largely in the Gandhian spirit. One could say that a
permanent peace and justice lobby is now active in most nations.
Certainly, this broadening of peace action is related to both
a proliferation of nongovernmental organizations and a general
surge in post-war social movement activity observed by collective
action researchers. Apart from some studies of prominent leaders
of movements, however, we know relatively little about the
continuing participation of activists once they join. Such
knowledge is essential for developing more effective movements
for social change. This study should expand that knowledge while
it builds on what collective action theory in general has
contributed to our understanding of social movement
participation.
2. Collective Action Theory
There are three dominant theoretical perspectives on
participation in social movements. The first view, developed by
collective behavior and social disorganization theorists,
emphasizes the irrational and emotional origins of mass behavior.
It tends to focus on the crowd, millennial movements, behavior in
times of disaster, and explains mass behavior in each case as
arising from generalized beliefs which motivate large numbers of
people to take action. This theoretical approach was heavily
influenced by the efforts of social scientists following World
War 11 to explain fascism and connnunism.
Resource mobilization theory is a second perspective. Its
proponents assume the rational behavior of activists and
characterize challenge movements as rational extensions of
institutional behavior. They have been particularly interested
in how movements recruit members and mobilize resources. Their
emphasis has been on movement organizations and their
mobilization of resources and the rational choice of people to
participate. A related idea is that of political opportunity
structure, the openings and availability of resources within a
political system which might exist for a social movement during a
particular moment in history. As that structure of opportunity
opens, movement organizations will rationally exploit it.
The third and largely European theoretical perspective has
developed around the notion that post-World War 11 movements are
of a different character and membership than earlier ones. They
are seen as a response to the invasion of the personal sphere, or
life world as Husserl and Habermas have termed it, by the state
and the corporation. They are movements of personal and group
identity, of subculture formation, and of ideological conviction
more than material deprivation. This New Social Movements view
emphasizes how these contemporary movements interact with one
another (Klandermans et al., 1988; Katsiaficas, 1997).
2.1 Participation
Important questions for collective action theorists have been why
people do or do not join a movement and, more recently, once they
join, why some continue while others leave. The three
theoretical perspectives explain joining differently. A major
obstacle for resource mobilization theorists, who see rational
choice as the motivation, is the 'free rider' problem. Most
people who might benefit from a social movement do not get
directly involved in it. Some may not have the time to
participate; others may hold back because of the risks involved.
Still others may be offended by some aspect of a movement's
ideology or method of protest. But the largest group of
nonparticipants are known by collective action theorists as 'free
riders'. They refrain from joining because they quite rationally
anticipate sharing in a movement's rewards without personal
effort or risk (Olson, 1965).
The free rider problem has stumped collective action
theorists by and large although Lichbach's work on the 'Rebel's
Dilemma' has substantially clarified the factors that tend to
cause a beneficiary of a movement either to participate or to
watch from the sidelines. He carefully identifies over thirty
solutions to this dilemma, essentially falling into four sectors:
Market, community, contract, and hierarchy. In the market realm,
for example, a person may choose to participate because of
increased benefits from doing so; in community, participation
may arise from the bandwagon effect; in contract, it may emerge
from the establishment of an activist governing system which sets
rules and sanctions; in hierarchy, it may be encouraged by the
establishment of a monitoring system for identifying slackers.
He argues that each solution to the 'Rebel's Dilemma' is flawed.
Only by combining solutions is social activism assured. What
solutions are chosen will also depend on the structure of
relationships between the activist group and the governing unit's
posture toward it. If the relationship is adversarial, one set
of solutions will be tried; if cooperative, another. In this
sense, how social activists solve the dilemma is part of a
political equation (Lichbach, 1994, 1995). At the heart of this
is a personal calculation: Will the benefits of participation
outweigh the costs for me? The answer to this question, according
to Lichbach, will determine whether someone decides to
participate in a social action, such as a demonstration, or stay
home. In essence, for the free rider, not one of the more than
thirty solutions that Lichbach discusses, by itself, would be an
acceptable rational justification for becoming involved.
Despite the reasons why most do not participate in social
movements, many do and some for long periods. They do so partly
for 'collective goods' such as security, but also because of the
'selective' or personal incentives a movement offers: Material
gain sometimes, nonmaterial rewards such as the opportunity to
publicly express deeply-held beliefs and values, a sense of
solidarity and connection with like-minded others, membership in
an organization working for a desired change, even the
development of useful organizing skills. As Lichbach argues, it
is the combining of solutions to the 'Rebel's Dilemma' that makes
activist participation possible. Thus, examining how people do
that is at the heart of understanding activist persistence, and
this is partially determined by the political environment within
which the social action takes place.
Some partial explanations of how and why people join
movements are worth noting here. McAdam emphasizes how the
availability of participants arises from their freedom from
personal responsibilities and institutional constraints (McAdam,
1988). Snow, Zurcher & Ekland-Olson (1980:787-801) stress the
significance of voluntary associations like civic clubs and
churches as movement recruiting networks.
A second important question for collective action theorists
is why some participants, albeit a relatively few, stay active in
the movement for long periods while most do not. Participants'
staying-power might be explained by their reason for joining.
Some movement joiners are identity-seekers (Glasser, 1972). If
they find what they seek in a movement and its organizations,
they tend to stay. Others join to achieve a particular
short-term goal: To end a war, make a personal statement about
violence, or avoid military conscription. If and when they
achieve the goal, they leave. Still others stay for both
identity and goals. As a movement institutionalizes, for
example, the professionals who run its organizations are
motivated both by identity investment and material goals.
Those who study social movements have only recently begun to
identify the personal attributes that contribute to persistent
activism. McAdam's study of US civil rights activists, for
example, describes how people come to and stay in movement work,
free from economic and other constraints, attitudinally
affiliated with movement goals, and located within networks of
political activism (McAdam, 1988). Sustained activist commitment
is an indispensable part of a movement's formation and survival.
It is a particularly relevant issue for the peace movement, with
its somewhat episodic, yet somehow enduring character. By what
means do long-term peace activists come to peace action, then
develop and manage their commitment to the movement over long
periods despite disappointments and setbacks?
This question of how and why activists persist in their
commitment over the long term seemed to us an important one to
study. Knowledge of what causes participant commitment to
continue is essential information both for peace movement
strategists around the world and for collective action scholars
who want to better understand social movement growth and
dynamics.
3. A Theory of Sustained Commitment
Our theory of sustained commitment as a primary determinant of
persistent activism was developed from our study of 30 Colorado
peace activists. Our methodological approach was qualitative,
using in-depth interviews to collect data. Large-scale
quantitative surveys are used to test hypotheses and to
generalize. In contrast, the goal of qualitative studies is to
achieve depth, in order to reveal hidden aspects of a research
question within the life experiences of people. For example, in
our focused interviews, the objective was to probe deeply into
the lives of activists to uncover the essential factors which
influenced their capacity to persist.
Because of the small number of activists studied, our theory
of pacifist persistence must be viewed as exploratory. Yet, such
theorizing is useful because, as a focused qualitative study, it
identifies key factors in activist persistence from the accounts
of the activists themselves. Some of these factors will be
obvious, but, in theory development, the point is to integrate
what is revealed by respondents, obvious or not. Out of
necessity, our theory will include obvious and more obscure
factors as they work together to produce persistence. It is the
combination of the factors which is a key to understanding what
keeps pacifists active.
We acknowledge the very limited nature of our study. It
concerns local peace action in a limited region in a single
nation. It was not designed for replication in other societies,
although others could perhaps test our model with a culturallyadjusted subset of our questions. A general model was not our
goal in this study. While a theory derived from such a small
sample can only be tentative, it can nevertheless be important in
stimulating qualitative studies in other countries. It might
also become the basis for a large activist survey leading to
important social scientific generalizations.
3.1 The Study Participants
We studied 30 long-term activists, 20 who had remained active in
the peace movement for at least five years and 10 others who had
earlier either shifted to other movements or left activism
entirely. Comparing the three groups allowed us to explore why
some people maintain their pacifist commitments while others fall
away. Although space constraints prevent a thorough discussion
of the shifters and dropouts here, we found them more likely than
persisters to have weak bonds to their peace organizations; to
feel that peacemaking was less urgent after the end of the Cold
War, which freed them to turn to other life goals; to have
competing responsibilities they could no longer manage and still
meet their commitments as peace activists; or to have had
disillusioning experiences within their peace organizations.'
Study participants were each interviewed for approximately
two hours. They were a diverse group reflecting different
geographical regions, social classes, and types of peace work.
Eighteen were female and twelve were male, ranging in age from 24
to 86, though most were between 40 and 60. Twenty held advanced
college degrees, but without correspondingly high incomes. Their
modest incomes, set against high educational achievement,
reflected the conscious decision of many of them to live a
materially simple life as the core of their peace careers. The
diverse occupational profile of these activists includes
countercultural and conventional worlds of work, low paying jobs
within peace movement organizations, and regular nine-to-five
employment, sometimes pursued only part-time to be free for peace
action. Some earned a meager income from canvassing
neighborhoods, leading nonviolence trainings, organizing
protests, and providing mediation services. What Oberschall
(1973:152) calls the 'free professions' were found among our
participants: Lawyers, university faculty, and writers. The
helping professions were also well represented: Social worker,
physician, health worker, and medical secretary. Even the IBM
systems engineer and the university administrator were there.
Alongside these professionals were the tea taster, the migrant
labor coordinator, and the professional herbalist.
Our activists averaged 20 years in the movement, altogether
representing 524 years of peace action. While they were members
of about 30 peace movement organizations, their peace action was
largely concentrated in the four organizations through which we
contacted them: The American Friends Service Committee (a Quaker
service organization), Peace Action (formerly SANE FREEZE), the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Rocky
Mountain Peace Center.
In this article, we focus on what we learned about sustained
commitment from the 20 persisters. From their experiences, a
theory of sustained commitment is developed, one that might be
tested in similar studies in other societies.
3.2 The Theoretical Framework
Our theory of persistent pacifism is nested within a broader
framework of commitment dynamics: How people become available
for peace activism as their commitment develops, how context
affects their inclination to join and stay, and how their
commitment is sustained by the interaction of crucial social and
personal factors.
Persisters come to the movement through availability, which
is determined in two ways. First, they are attitudinally
predisposed to engage in peace action because of pacifist beliefs
they hold with deep conviction. They have developed those
beliefs in certain life settings and time periods, and from their
experiences. Family and religious life during childhood exert
particularly strong influences.
Second, their adult life situations permit them to become
available. Often, early adulthood is a time when persisters,
relatively free of other responsibilities and constraints, first
come to the movement. Initially, situational availability may be
largely determined by chance but, increasingly, persisters
consciously shape their lives in order to stay active.
Persistent peace activists both join the movement and do its
work within contexts which directly influence how long they will
stay active. The widest of these are the national and global
settings where goverru-nent policies, media attention and
interaction within peace action networks impact local activists.
There are also the immediate contexts in which the persisters
work: Their local peace groups, communities and social networks.
Peace activist persistence depends on features and events in both
the larger and local contexts: The permanent presence of local
targets of resistance such as military installations, the level
of international tension, the density of peace organizations and
activists.
Finally, there are a number of commitment-sustaining factors
which influence the depth of persisters' involvement and their
ability to stay active over the long term. A number of these
factors can be cultivated by peace and justice organizations to
draw new people into commitment and to reinforce their activists'
persistence and effectiveness.
In the next section, we reveal the pathway by which
persisters joined the movement--their beliefs and values, their
life patterns. In subsequent sections, we will examine the
contexts of their action and why they stayed.
4. Why Persisters Join: Availability
Our persisters came to the movement because they were 'available'
to do so. The concept of availability refers to how inclined and
able one is to pursue a particular course of action, which will
affect one's willingness to join a movement or to stay involved
in it.' Two aspects of availability are especially important:
Attitude and life situation.
Attitude is crucial, where availability arises from a
person's beliefs, life experiences and depth of conviction.
One's social situation is equally important, where the freedom to
act hinges on the pattern of everyday life constraints. Thus,
people become available for collective action when they have been
soci@ed to move in that direction (attitudinal availability) and
when their life circumstances provide the time, money, and energy
for their commitment to activism (situational availability).
4.1 Attitudinal Availability: Beliefs
Attitudinal availability is the propensity to pursue peace action
because one's beliefs are in harmony with the movement's goals
and means. Those beliefs must be maintained if peace activism is
to continue. Our persisters had been socialized--some early in
life and others much later--to hold pacifist beliefs such as the
importance of helping others; the need to shape public policy to
reflect peace and social justice principles; the utility of
nonviolent direct action for producing change; the importance of
personal responsibility; and the need for peace action in
realizing global peace and social justice. Persisters were,
then, ethically prepared to assume the activist role and they
deepened their beliefs through involvement with kindred spirits
in the peace community.
4.2 Socialization to Pacifist Beliefs
Perhaps no concept is more important for understanding commitment
and its continuity than belief. Beliefs are ideas we are
socialized to think are true and it is their meaning as 'truth'
which gives them the power to shape our perception of social
reality and to affect our behavior.
Beliefs begin to form during early socialization and become
the foundation of our social constructions of reality (Berger &
Luckman, 1966). As children, we are exposed to the beliefs of
our parents and significant others. We internalize them so
gradually that we are unaware that our perceptions of others and
the world are based on the social constructions of our families,
churches, and schools. We do not know we have been socialized.
Unaware of how we acquired our beliefs, we naturally regard them
as the 'truth'. It is our confidence in their validity,
especially ethical convictions prescribing moral behavior, which
gives them such a powerful influence on our action. Peace
activists, like everyone else, are socialized in this way. From
influential people in their lives they adopted a belief system
built around the goals of peace and social justice and then
embraced the appropriate ethical and political behavior to
achieve them. Through the teachings and example of significant
others, they embraced several peace-supportive principles.
Learning to help others. Persisters in our study learned
that helping others was a moral duty. They were taught at home
and in church to 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto
you'. They learned to identify with the poor, to understand the
social causes of poverty, racism, and sexism, and to feel a
comradeship with the oppressed.
Learning to be critical of social institutions. Their family
and school experiences taught some persisters to question the
legitimacy of certain institutions, an inclination toward social
criticism furthered by movements of the 1960s--for civil rights,
for peace in Vietnam, and for women's liberation. This critical
attitude toward social institutions and authority, especially in
colleges and universities, made our persisters angry with the
political system, preparing them for enduring peace activism.
Without such political disaffection and criticism of conditions
and policies, people are unlikely to persist as agents of social
change.
Learning to see activism as problem-solving. While some
persisters avoided radical politics and worked in more moderate
ways to reform the system, most felt that sweeping political
changes were necessary and were achievable by determined
nonviolent action. This belief that peace action was a solution
moved them to embrace it as a way to change the political system.
They knew that, given the seriousness of the crisis they
perceived, extraordinary means were necessary.
Learning to be socially responsible. The worldview of
persisters included a strong sense of personal responsibility to
work for peace. Being socially responsible defined who they were
and became a part of their identities. Failure to act on behalf
of peace and social justice would have made them feel guilty. In
fact, most could not imagine a life without such activism.
Learning that peace action is urgent. Persisters felt a
sense of urgency about peace action, a belief that remained
strong over time. Before joining, many developed the belief that
peace work was urgent as a result of the Vietnam War and the
threat of nuclear holocaust as a deadly consequence of superpower
emnity.
In any particular persister's experience, some of these
teachings would be more influential than others, but all seemed
essential for the formation and durability of their commitment.
Socialized to embrace such beliefs and values, persisters
were especially sensitive to problems such as the threat of war
and other forms of state violence, and the presence of glaring
class, racial, ethnic and gender inequalities. Those issues have
been the stimulus for the movement's formation and the reason
activists participate, sometimes at considerable personal risk.
Persisters in our study became involved in social activism
because they felt those issues were significant and the need for
a new social and political order was pressing. They hoped a
nonviolent and egalitarian society would eventually emerge.
4.3 Situational Availability: Life Pattern
The ethical readiness to pursue activism (attitudinal
availability) must coincide with the practical ability to act
(situational availability), if a strong commitment is to form and
be sustained. Situational availability is determined by a
person's daily life pattern and how it either facilitates
activism or inhibits it. People who are working full-time,
married with young children, in debt, or in poor health would
normally be less free to undertake peace action, even if they
were ethically predisposed to do so. By comparison, people who
are in careers with more flexible time schedules or who live
communally would likely have more time and social support to be
active because of their life situation. So might a healthy
person who is unmarried and has no children.
Activists can control situational availability to some
extent. In fact, persisters were creative in designing their
lives so they could be available. Some worked part time or
developed careers which gave them time for peace action. Others
had retired or were homemakers with spare time for community
work. Some postponed marriage and having children. Most
developed simple life styles which required only moderate
incomes. A few created or joined peace communes where making
money and raising children were shared, freeing them for movement
work. In various ways, these activists mapped out their lives so
they could remain involved.
Attitudinal and situational availability are important
interlocking concepts for understanding how and why peace
commitments form and continue. Either, by itself, cannot ensure
the continuation of a peace commitment. For long-term peace
careers to develop, attitudinal and situational availability must
be continually cultivated by the activists themselves. This
effort can be aided by the movement community, to the extent that
it reinforces members' fundamental beliefs and helps them arrange
their lives so movement work is possible.
5. Contexts for Action
We learned from our persisters that the intensity and duration of
their commitment varied with the opportunities for and conditions
motivating activism. Thus, the continuity of activism will be
explained to a degree by the contexts where it develops and
continues.
Both the activists' initial engagement and their persistence
in the movement develop in the local settings where they live and
do their movement work: Peace groups, churches, workplaces,
friendship networks, schools, food cooperatives, parenting
groups. Those are primary locations for recruitment and
participation in social movements, what in collective action
theory are known as 'micromobilization contexts'. Our study of
persistence gave primary attention to those micromobilization
settings.
Although activist commitment takes shape and matures in those
smaller contexts, the larger macromobilization arena exerts
strong influences upon local activism. National and
international political forces and events shape local projects
and opportunities. For example, national economic expansion and
political liberalization will significantly influence local
activism and commitment. Political opportunities for peace
action improved during the 1980s in the USA. The government's
willingness to tolerate nonviolent protest had been increasing
steadily, as it learned to respond to demonstrations without
using police violence. The movement's imaginative use of
nonviolent action earned it much public credibility, which its
leaders learned to exploit as political opportunity shifted
between local and national levels (Miller, 1994:393-406). The
development of such 'structures of political opportunity' would
increase persistent activism, as it would open new channels for
movement pressure. The concept of opportunity structure is used
by Tarrow and others to analyze points of public access to
policy-making, for example, changes in government presenting new
openings for political influence through collective action. We
extend the concept here to describe opportunities for such action
at the level of the individual activist (Tarrow, 1989). Also,
the more open a society is to structural change, the more
activists are likely to believe such change is possible, and thus
to persist in movement work. Where they exist together,
opportunity and hope can help to keep activists involved over the
long term. But threat, such as that of nuclear war, can also be
a crucial determinant of activist commitment.
The levels of anxiety and frustration were very high among
Europeans and North Americans who were concerned about peace in
the 1980s. Cold War rivalry had taken several menacing forms:
Euromissile deployment in Europe; low intensity warfare in Latin
America; anticipation of Star Wars and Nuclear Winter around the
globe.
In Colorado, local nuclear war installations were a constant
and visible reminder of the threat and were highly influential in
sustaining activist commitment over long periods. Such dangerous
and politically provocative facilities as the Rocky Flats nuclear
weapons plant near Denver stimulated protests for two decades,
drawing thousands of people from throughout North America.
In the 1980s, opportunity, hope, and strain created a
macrocontextual climate conducive to sustained peace commitment
in North America and Europe. In the USA, the seriousness of the
I 1
problems and an expanded structure of political opportunity
stimulated hope among activists, who were thereby encouraged to
build their lives around the movement. Conditions within its
micromobilization contexts helped build and sustain their
conunitinent and prepared them to join when the political moment
was ripe and demanded action--the accessibility of local targets
of protest, bonding to and within their peace organizations, and
personal aspects of their lives, such as local support
communities of like-minded people.
5.1 Opportunity
For each person who is attitudinally and situationally available
to participate in the movement, a concrete set of opportunities
must be present in order to transform readiness into action. For
example, where people live is important. Someone living in a
small town in a large country may be attitudinally and
situationally available for peace action but be so far from its
physical targets such as military installations or from peace
movement organizations that he or she does nothing. Our study
participants, living in metropolitan Denver with numerous
military installations nearby, had opportunities for action
within easy reach. Many peace organizations in the area were
directing nonviolent action at targets such as Rocky Flats.
There were large numbers of citizens ready to be mobilized for
peace, first into consensus communities, as Klandermans would
call them, then into direct action (Klandermans, 1988:173-196).
There was also a dense network of peace and envirom-nental
organizations, whose interests often converged around goals like
the closing of Rocky Flats, which were ready to mobilize that
consensus and readiness for action. In short, people who were
available to the movement did not lack the opportunity to take
action.
Opportunity refers to the possibilities for action
exploitable by peace organizations or by activists initiating
their own projects. When such opportunities are easily
accessible to those who have the proper ethical inclination,
their step into peace action is likely, if they are available and
believe peace action is urgent.
Going to a rally, attending a meeting, distributing
literature--these are individual steps toward deeper involvement.
Taking action, however small, can be a turning point, because by
establishing contact with other activists, their organizations
and connnunities, our persisters became engaged in the work.
Peace commitments begin because people decide to act rather than
merely contemplate action. They are available in attitude and
life situation, the opportunity presents itself, the moment is
right, and they approach the peace conununity and become
involved.
Joining a peace group can dramatically change one's way of
life as priorities are shifted to make time for activism. It can
represent an ethical turning point for a person. Wars and social
movements present a moral dilemma for the potential activist--do
nothing and play it safe or do something to stop the killing and
social injustice, take a risk, and perhaps make a difference. As
issues of war and violence polarize attitudes, pressure mounts on
the individual to resolve the dilemma by taking a stand on the
ethical issues. If the decision to participate in the movement
is based on one's greater need or desire to live on 'higher moral
ground', that ethical shift may become the basis of persistent
peace activism. Our study participants related how, directly
confronted with violence and social injustice, they were forced
to struggle with the moral issues, take a stand, then take part
in protests at the risk of public ridicule, even physical harm.
Once the act of joining the movement occurs, however, our
persisters' sustained conunitment evolved gradually. There was
no 'identity crisis' leading to a sudden conversion, a point
Hannon (1990:217-232) emphasizes in his life course view of peace
commitment. The evolution appeared to be a gradual convergence
of socialization influences, social affiliations, the uniqueness
of the historical moment, social criticism, and opportunities for
action.
Hannon's findings, from his study of activists in the Pledge
of Resistance against US military involvement in Central America,
confirm our own. He emphasizes the influence of several
conditions in the formation of committed activists: Early
religious socialization, with its utopian vision of society,
countercultural ethic, and communitarian experience; the college
experience as a radicalizing influence, bringing awareness of
social injustice; role models mentoring them along radical lines;
and political involvement with others of similar conviction.
6. Why Persisters Stay: Commitment-Sustaining Factors
Certainly, the beliefs and life patterns bringing our persisters
to the movement also work to keep them there, as do the contexts
within which they live and work. But we learned of other factors
which act more directly to support a persister's conunitinent.
Some of those influences, such as bonding and vision sharing, are
located primarily in the activist's membership in groups,
organizations, and networks where they live and do their movement
work. Other factors, like management skills, personal growth and
satisfaction, and creativity issue more from the activist's
learning and development. We will look, in turn, at each of
these--membership, management, personal benefit, and creativity.
6.1 The Persister as Member
Our persisters' commitment to peace action depended heavily on
how closely they were connected with the movement communities in
which they lived and worked. We evaluated two dimensions of that
connection, bonding and visioning.
The strength of a commitment can best be determined by
observing how consistently a person pursues a particular course
of action.' Asking people how committed they are is, of course, a
less reliable measure than watching what they do. While we could
not observe the everyday activity of our study participants, we
could roughly determine the strength of their commitment by
learning how strongly they were bonded to their peace
organizations and how those ties reinforced it.' Kendrick's
research has shown the significance of such ties in the
movement's recruitment and retention of activists (Kendrick,
1991:91-111).
Bonding to the peace group's principles. The more closely
aligned an activist's beliefs with the principles of the peace
group they join, the greater the likelihood that a personal bond
will form to its ideology. There was a strong correspondence
between our respondents' beliefs and their organization's
principles, especially regarding the use of consensus in making
decisions, the emphasis on nonviolence, the linking of peace with
social justice, and the strong undercurrent of environmental
concerns. This ideological compatibility helped connect these
activists to the broader peace movement and sustained their
commitment over the long term.
Bonding to the organization. The way people evaluate the
performance of their peace organization is an important indicator
of how attached to it they feel. Activists who bond to the
organization are likely to express support for its goals and to
show appreciation for its ways of working and how it handles
internal conflict and external crises. The way a peace
organization functions bears directly on its ability to preserve
the commitments of its members. Participants must feel good
about their organization: For the opportunities it provides for
creativity, for the support it gives to individual efforts, for
the positive working atmosphere it creates, and for the
effectiveness of its operating style and democratic structures
and procedures. As a group, persisters reported positive
feelings about how their peace groups were organized and run,
despite some frustration with the length of time required to make
decisions by consensus.
Bonding to leaders. Expressions of appreciation and support
for a peace organization's leaders indicate the presence of a
bond to leadership. This attachment is likely to strengthen a
member's commitment. Our persisters felt that the leaders of
their groups were performing well, even regarding some as model
peace activists. Yet, of the four types of bonding examined,
personal attachment to leaders appeared to be the least important
because of the peace movement's collective leadership ethic.
With its emphasis on equality, participatory democracy, and
shared responsibility, the movement places less importance on
individual leaders. In fact, there is a pronounced concern that
such leaders not be elevated above the conununity.
Consequently, bonding to leaders seemed less important in
determining how conunitment was sustained than other factors.
More influential was their perception of how democratically and
effectively their organizations operated, and how they felt about
the people with whom they worked. Yet, most judged the leaders
of their organizations to be good and effective people,
suggesting some loyalty to them as well.
Bonding to the peace community. Positive feelings toward coworkers and close friendships with them indicate the presence of
bonding to the peace community. If such relationships exist, we
can assume that a member's commitment will be strengthened and
thus be more likely to survive. Close relationships within the
movement, mutual respect, and common experience draw members
together into a community of caring and hope. These ties can
compensate for weaker bonds they might have with the organization
or its leaders.
Social networks foster the formation of group identity and
commitment as other research has noted. For example, Melucci
(1988:329-348) shows how collective identity develops among
movement members within their social networks. His findings
confirm the observations of Gerlach and Hine (1970) about the
positive influence of social networks on participation and
commitment generally. Likewise, the significance of
countercultural networks for drawing people into movement
activity is illustrated in Kriesi's (1988:41-82) work on Dutch
peace action.
Since no bond by itself is likely to preserve a commitment,
our activists' entire bonding pattern was examined. We needed to
know how many bonds existed: Was there attachment to the peace
group's principles, to its organizational structure, to its
leaders, and to the community? Also, what was the strength of
each of those connections? For most of our persisters, all four
bonds were present and, while intensity varied across them, they
were solid enough to help sustain a commitment over time.
15
Sharing the Peace Vision. Beliefs held in common with
coworkers appear to reinforce the persistence of peace activism.
Our persisters shared a vision of a peaceful world, agreed that
eliminating war, violence, and social injustice was the means to
its realization and committed themselves to a life of peace
activism. This vision was part of a shared reality continually
reinforced within and outside their organizations through
frequent communication with one another. This shared perception
of a preferred future and the means to achieve it integrated
persisters into the community and provided them with a common
world view. It also defined the problems to be solved,
established a course of action and offered a rationale for
continuing movement work, as well as providing a common discourse
to give it meaning and coherence.
The social reality shared by persisters differed in an
important respect from the perceptions of those we studied who
stayed active only for a while. Persisters saw themselves as a
small, dedicated group distinct from the thousands who dropped
out of activism after a short time or who entered the movement at
intervals in response to major crises. In short, persisters know
they are persisters, keeping at it while others come and go.
Sharing a perception of their unique persister role keeps them
conunitted over the long term and creates a cohesiveness among
them. This 'staying power', combined with their vision of a
peaceful world emerging sometime in the future, gives them the
tenacity and confidence to continue their movement work.
6.2 The Persister as Manager
An activist commitment must be managed if it is to endure, so
activists must be clever in shaping their lives for prolonged
peace work.
Managing support and criticism. An enduring peace commitment
needs wholehearted backing from those close to the activist. Our
persisters were encouraged by spouses, children, parents and
friends. Often those supporters made significant sacrifices so
the activist's work could continue. Strong encouragement also
came from fellow movement members. Such support encouraged
persisters to keep with the work, helped them deal with
discouragement, and provided time and other resources so they
could pursue their peace action with consistency. They were
especially sensitive to this need for dependable support and they
shaped their social lives so they could receive it.
Persistent activists cannot escape criticism from members of
their extended family or others whose ideological leanings differ
from their own. Our activists commonly used three responses to
such criticisms: They discounted them, knowing they were based on
irreconcilable differences of belief; they insulated themselves
by Iiiniting their contact with the critics; and they employed
humor to remove the sting from harsh words. These methods worked
in part because activists had compensating support from more
significant family members and close friends.
Managing competing responsibilities. An activist's
commitment is set within a larger constellation of obligations to
family, job, and friends. Persisters balanced movement and
nomnovement demands creatively. Many chose to live a materially
simple life to reduce income pressures on their movement work.
Some took or created employment with flexible time schedules so
they could more easily integrate peace action into their lives.
Others found lowpaying jobs in their peace groups, especially
valued opportunities for earning a modest living from peace
action.
Our observation that persisters manage their commitment by
using effective organizing skills is supported by Nepstad and
Smith (1996) in their study of recruitment to high-risk activism.
They found the ability of activists to balance family and
professional career responsibilities to be an influential
determinant of their willingness to act on their intention to
participate in peace actions when risks were high. Activist
persistence, according to their study and ours, depends more on
how skillful activists are at organizing multiple life
responsibilities, than on being free of such demands, as had been
suggested by previous research.
Such creative management of responsibilities by our activists
was possible in part because their family and friends were
willing to 'take up the slack' so movement work could receive
their fuller attention. Thus, commitment is not merely an act of
individual will: It also has a deeply social character.
Husbands, wives, children, and friends may all share the burden,
such as assuming responsibilities the peace activist must neglect
at home or work. At the very least, supporters must be willing
to tolerate being neglected as the activist attends meetings,
plans and carries out demonstrations, then retreats into solitude
for renewal. Persisters managed the competing demands on their
time in a climate where others offered support, helping their
peace commitments survive.
Managing burnout. To persevere, an activist must deal with
burnout. Persisters were normally able to avoid it: They
balanced action with reflection, diversified their activities,
used creative outlets to relieve tension, withdrew into solitude
or nature to regain their energy, found kindred spirits for
mutual support, and developed long-term views of change in order
to maintain their motivation. They refrained from working to the
point of exhaustion, cared for personal needs as well as movement
demands, and took time to play and create. Such efforts balanced
the stresses and disappointments of peace work with activities
that renewed their energy and spirit. Through this balancing
act, burnout was avoided and their commitment was sustained.
6.3 The Persister as Beneficiary
There is no selfless activism. Personal benefits from activism,
some material and others not, help sustain an activist's
commitment. Some of the same rewards motivating society beyond
the movement operate within it as well: success, personal growth,
career development.
Success. Moral conviction and the pressing nature of a
problem can keep peace activists going, even in the face of
serious setbacks. Yet, there must be some personal rewards for
persistence as well; at the very least, a perception that their
action has made a difference. Perception of modest success is an
important reward of social activism. For example, persisters
could point to shifts in local public concern with nuclear war
and radiation pollution as indicators of the modest success of
Rocky Flats protest activity.
Personal growth. While their small victories are important
for keeping activists involved, they do find other rewards: The
gratification of living in harmony with their nonviolence values;
the appreciation of other movement members and supporters;
observing other activists living the ethics of nonviolence among
themselves and with opponents in the connnunity; watching the
members of their peace group successfully arrive at a consensus
and preserve a feeling of community; learning how to better
communicate and organize; and experiencing a more meaningful
personal life.
Such intangible rewards seemed to fulfill the personal
ambition of most persisters, guided as they were by a broader
view of change: Of becoming more peaceful and effective people
who were living an integrated, nonviolent life while contributing
to the creation of a more just and peaceful world. Seen in this
light, persistent activists may join social movements in order to
change society or solve global problems but, in the process, they
may also change themselves, thereby creating the possibility for
a new kind of community.
Our results concur with those of Knudson-Ptacek (1990:233-245).
She learned that peace activists found fulfillment and
success through their relationships to others and saw their
personal development evolve as their orientation shifted from
selfish interests toward the welfare of the collective. Their
growing sense of interdependence reinforced their belief that
they were in part responsible for causing global problems and for
solving them together. That activist interdependence had four
bases: The spiritual, a unified view of life offering meaning and
direction; the political, an understanding of political
processes; the relational, friendship patterns providing bonding
and personal commitment to others; and the defensive, banding
together for protection. The testimony of our persisters
supports this line of thinking. They spoke about these four
connections in relation to their commitment to serving the world
community, which they felt was their larger obligation.
Careers. Many of our persisters developed 'ethical careers'.
Yet, while they were entrepreneurial in the sense that many
created work for themselves in the movement, that work was rarely
remunerative. A few had modestly paid positions with peace
organizations, but most persisted not because they could make a
living from peace activism, but out of a sense of mission.
Our persisters resembled in some respects veterans of the
1964 Freedom Summer campaign for southern black voter
registration (McAdam, 1989). Several had begun their activism in
the civil rights movement. Many were working in education and
the helping professions, with incomes lower than their high
educational achievement would lead one to predict. Support from
their extended social networks appeared to be more substantial
than support they received from their movement organizations.
Many moved from their initial step into activism as a moral
stand, to peace work as a vocation within a growing web of
personal and organizational supports.
Career activism involved more profound life change for some
of our persisters than for others. There were two broadlydefined groups: Those who reshaped their lives around their
activism and those for whom movement work involved no major life
change. These two paths illustrate Travisaro's distinction
between conversion and alternation in social movement
participation. Some participants' lives are transformed by total
commitment to the cause. They become completely absorbed in the
movement. Others are able to 'commute' between the movement
world and their conventional lives (Travisaro, 1981:237-248).
6.4 The Persister as Creator
The activists we have come to know through our study persist in
large part because they are creative in their activism. They
have learned entrepreneurship, to innovate, to do their work with
many fewer resources than are available in the conventional world
of work. Living 'life on the edge', integrating personal and
movement life, devising workable strategy and tactics for keeping
ahead of the opponent, seeing and exploiting a personal
opportunity structure--all have required that the persister
become an imaginative and inventive person. The history of
nonviolent action would support the argument that, lacking the
capacity or willingness to resist violence and militarism by
physical force, activists must be infinitely more creative than
their adversaries (Ackerman & Kruegler, 1994; Powers & Vogele,
1997).
Our research suggests that persistent activists are not only
rational in selecting a course of action, as resource
mobilization theorists claim, but they are also imaginative in
identifying, mobilizing and combining their resources to pursue
it. Their creativity is reflected in the daily decisions they
make in fashioning their lives, preventing burnout, designing and
implementing projects, and even crafting their performance in
court after civil disobedience actions. Awareness of this
activist creativity is essential for understanding how their
commitments develop and survive. This 'creative action' is a
resource mobilized by the activist and collective action
researchers should give it more attention.
Creativity is related to rationality, but it has unique
features: It is the process of rationally exploring options
beyond conventional ways of thinking and organizing. It draws on
imagination and thrives on novelty and risk-taking. It is
characterized by innovation, a process where people deal with
changing conditions, develop new opportunities, and invent novel
programs. This creativity is at the heart of persistent
pacifism.
7. Factors that Sustain Commitment
Persisters' commitment was sustained to the extent that they:
- Preserved their activist identity and a strong sense of
personal responsibility to work for peace and social justice
in the world.
- Cultivated personal opportunities for peace action.
- Perceived the urgency and effectiveness of peace action.
_ Remained bonded to peace movement principles, and to
their movement organizations, leaders, and communities.
_ Managed support and criticism from inside and outside the
movement.
_ Effectively managed their competing responsibilities.
_ Successfully integrated peace action into their everyday
lives.
_ Developed a strategy for managing burnout.
_ Received the rewards of activism in the form of new
skills and personal growth.
_ Shared the peace vision with other activists, including a
long-term view of change.
Although each of these factors made its unique contribution
to activist persistence, a few seemed crucial: Having an activist
identity, including a strong sense of personal responsibility to
work for peace and social justice; believing that peace work was
urgent; feeling bonded to the peace movement; managing competing
responsibilities; integrating peace work into daily life; and
developing a strategy for managing burnout. This shows, in line
with Lichbach's ideas about the mix of solutions to the Rebel's
Dilemma, how different social factors combine to ensure longterm
activism.
8. Conclusion
We have brought together the many elements of our activists'
accounts into a model of sustained commitment (Figure 1). This
model reveals the various socialization influences on the
formation of beliefs which make people more attitudinally
available for activism. It also identifies life pattern as the
primary determinant of their situational availability, giving
them the time and energy to act on their beliefs. Once available
to the movement, their joining is contingent on opportunity.
When peace groups and action targets are nearby and plentiful,
one who is fully available will be more likely to become
involved.
Once activists are in the movement, a number of influences
sustain their commitment. Some of these our preliminary research
had prepared us to find: The belief in the urgency and
effectiveness of peace action, which gives it meaning; the
development of an activist identity rooted in the ethic of
helping others and feeling personally responsible to act for
change; bonding to a peace group's ideology, organization,
leadership and community; continually clarifying the movement's
vision and its long-term view of change.
We had not anticipated other influences, however. Those had
to do with the persister as manager and creator. Much of their
persistence appeared to flow from their ability to manage their
commitment to the movement. They gained support from significant
others and handled criticism in creative ways; balanced their
competing responsibilities so activism was possible; integrated
peace work into their daily lives; cultivated opportunity so they
could be involved in actions that mattered to them; developed
creative strategies for managing burnout; and received rewards
from their activism in the form of personal growth which also
kept them involved. Persisters appeared to be consummate
managers of their lives in support of their continued activism.
The activist's role as creator seemed equally influential in
sustaining commitment. The persister's 'creative urge', one
might call it, and the ability to fulfill it through activism
seemed particularly salient. Opportunity for action, for
instance, must be continually cultivated by activists, either by
responding to projects of others or by creating their own. Their
full exploitation of this 'action opportunity structure' permits
them to meet this need for creative engagement. Likewise, the
challenge of creating a personal life that integrates their peace
values and work with the requirements of everyday living is an
act of creation that sustains commitment. Finally, growing
personally is recreating oneself from movement work through new
skills and a more nonviolent temperament.
Our persisters also demonstrated their creative attention to
the care and reinvention of their organizations. For example,
persisters at the Rocky Mountain Peace Center replaced an
ineffective board-staff structure for making decisions with an
imaginative 'spokescouncil' to better apply their core peace
values in making and h-nplementing decisions. The same
organization arranged its program more rationally around issuebased communities. The absence of such creative efforts by
activists to maintain organizational vitality was a major reason
for the rapid decline of the Nuclear Freeze movement in the 1980s
(Solo, 1988).
Just as important as imagination in personal and
organizational life is the persister's pursuit of creative and
flexible strategies against the targets of the movement. Without
innovative strategies, opponents quickly learn to anticipate the
activists' actions and preempt or neutralize them, thus
eliminating the modest successes our persisters have said were
important for sustaining their commitment. Outwitting one's
opponent, especially locating the chinks in the armor of the
state, is a direct challenge to the persister's creative urge.'
We saw how important this was in the 1997 strategic and tactical
inventiveness of the Serbian democracy movement actions in
Belgrade and elsewhere.
Within our model, microcontextual processes--the bonding, the
sense of urgency and common vision, the personal growth, the
management, the creativity--seem to increase the likelihood of a
sustained activist commitment. They operate within and in turn
influence the macromobilization context where larger political
events and policies help set the local activist agenda.
8.1 Study Contributions
The results of our study have theoretical and practical value.
They partially validate and expand each of the three major
theories of social movement development. They clarify the
significant influence of belief that collective behavior
theorists have identified as the key stimulus of participation in
social movements. They strengthen the argument of New Social
Movements theorists that culture, context, collective identity
and social networks are instrumental in the formation and
preservation of social movements. Finally, the accounts of our
persisters offer support for the resource mobilization view of
social movements as the rational pursuit of solutions to public
grievances that have been neglected by institutional politics.
What our study revealed about pacifist persisters from the
1970s and 1980s serves to illuminate what researchers learned
about peace movement changes in the USA during that period: The
movement's surge and slump dynamics with the lasting effect of
expansion; its institutionalization in some sectors that made it
less episodic; the broadening of its goals that brought it into
common cause with other nonviolent movements.' These movement
developments supported pacifist persistence and, in turn, were
reinforced by persisters who were creative in managing their
commitments and determined to live with integrity from their
pacifist beliefs. It is such hardcore persisters who foster and
maintain the vigor and effectiveness of the movement. Thus,
activist persistence seems important for peace scholars to study.
On the practical side, knowledge of what leads to that
persistence could increase the movement's effectiveness and
expansion.
Our findings revealed two types of activist capacities that
are important for peace movement organizations: Life management
skills and creativity. Since these qualities are essential for
success in all human endeavors, we should not be surprised to
discover their importance for sustaining activism. Creativity is
especially important because that quality has been largely
neglected in the study of social movements and peace action.
Given the prominence of 'creative action' that we discovered in
the lives of activists and the work of their organizations, it
should be of major concern for future studies of persistent
activism. Attention to that creative element could ultimately
enhance movement effectiveness. Cultivating the creativity and
life management skills of activists could serve to offset the
serious power disadvantage that normally constrains challenge
groups.
The peace movement may now be coalescing with movements for
human rights, democracy, civic development, and environmental
protection into a transnational metamovement against violence.'
If so, knowing how to encourage activist conunitinent would be
essential for building a strong and lasting coalition. In that
event, creativity and other factors that keep members in the
movement could be of particular interest to activists and
scholars alike.
Our model of sustained commitment is a step toward
understanding why people become active in peace work and how they
maintain their commitment to it. We are hoping that others will
refme and expand our model by conducting similar studies in other
parts of the world. Such studies of persistence should be of
special interest to peace scholars and to movement organizations
with their constant challenge of attracting and retaining
members.
24
NOTES
1. For a thorough treatment of the three groups--persisters,
shifters and dropouts--see Downton & Wehr (1997).
2. Availability and opportunity are concepts explored in Downton
(1973, 1979, 1980).
3. Becker (1960) abandoned the then prevailing view of commitment
as a subjective state of mind in favor of a behavioral
definition of the concept as 'a consistent line of action'.
4. Our thinking in this article is based, in part, on our earlier
theoretical work of peace commitment as a process of bonding
to leadership, ideology, organizations, rituals, and
friendship groups (Downton & Wehr, 1991).
5. Inventiveness and tactical imagination in the Italian peace
movement are explored by Ruzza (1992).
6. Of particular relevance are two goal changes noted by Colwell
& Bond (1994:41-42): the expansion of US peace organizations'
goals beyond simply opposition to war and the increased
prominence of commitment to nonviolence.
7. For an elaboration of this idea see Wehr (1995).
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(From Mathew Fox, The Reinvention of Work, Harper Collins, 1995)
Reinventing Work:Economics, Business,
and Science
To me, this concept of GNP (Gross National Product] means
nothing at all.... GNP being a purely quantitative concept,
bypasses the real question: How to enhance the quality of life.
E. F. SCHUMACHER'
That human well-being could be achieved by diminishing the
well-being of the Earth, that a rising Gross Domestic Product
could ignore the declining Gross Earth Product; this was the
basic flaw in this Wonderland myth (of progress].
BRIAN SWIMME AND THOMAS BERRY'
GNP values very highly bullets, tanks, and cars; and it values at
zero the environment, clean air, clean water, etc. It also
values at zero our children, who really are our future wealth....
The raising of children, managing household activities, serving
on the school board, and many other activities are not considered
to be part of the formal economy.... In so many countries in the
world, the contribution of unpaid workers is far larger than the
GNP.
HAZEL HENDERSON
The community supports that business that supports the community.
BEN COHEN
Primitive and even colonial women played
role in the business of survival. Their
managers was taken for granted.... Women
inferior caste... most dramatically with
industrialization.
MADONNA KOLBENSCHLAG'
a much more integral
identity as workers and
were relegated to an
the coming of
The model that presents the business organization as a cold,
impersonal machine denies humanness. People have needs in three
areas: body, mind, and spirit. Yet most companies, if they
acknowledge people have needs at all, act as if there are only
two requirements for producing good work: money and job security.
RICHARD McKNIGHT'
-The primary purpose of a company is to serve as an arena for the
personal development of those working in the company. The
production of goods and services and the making of profits are
by-products.
ROLF OSTERBERG'
As more about the fundamental role of consciousness in the
universe is revealed and the new ideas promulgated, a basic
change in science will eventually occur. . .. It is even possible
that eventually a new science will be born, a science that
accommodates the whole human with fully realizable capabilities
of body, mind, and spirit.
BEVERLY RUBIK'
In this chapter we will discuss how we might reinvent the work of
economics, business, and science.
ECONOMICS
I do not derive a great deal of confidence from the words of
economists-and neither, apparently, do many economists. Paul
Krugman, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, confessed in a recent newspaper report, "We don't
know a lot about what's going on." Another economist says, "Quite
candidly, I don't know if we as economists know an awful lot
about what it takes to improve long-term economic performance."
As economic writers Peter Gosselin and Charles Stein suggest,
humility "is becoming more common in the economics profession
these days."9 Maybe it's time for economics to let go of its
faith in an outmoded paradigm.
I recently spoke to a new graduate of economics from a respected
state university. He told me that he had studied the economic
theories of the old paradigm-Adam Smith, Milton Freedman, and a
bit of Karl Marx-but he had been asked to read nothing whatsoever
of new-paradigm economist E. E Scbumacher. This is a shame,
because Schumacher is an economist worth reading. First of all,
he knows as much as anyone can know of the mysteries of our
economic systems. Born in Germany, he came to England in the
1930s as a Rhodes Scholar to study economics at New College,
Oxford, and later taught economics at Columbia University in New
York. He served as economic adviser with the British Control
Commission in Germany from 1946 to 1950, and from 1950 to 1970 he
was the economic adviser of the National Coal Board of England.
He has advised many developing countries on the problems of rural
development and is author of Small Is Beautiful and Good Work, as
well as A Guide for the Perplexed. Yet, as we have seen already,
Schumacher also pays attention to the inner life of the self and
society. This dimension gives him the authority to bring the new
paradigm into his own profession.
About the economics profession Schumacher is severely critical.
He proposes, for example, that the great litmus test of
economics, the GNP or gross national product, is essentially
meaningless. "To me, this concept of GNP means nothing at
all.... GNP, being a purely quantitative concept, bypasses the
real question: How to enhance the quality of life." Instead of
GNP, Schumacher proposes that we critique our economic system
from the viewpoint of meaningful work for evervone. Perhaps FE
(full employment) should replace GNP as the yardstick of a
healthy economy. "Let us ask then: How does work relate to the
end and purpose of [humanity's] being? It has been recognized in
all authentic teachings of [humankind] that every human being
born into this world has to work not merely to keep himself
alive but to strive toward perfection."10
Schumacher sees a threefold purpose in human work:
As a divinely arrived being [the human person] is called upon to
love God in traditional language. As a social being he is called
upon to love his neighbor. And as an incomplete individual being
he is called upon to love himself. The social organization ought
to reflect these three absolute needs. If these needs are not
fulfilled, if he can't do it, he becomes unhappy, destructive, a
vandal, a suicidal maniac. The social, political, and economic
organizations ought to reflect these needs. But they do not. 1
Schumacher observes that "joyful, constructive labor" completes us, makes us feel that we are created "as a child of God."
Yet most jobs are organized to be so dull that they cannot serve
this purpose. Notice how thoroughly Schumacher fits in the
tradition of the mystics who speak of the joy of work and of our
being children of God.
One problem that Schumacher names in the GNP mania is the
notion that an economy must always be growing to be healthy.
This does not make sense when the Earth itself is finite. At
whose expense will the economy grow? How can we have infinite
growth on a finite planet without someone or something having to
pay a dear price? And isn't that exactly what industrial
societies have subjected the planet to an infinite plundering of
limited resources of fossil fuels, forests, water, air, plants,
animals, people?
Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry concur. They recognize the
doctrine of the GNP to be the dominant myth that drives our
anthropocentric civilization in the name of progress. They
believe that the "terminal phase" in which the Earth finds itself
today "was caused by a distorted aspect of the myth of progress.
Though this myth has a positive aspect in the new understanding
that we now have ofan evolutionary universe, it has been used in
a devastating manner 'n plundering the Earth's resources and
disrupting the basic functioning of the life systems of the
planet." 12
What stands behind this destructive myth? "That human wellbeing could be achieved by diminishing the well-being of the
Earth, that a rising Gross Domestic Product could ignore the
declining
Gross Earth Product; this was the basic flaw in this
Wonderland myth [of progress]."13
Schumacher believes that one of the great evils of current economic theory is the idea that bigger is better. The truth is
that impersonal bigness disempowers the worker, leaving him or
her out of touch with the decision-making level of the work
world. Americans of late are beginning to grasp th.is fact as we
wake up from the greeddriven eighties to a nightmare of
unemployment, loss of tax base, widening gaps between the wealthy
and the middle class, and increased poverty.
Smallness is the path Schumacher says will put most people to
good work. "It is only in a small organization that we can meet
people face to face and make decisions face to face," he
observes. Intermediate technology is his term for a conscious
effort to displace and let go of the giant technology that so
dominates our economic world and the way we think about it. We
can see in Schumacher's work a movement from the technology of
giant industrialism to a human-sized or green technology that
once again fits into the Great Work of the universe. The former
technology was part of the anthropocentric,exaggerations and
arrogance of the Enlightenment era. About smallness and
technology Schumacher writes, "I can't see anything that [humanity] really needs that cannot be produced very simply, very
efficiently, very viably on a small scale with a radically
simplified technology, with very little initial capital, so that
even little people can get at it."15
Schumacher believes that consciously returning to smallness is
not a romantic return to tribal ways; reinventing ways of doing
things on a smaller scale will in fact require all our resources
of creativity and imagination. He gives the example of metal
rims needed for wooden oxcart A,heels in developing countries.
In the old days persons knew how to make these rims, but at some
point the art was lost.
Having found a two-hundred-year-old tool in a French village,
the Schumacher team took the challenge to the National College of
Agricultural Engineering in England. These people reinvented
this old tool and came up with a rim-maker that costs only
thirteen dollars, doesn't require electricity, and can be
operated by anyone. Prior to this, the cheapest machine for
making rims in the modern West cost $1100 and required outside
power and electricity to operate. After putting the word out to
inventors that such a thing was needed a new way of creating
these wheels emerged. A return to smallness will create new and
good work for people, Schumacher believes.
Experience shows that whenever you can achieve smallness,
simplicity, capital cheapness, and nonviolence, or, indeed, any
one of these objectives new possibilities are created for
people, singly or collectively, to help themselves, and that the
patterns that result from such technologies are more humane,
more ecological, less dependent on fossil fuels and closer to
real human needs than the patterns (or lifestyles) created by
technologies that go for giantism, complexity, capital
intensity, and violence.
Notice how often Schumacher speaks of needs. Needs are not the
same as wants or desires. A healthy economy satisfies needs
first; it does not indulge in satisfying wants for a few before
it satisfies the needs of the many. In this regard our entire
industry of advertising must be sub'ected to a spiritual
critique. Is its purpose not to pump up the wants of those who
have extra means? And does this economy not then oppress those
whose true needs are not yet met? "What is the great bulk of
advertising other than the stimulation of greed, envy, and
avarice? It cannot be denied that industrialism, certainly in
its capitalist form, openly employs these human failings-at least
three of the seven deadly sins-as its very, motive force."17
An economic system built on titillating and stimulating greed,
envy, and avarice as its "very motive force" cannot or ought not
long cndure. People are at the heart of our work, even when
business ideologies and narrow conceptual litmus tests (such as
the abstraction known as GNP) cover up this fact. "Business is
not there simply to produce goods, it also produces people, so
that the whole thing becomes a learning process. In othcr words,
business must be critiqued from a qualitative point of view and
not merely from a quantitative perspective.
Schumacher is not alone in offering a new paradigm that could
help reenchant the profession of economics and eventually our
worlds of business. Hazel Henderson is an economist committed to
a new worldview as described in her books Politics of the Solar
Age, Creating Alternative Futures, and Redefining Wealth and
Progress. She criticizes the worldview of "industrial economics"
by pointing out that the debate between communism and capitalism
was actually a trivial argument. Both Marx and Smith devised a
discipline that led to industrialism and materialism.
Unchecked production, consumption, and continuous economic
growth are common in their thinking.... It is high time to give
Adam Smith and Karl Marx a decent burial. 19
Henderson also criticizes the ideology of the industrial
revolution for its abuse of the Earth and its reductionism in
holding up the GNP as the measure of a healthy economy. "GNP
values very highly bullets, tanks, and cars; and it values at
zero the environment, clean air, clean water, etc. It also
values at zero our children, who really are our future wealth."
Nor are women counted in the GNP. "The raising of children,
managing household activities, serving on the school board, and
many other activities are not considered to be part of the formal
economy.... In so many countries in the world, the contribution
of unpaid workers is far larger than the GNP. Henderson finds
hope in the G-15, the group of developing countries that represents twice as many human beings as the G-7 (the seven industrial
countries that meet yearly to determine the future of the world's
economy). She finds hope in the contribution that women, who
have been largely excluded from industrial economics, can make to
the reinvention of the global economy.
Henderson pictures the total productive system of an industrial
society as a "three-layer cake with icing." The icing is the
official market economy of cash transactions or the "private
sector." The GNP-monetized section of the cake represents the
officially measured GNP that generates all our economic
statistics (even though 15 percent of that is "underground" or
illegal and therefore pays no taxes); this is the "public
sector." The layer that holds up the public sector is the
nonmonetized production of the social cooperative countereconomyThis includes "sweat-equity," do-it-yourself work, bartering,
parenting, volunteering, caring for old and sick, use-subsistence
-agriculture, and other activities. And the bottom layer is
nature's layer-the natural resources base so jeopardized by
pollution, deforestation, and toxic wastes. This picture of
society's economy appears far more inclusive than the
male-dominated and anthropocentric definitions we have been given by
custodians of the GNP ideology.
Henderson consciously applies the new scientific paradigm to
her work as an economist. She speaks of "the end of economics,"
because economics (from left to right) was primarily concerned
about industrialism as a method of producing material goods
efficiently and with ever greater technological virtuosity." She
names the new paradigm as "the dawning of the Solar Age," meaning
a shift to renewable resources management and sustainable forms
of production. The new paradigm rejects the idea that the Earth
is inert-the foundational idea of industrial science and
technology-and opts instead for the view that the Earth is Gaia,
a living planet, whose systems are living, dynamic and self-organizing.
"The Solar Age is an image that reminds us that the
light from the sun is what powers our extraordinary blue planet
and it is the sun's stream of photons which drive all of Earth's
processes: the cycles of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, the water
cycles, and climate...... In addition, the Solar Age will include
a new appreciation of mystical or right-brain experience. "The
wisest of us recognize that our Earth still has much to teach
us-if we can humble ourselves and quiet our egos long enough to
really listen, see, hear, smell, and feel all of her wonders."
This newly found sense of spirituality will, in turn, end the
cycle of avarice on which modern consumer economics is based; we
will find our quest for the infinite or for Spirit in places that
truly satisfy. "As we re-integrate our awareness in this way, we
no longer crave endless consumption of goods beyond those needed
for a healthv life, but seek new challenges in society for order,
peace, and justice, and to develop our spirituality."22
Economist Herman E. Daly has long been conscious of the need
for paradigm shift in his profession. Author of Steady State
Economics, he has not only taught in academia but is a member of
the Environment Department of the World Bank. Recently he teamed
up with process theologian John Cobb, and together they published
a book called For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy
totvard Communi'ty, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future.
In this book they explicitly recognize the need for a paradigm
shift in the profession of economics and in academia itself.
Their book, they say,is meant to outline an alternative to both
capitalism and socialism, which founder on the myths of
growth-based economics. They acknowledge that economics
today cannot be done in isolation from other disciplines, including -even
cosmology. "To conceive of such a radically different economy
forces us both to think through the discipline of economics as
well as beyond it into biology, history, philosophy, physics, and
theology. Part of the assault of the wild facts has been against
the very disciplinary boundaries by which knowledge is organized
(produced,packaged, and exchanged) in the modern university."23
They trace the accomplishments of industrialization over the
past few centuries, whereby "the standard of living has soared
from bare subsistence to affluence for most people" in the
northern hemisphere. But they also deplore the price that has
been paid in the souls of the people who have most profited from
this wealth, wherein individual egoism and a "spirit of social
irresponsibility" reign. They underline how little attention has
been paid by economists of industrialism to "the exhaustion of
resources or to pollution." The suffering of the biosystem is
seldom if ever calculated in this kind of economic thinking; nor,
might we add, is the suffering calculated of preindustrial
economics whose land and labor are so readily abused by northern
countries. The authors call for a "paradigm shift in economics,
citing a poll of economics professors at fifty ma'or universities
that showed two-thirds of respondents felt economics had lost its
moorings. "Instead of Homo economicus as pure individual we
propose Homo economicus as person-in-community." The changes they
are proposing to their own profession, they insist, "will involve
correction and expansion, a more empirical and historical
attitude, less pretense to be a 'science,' and the willingness to
subordinate the market to purposes that it is not geared to
determine."24
Daly and Cobb point out that the industrial revolution was a revolution "from harvesting the surface of the Earth to mining the
subsurface," and thus a shift "from dependence on energy
currently coming from the sun to stored energy on the Earth."
This is vitally important, because what occurred was a shift from
dependence on relatively abundant sources "to the relatively
scarce source of the ultimate resource: low-entropy matter-energy."
Both capitalism and socialism remain uncritical about
their commitment to "large-scale, factory-style energy and
capital-intensive, specialized production units that are
hierarchically managed." Invoking the poet-farmer Wendell Berry,
the authors praise the "Great Economy-that economy that sustains
the total web of life and everything that depends on the land.
It is the Great Economy that is of ultimate importance."25
This phrase, the "Great Economy," sounds much like the phrase
used in this book and borrowed from the poet Rilke: the "Great
Work."
The authors acknowledge their Protestant roots and decry its
overemphasis on individual salvation, inherited from Augustine's
question of whether he was saved or not. Left out has been the
community perspective, a perspective they credit medieval
feudalism and Roman Catholicism with having celebrated better
than Calvinism and,the Enlightenment philosophy. They envision
an economic order that would be "just, participatory, and
sustainable." Invoking the prophetic tradition of Israel and
sounding the trumpet for economic change, they call for "an
economics for the common good" that interferes with "an ideology
of death," which is "destroying our own humanity and killing the
planct."26
While the authors address the academic discipline of
economics, they also lay out practical applications of their
work. Prophetic and apocalyptic in tone at times, this study
nevertheless communicates a spirit of hope and challenge:
"Huinanity is not simply trapped in a dark fate. People can be
attracted by new ways of ordering their lives, as well as driven
by the recognition of what will happen if they do not change."27
They conclude the book with a statement of their belief that a
spiritual vision is necessary to sustain the struggle for a paradigm shift in economics. The work of Daly and Cobb, embracing as
it does the work of other economists invoking a paradigm shift in
their profession, is a fine example of how the profession of
economics could be reborn.
Geologian Thomas Berry is challenging economists to renew
their profession by throwing off anthropocentrism and waking up
to cosmology and ecology. He warns, "When nature goes into
deficit, then we go into deficit," and he bluntly states the
facts: "At least in its present form, the industrial economy is
not a sustainable economy.... An exhausted planet is an exhausted
economy." Perhaps this helps to explain why industrial nations
are so deeply in debt today. Our economics are not working.
Even our economists are exhausted! While economists often wring
their hands over this reality, Berry has some suggestions for
moving on:
The earth deficit is the real deficit, the ultimate deficit, the
deficit in some of its major consequences so absolute as to be
beyond adjustment from any source in heaven or on earth.... For
the first time we are determining the destinies of the earth in a
comprehensive and irreversible manner. The immedate danger is
not possible nuclear war, but actual industrial plundering.29
To go beyond this situation, we must change our vision. The
impetus behind our economics is not facts but ideology or vision;
therefore it can be altered by a truer vision. Berry writes,
"However rational modern economics might be, the driving force of
economics is not economic, but visionary, a visionary commitment
supported by myth and a sense of having the magical powers of
science to overcomc any difficulty encountered from natural
forces." The economic visions we have been granted over the past
few hundred yearssocialist, free enterprise, mercantile,
physiocrat, or supply-demand theories-all are "anthropocentric
and exploitive" in their programs. "The natural world is
considered a resource for human utility, not a functioning
community of mutually supporting life systems within which the
human i-i-iust discover its proper role.,,30 Berry points out the
kind of pseudomysticism that the industrial age ran on:
The industrial age itself, as we have known it, can be described
as a period of technological entrancement, an altered state of
consciousness, a mental fixation that alone can explain how we
came to ruin our air and water and soil and to severely damage
all our basic life systems under the illusion that this was
"progress." But now that the trance is passing we have before us
the task of structuring a human mode of life within the complcx
of the biological communities of the earth. This task is now on
the scale of "reinventing the human," since none of the prior
cultures or concepts of the human can deal with these issues on
the scale required.31
It would follow that we need new visions to replace those
that dominated our ways of seeing the world during the industrial
era. Berry does not hesitate to challenge the power brokers of
our culture to look at their souls.
For the past hundred years the great technical engineering
schools, the research laboratories, and the massive corporations
have dominated the North American continent, and even an
extensive portion of the earth itself. In alliance with
governments, the media, the universities, and with the general
approval of religion, they have been the main instruments for
producing acid rain; hazardous waste; chemical agriculture; the
horrendous loss of topsoil, wetlands, and forests; and a host
ofother evils the natural world has had to endure from human
agency. The corporations should be 'udged by their own severe
norms. What exactly have they produced? What kind of world have
they given us after a century of control?32
Clearly, there is much work to be done by economists within
their own profession.
Business
Just as religion depends on theology for an ideological
support system, so business depends-often uncritically-on the
economic ideology that underpins it. One can expect that a new
wind will sweep over business when economics is sub'ected to the
critique that it deserves as we move from the industrial era to a
green era. Business is a practical application, a praxis, of an
economic theory. As that theory undergoes transformation, so too
will business.
However, transformation works the other way around as well.
That is to say, as the praxis changes, so too might the theory
change. As business people attempt to do business more from a
creation-centered model, they will feed into the theoretical
world of economics some new and refreshing approaches.
Examples of New Paradigm Approaches to Business
Schumacher offers examples of new and small businesses that have
sprung up, making intermediate technology available to people.
One African village began manufacturing egg cartons in relatively
modest numbers, with the result that an entire cottage industry
of making egg cartons was established. (All previous
manufacturers of egg cartons made them in quantities too great
for small villagers' needs.) In Khur'a, India, a town ninety
miles from Delhi, there sprang up within a period of twelve years
three hundred pottery factories employing 30,000 people to
produce pottery and hospital and electrical porcelain.33 This is
an example of how people are already working with the new
paradigm-putting people to work in small businesses that remain
simple and people centered.
Another example closer to home is the business of Ben Cohen and
Jerry Greenfield, the inventors of Ben and jerry's ice cream.
Their corporation, which has grown into a ninety-million-dollar
business, is committed to donating 7.5 percent of pretax earnings
to nonprofit organizations. (Most corporations give less than I
percent of pretax earnings to charity.) They deliberately support
family farmers by paying more than the government recommends for
milk; they use their packaging to advertise value-oriented issues
pertaining to peace and the environment. They consciously
contribute to defending the rain forest by purchasing Brazil nuts
from people in the rain forests and calling their product "rain
forest crunch" in order to raise consciousness about the rain
forest.
Ironically, Cohen and Greenfield were at first so taken
aback by their success that thev were ready to sell their
business. Instead, they took up the challenge of changing
business. Along the way they ran into the business world's
perhaps inevitable resistance. (All persons wishing to reinvent
work can expect to encounter such resistance. It ought not to
discourage us, as it did not discourage Ben and Jerry. Thomas
Kuhn points out that resistance is one of the signs of a paradigm
shift.)
Cohen and Greenfield deliberately changed their way of doing
business. Instead of the old-paradigm definition of business,
"An entity that produces a product or provides a service," they
coined a new slogan: "Organized human energy plus money will
produce power." Business may be "the most powerful force in the
world," Ben proposes, and as such it needs to accept the
responsibility that goes with power. Business is a focused ener
gy, like a laser, that in fact sets the tone for a society. He
asks the question: "Does business have a value beyond maximizing
profits? " After all, individuals hav'e-.values but are often
told on coming to work to leave their values at the door. At
work "we are prevented from acting on our values," he contends.
"If individuals have a responsibility to help the community, we
cannot possibly suspend that responsibility just when we're at our
most effective, that is, when we are at work." Ben asks why it is that
business lacks values. It is because of an ideology we carry
with us from the old, paradigm, namely that one "can't make
profits and help the community at the same time." The result of
such a dogma is that the environment, the workers, and the
community all suffer at the hands of the workplace.34
It is the experience of Ben and Jerry that this tired shibboleth
creating a dualism between work and values simply no longer
works.
As long as we operate within this old paradigm, we are separated
from our heart and values and feel powerless. We cannot suspend
our values during the workday and think we will have them back
when we get home. We're all interconnected. There is a
spiritual dimension to business just as to individuals!35
Notice how Ben is invoking one of the new laws of the
universe (an old one to mystics): interconnection. He sees the
suffering we rain on one another as due to a lack of
interconnection. Like Schumacher, Ben and Jerry criticize
business for being so insular and narrowly focused on one
ingredient: the quantitative. "The only measure for business,"
Ben points out, "is quantitative. It is only about profit and
loss." In this regard Ben is critiquing the mechanistic and
quantitatively-oriented worldview of the Newtonian era when what
counted was exclusively what was quantifiable.36
In a conscious effort to break out of this confining and
unrealistic paradigm, Ben and Jerry have redefined the bottom
line in business. Instead of asking only, "How much profit do we
have at the end of the year?" they now also ask, "How much have
we helped the community of which we are a part?" The question is
decidedly not an issue of philanthropy but "the way we do
business." And so they have introduced into their business a
yearly report called an "Audited Social Statement." They undergo
two audits each year=a financial one and a social one. They have
found that the latter "is good for business" for "the community
supports that business that supports the community." Profit is a
regulator of business but not the only one.
Other human factors
must also be taken into account. When these are lacking, thcn
business takes a "narrow, selfish" stand on political issues.
Business says Ben, "needs to integrate community care into its
way of operating." In other words, business must join the
revolution taking place around the Great Work of the universe-the
work from which business, and all human endeavor, will derive its
meaning and its rules. Business must become interdependent; that
is, it must relate to the greater community around it, listening
to its pain and its joys.37
Some ways in which Ben and Jerry's have reached out to the
greater community are as follows:
They went public with the company in order to invite the community to become co-owners of the business. They did this by
offering stock at 126 dollars per share so that ordinary folks
could afford it. The result has been that one of every one
hundred families in the state of Vermont, where the busincss is
located, owns stock in their cornpany.
The materials they use in their product are chosen from
communities that support the oppressed. For example, baked goods
are ordered from Buddhist communities that hire the homeless and
train them to be bakers; coffee is bought from a Mexican
coffeecooperative; blueberries come from next-door small farmers
in Maine; nuts come from the rain forest.
Their shops are used as polling places, and their managers are
authorized as notaries to do voter registration, so as to get
persons to vote on the spot when they come in for ice cream (when
you register you get a free ice cream cone).
They hire homeless to sell their products.
They intend to reduce their energy consumption by 25 percent
within ten years by solar power and other ways.
They chose the South Shore Bank of Chicago as their bank. That
bank, located in a decaying urban area, is committed to greenlining, or putting its money into the local neighborhood. Recently
Ben and jerry's has announced that they will build a factory in
the heart of South Central Los Angeles. This factory will employ
over two hundred local citizens.38
Ben is the first to point out that other businesses are also
following this path: Patagonia, makers of outdoor clothing;
Seventh Generi at rL, manufacturers and distributors of env'
ironmentally healthy products; Working Assets, a socially
responsible investment firm; Levi Strauss; Stridrite Shoes;
Aveda, makers of hair and beauty products; and others. In
addition, networks are developing around these new business
paradigms: One Per Cent for Peace (to which over one hundred
groups belong)- Social Venture Network (over two hundred
businesses); New England Business Association for Social
Responsibility (one hundred members); and the national Business
Association for Social Responsibility in Washington, D.C., which
is launching an alternative chamber of commerce.
These organizations are dedicated to encouraging businesses to
take responsibility for healthy and productive workplaces, for
quality and environmental impact of their products and services,
for community involvement (New England Businesses for Social
Responsibility), and to use business to "create a more 'Ust,
humane and environmentally sustainable socicty" (Social Venture
Network). The approximately 2,000 committed companies in the
social responsibility movement here and abroad have combined
annual sales of $2 billion.
This represents only one-hundredth
of I percent of the sales volume of business enterprises
worldover.39 It would seem that business people are not all
lagging behind in the effort to reinvent their work.
In England the fastest growing holistic business is The Body
Shop. Anita Roddick and her husband, Gordon, began the busine'ss
in a small shop in 1976; it now has three thousand employees and
a gross annual income of $241 million dollars. Its goals are to
sell natural body products that are environmentally friendly.
Its guidelines include simplicity, natural products, minimal
packaging, no animal testing, and ingredients that can be grown
in the so-called Third World. About her work Anita Roddick says,
"The individual is forcing the change. People are shopping
around, not only for the right 'ob but for the right atmosphere.
They now regard the old rules of the business world as dishonest,
bor'ng and outdated. This new generation in the workplace is
saying "I want a society and a 'ob that values me more than the
gross national product. I want work that engages the heart as
well as the mind and the body, that fosters friendship and that
nourishes the earth. I want to work for a company that
contributes to the community."40
In her remarkable autobiography, Body and Soul, Roddick virtually redefines the meaning of business:
The trouble is that the business world is too conservative and
fearful of change. All this talk about free enterprise,
innovation, entrepreneurship, individuality ... it's nothing but
hot air. . . .
I am still looking for the modern-day equivalent of those Quakers who ran successful businesses, made money because they
offered honest products and treated their people decently, worked
hard themselves, spent honestly, saved honestly, gave honest
value for money, put back more than they took out and told no
lies. The business creed, sadly, seems long forgotten.41
In the excellent chapter entitled "The Transformation of Business his book After the Crash:The Emergence of the Rainbow Economy, Guy Dauncey points out that the idea of worker cooperatives
and worker-owned businesses is growing rapidly. From 1971 to
1975, there were only ten worker cooperatives registered in
England; by 1986 there were 1,500, with a per annum combined
turnover of about 380 million dollars. "This remarkable growth-rate
of around 58 percent per annum, illustrates the growing
desire that workers have to be in control over their own
livelihoods, and to be able to create a harmony between their
values and their working lives," he comments.12 In Florida, the
largest retail food chain, Publix Super Markets, is completely
owned by its employees and makes a profit per dollar of, sales
that is twice that of Safeway, America's largest food retailer.
In 1976 a total of 843 companies in the United States had
employee stock option plans (ESOP) that covered a half-million
people; in 1984 more than 5,700 such plans covered some 9.6
million workers or 7 percent of the U.S. workforce-a growth rate
of 27 percent per annum. Were America to continue this growth
rate, by the year 2004 the entire American workforce would be
working under an ESOP plan. The results are equa lly impressive.
Studies show that these companies outperform their nearest
competition time and time again.
Dauncey delineates the evolution of business in three stages:
First was the era of Dickens and Marx, when there were no laws
controlling or regulating businesses. Next came the organization
of workers and laws against child exploitation; organizers and
unions fought for and won benefits related to health, safety,
living wage, and limits to working hours.
But today we are moving into a new era, when a "huge evolution"
is taking place. What will characterize this era?
Nurturing creativity, worker self-management, participation and
teamwork, setting up profit-sharing and employe-shareholding
schemes, promoting the role of women and meeting childcare needs,
encouraging work-sharing and flexi-work patterns, supporting employees' own personal journeys of growth and self-empowerment,
breaking down hierarchical organizational structures and
authoritarlan modes of management ... pursuing environmental
excellence, encouraging community involvement-these are some of
the signs which mark a company's evolution into the Third Era.44
This evolution cannot be described by the inherited
dualistic language of "right wing" versus "left wing." Its values
include initiative, individuality, and enterprise, but also
caring for the workforce and the community as a whole. Green
movement values of environmental concern and human-scale
organization are incorporated, as are human potential movement
values of caring for personal growth and fulfillment; spiritual
values of honesty and integrity; and values from the movement for
global development of international justice, cooperation, and
interdependence.
Recently John Denver's Windstar Foundation in Aspen, Colorado, sponsored a conference entitled "Establishing a Socially
Just New World Environment.11 A panel of-progressively minded
business people gathered to emphasize that a new paradigm in
business must include encouraging employees to do good work in
the community and paying more attention to how the employees
themselves need to grow and develop in the workp lace. If these
values are enc-ouraged, the workplace, far from being a foreign
or isolated world, can- become the microcosm of what the world
should be. Once again we see here the theme of interconnection
replacing the laws of rugged individualism and dualism that
characterized the industrial era. As one panelist put it, the
employees will treat the community the way they were treated.
One must build a community based on humane values within the work
world if one is to reach the greater community "out there."
Another panelist proposed that business pay attention to its
inner, self and not just be content with outer, market forces.
Impact on the community must be factored into business as well as
cost, quality, and delivery time of a product. Businesses might
adopt a school in an inner city, and they might give employees
time off to work in that school, thereby encouraging workers to
give time to the community. A woman told the story, of how, in a
small town in New Mexico, small shop owners put signs in their
windows if they supported a protest taking place against waste
dumping in their community. Thus businesses had an opportunity
to express something of their value system to the greater
community.
Spirituality and Business
Richard McKnight is an organizational psychologist who has worked
extensively with stress management and leadership personnel in
business. He comments about his work:
For most workers, managers, and executives I have worked with in
the last 10 years, business organizations are seen as cold,
personal machines that take raw materials, capital, and people in
one end, perform some transformation, process, or serv'cc,,and
produce money out the other end--or should.... In the prevailing
model, the ideal business posture is characterized by words such
as "competition aggression, and "winner." "Our business is only
about making money, one executive said to me, "and the only way
we can do that in our industry is by keeping everybody uncertain
and mean-inside the company and outside it.,,45
McKnight regrets the physical illnesses and emotional
traumas that result from such a model of business-as-machine.
Such results are harmful to employees, to society, and
ultimately, to the 'bottomline."' Talking unselfconsciously about
the absence of Spirit in the prevailing machine model of doing
business, he calls for a greater sense of spirituality, which he
defines as "an animating life force, an energy that inspires one
toward certain ends or purposes that go beyond self " Having a
transcendent purpose 'n one's work, he believes, "results in
being in love with the world" and allows for 'ntegration and
direction in our life and work. The other model, business as a
cold, impersonal machine, "denies humanness." He says, "People
have needs in three areas: body, mind, and spirit. Yet most
companies, if they acknowledge that people have needs at all, act
as if there are only two requirements for producing good work:
money and job security.
His experience reveals that most workers suffer from one of two
spiritual syndromes at work: "Either they are devoted only to
nontranscendent materialistic purposes such as career
advancement; or they have a transcendent purpose that doesn't
mesh with the purpose of the company they work for.47 Creativity,
enthusiasm about life, acceptance of self and others, lives lived
gracefully, being perpetual students of life, giving more than
taking, optimism, peacefulness, courage regularly demonstrated:
these are the characteristics of a spiritual person according to
McKnight, who believes that businesses can and ought to assist
the development of this spirituality.
McKnight is not alone in his call for spirituality and a
paradigm shift in business. Peter Vaill, professor of human
systems in the School of Government and Business Administration
at George Washington University, calls for "a new appreciation of
the spiritual nature of [the human] and a determination to keep
it in any new formulation of the nature of organizational life."
He values paying more attention to the human being as "a creator
of phenomena," to the performing art" that management is, and to
the experience of "awe," as well as to what it means to "be in
the world with responsibility." He sees the new paradigm as
offering "refreshing, even thrilling new interest in ethics,
morality, and the spiritual nature of [humanity]," wherein a
sense of "process wisdom" and the value of "relationality" will
flourish."
Management consultant Linda Ackerman addresses the questions
of management in the new paradigm. She names three kinds of
management styles: fear state management; solid state management"
and flow state management, and she feels the latter is what the
new cosmology calls for. She traces its imagry to the concept of
Tao in Chinese philosophy and its embodiment in Mohandas K.
Gandhi. She sounds like she is defining the mystical experience
when, borrowing from the research of psychologist Mihaly
Csikszentmlhalyi, she defines flow as "the holistic sensation
that people feel with total involvement." A person in such a
state "experiences a unified flowing from one moment to the next,
in which he is in control of his actions, and in which there is
little distinction between self and environment, between stimulus
and response, or between past, present, and future.
Rolf Osterberg has served as CEO of Scandinavia's largest
film company and has been chairman of the board of over twenty
companies and trade associations. But after his many
achievements in business, he underwent a kind of metanoia
experience wherein he questioned the direction his life in
particular and work in general was evolving. He came to a point
of realizing there must be more to work than the pure mechanics
he was seeing in the workplace, where people are seen as mere
"tools, units of negotiations, cost factors. There is no real
life in the whole enterprise." He felt that others were also
awakening.I became more and more convinced that something great,
something much greater than I had ever believed, is happening,
and it is happening to all of us. We are indeed changing our
beliefs... The terrain (the systems in which we live) no longer
corresponds with the map (our minds). The map is changing and
the terrain must be adjusted accordingly.50
In his book, Corporate Renaissance, he calls for a major
revolution in the way we envision work and business. He writes
Work, as every other aspect of life, is a process, through which
we acquire experiences.... The primary purpose of a company is to
serve as an arena for the personal development of those working
in the company. The production of goods and services and the
making of profits are by-products.51
Like Juliet Schor, whose analysis of consumerism we saw
earlier in this book, Osterberg has come to realize that human
beings have become prisoners on a treadmill of consumerism.
"Like a hamster on a wheel, their role is to keep the wheel
spinning: by productive work in mass production as well as by
consumption-mass consumption." He decries how developing
countries are being instructed to use these models of "economic
growth" (meaning increased production and increased consumption)
as a goal for their development. Only the ruthless exploitation
of human and natural resources has been able to keep the wheels
of "economic growth" spinning.
We have taken advantage of the precarious economic situations of
developing countries-situations for which we are largely
responsible and simply moved the exploitation there. Growth has
not improved or augmented anything. It has drained, consumed and
devoured, and continues to do so.52
Osterberg believes that we have to look on work in a
radically different way. "There is only one way to remove these
problems, and that is to fundamentally-deep down in the farthest
nooks of our souls-change our thoughts about work." He feels that
work has become for many in our society a way to flee one's
deeper self and avoid one's deepest feelings. "Work has become
one of the drugs we use to deaden and block the emotional aspect
within us," he says, a process that has "gone so far that we can
not enjoy our leisure time. We cannot relax" Without using the
term Creation Spirituality, Osterberg is clearly speaking of what
we have called the "inner work" of the via positiva, the via
negativa, and the via creativa. He sees the real agenda in
business today as altering our way of seeing work itself:
In the new thought, life is seen as a developmental process in
which we grow as human beings. Life has no specific goal beyond
the process itself. The process-life itself, if you want-is the
meaning, not the possessions, position and fame gathered along
the way.... One who works does not contribute more than one who
has chosen some other arena for personal growth.54
Many of our culture's brightest individuals go into
business. Some of these persons will be able to see the pain
inflicted by the business world, and they will be ripe for
opening to the new opportunities that arise from redefining
business so that it serves the greater needs of both the human
and nonhuman worlds. Perhaps this reinventing of
the quality of
the workplace will also contribute to reinventing the quantity of
work available. When workers have integrated spirituality with
their work, their values, and their creativity, addictions such
as overwork and the practice of overworking employees might give
way to more shared work. Those without work or with too little
work can then be invited to participate in the work world.
What we hear from listening to these prophetic voices within
the business world is a growing awareness that business itself
(and the economic philosophies that underlie it) has an inner
house to be put in order. Some are responding to that challenge
today. In this challenge work is being reinvented. And a new
kind of work is being created as well-the work of putting the
inner houses of our work worlds in order. Hope lies in this kind
of reconstruction. The reenchantment of work is indeed under
way.
Meister Eckhart on Driving Moneylenders from the Temple
Much of the critique of economics and business that we have
discussed in this chapter was anticipated by Meister Eckhart. He
saw the dangers of an exclusively money-based economy and
anticipated the addictive potential of money making as an
exclusive criterion for our values. In a stunningly powerful
sermon, one that did not endear him to the merchants of Cologne,
the trade capital of all of Europe at the time, Eckhart took the
passage from the Gospels about Jesus driving moneylenders from
the Temple. Eckhart asks,
Why did Jesus throw out those who were buying and selling, and
why did he command those who were offering pigeons for sale to
get out? He meant by this only that he wished the temple to be
empty,just as ifif he had wanted to say: "I am entitled to this
temple, and wish
to be alone here, and to have mastery here."
What does this mean? This temple, which God wishes to rule
over powerfully according to his own will, is the soul of a
person. God has formed and created the soul very like God's
self, for we read that our Lord said: "Let us make human beings
in our own image" (Gen.1:26). And this is what God did.55
Eckhart critiques what he calls the "merchant mentally" and
what it does to the soul, which he understands as the temple of
God par excellence, for "neither in the kingdom of heaven nor on
earth among all the splendid creatures that God created in such a
wonderful way is there any creature that resembles God as much as
does the soul of a human being." What does a narrow definition of
businessone that is bottom-line profits only, one that pays
homage only to the quantity in life and not the quality-do to the
vast soul of the human bel'ng' It clutters the soul. It
distracts the inner person. It interferes with our great
capacity to be emptied so that the Divine can fill us. "In all
truth no one really resembles this temple except the uncreated
God alone. [It] gleams so beautifully and shines so purely and
clearly," in all its splendor. Above all, a value system based
on quantitative profit alone trivializes the reason we exist and
the reason we work: to be connected to all beings and their
Creator, that is, to participate in the Great Work. "For this
reason God wishes the temple to be empty so that nothing can be
in it but the God's self alone. This is because this temple
pleases God so and resembles God so closely, and,because God is
pleased whenever God is alone in this temple.
Wonderful things happen in this temple that cannot happen if it
is cluttered by a merchant mentality, a mentality of buy and
sell, of cause and effect, of quid pro quo. God is revealed in
this temple, provided it is empty of whys and wherefores. For
in this temple Jesus "reveals himself and everything that the
Creator has declared in him in the way in which the Spirit is
susceptible." In this temple, the Holy Spirit "gushes out,
overflowing and streaming into all sensitive hearts with an
abundant fullness and sweetness." Creativity and wisdom come
together in this temple, and there "God becomes known to God" and
the soul discovers its own "essential original being in one unity
without distinction." But the soul must be emptied for these
marvels to occur.
Furthermore, for Eckhart a merchant mentality kills the spirit
of gratitude and replaces it with a compulsion of ownership for
attachment (Eigensschaft) that "leaves the mind stupefied and
forms an obstacle to receptivity." A spirit of clinging kills our
capacity for experiencing the infinite riches of Divinity. Only
by driving such attitudes from our souls or temples can we "newly
receive God's gift in an unencumbered and free way" and return it
"with grateful pralse."57
In this amazing sermon, delivered when capitalism was just
making its entrance onto the stage of European history, we have a
deep and penetrating critique of what a narrowly defined economic
philosophy does to our souls. But we also have a critique of
what a moneylending, that is to say, an anthropocentric view of
wealth, does to our relationships to the Earth and the cosmos.
For the divine temple is the universe itself. We can no longer
"con-temple," that is to say, contemplate or pray the universe if
we overwhelm it with our agendas. All play, and all gratitude
are then banished. Contemplation dies. Furthcrmore, the
reductionism we commit on the cosmos will come back to haunt us.
If we cannot enter into right relationships with the Earth and
Earth systcms we are simply cluttering the temple of God. An
emptying process is needed, and that emptying begins with our own
psyches.
For all these reasons then, we are encouraged to pursue a
new paradigm of business and economics such as has been outlined
in this chapter.
Science and Technology
The work of science also needs to be reinvented in our time.
Much of what we presented in chapter 2 flows from scientists who
have dared to bring the paradigm shift to their own discipline.
Rupert Sheldrake, Gregory Bateson, Beverly Rubik, Brian Swimme,
David Bohm, Erich Jantsch, Paul Davies, and many other scientists
are opened heart and soul to the mysteries of the universe once
again.
I say "once again" because many scientists have told me that
they became scientists in the first place because of mystical
experiences that they had as children. Recently I took part in a
discussion group at the University of Pennsylvania, and a
physicist in his mid-sixties asked me a very convoluted
scientific-religious question. I replied by saying, "'You know,
many scientists I know tell me they became scientists because of
the mystical experience they had with the night sky as children."
He immediately replied, "That's it! That's why I'm a scientist.-I
haven't thought about this for forty years." His face became
that of a ten-year-old boy. He was reminded of the heart
attraction that first led him to his vocation. It is this heart
dimension that is so lacking in the modern era's definition of
science and in scientific education. Thomas Aquinas says that
"science puffs up"-that it becomes arrogant when it lacks the
dimension of the heart. When Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry point
out that "science deals with objects. Story deals with subjects,"
they are reminding us that to be a scientist alone is not enough.
A fully human person deals with story, where the heart is
nourished, as well as objects, where facts are discovered.
Ironically, it is through science's devotion to objectivity in
the past few centuries that we have been gifted with a new story,
one that truly awakens our hearts. Science today has come full
circle; that is, it has come around to demonstrating that the
objectivity it once so highly prized does not, in fact, exist,
and that the world cannot be explained in materialistic terms
alone. Mind lives in the universe at all levels. This- means
that science itself is implicated in the results of its own
findings. Science, because it is human, carries moral responsibility with it. This is a new idea in the West, for since the
Renaissance, scientists have considered themselves morally
detached from the consequences of their findings. A certain
myopia has dominated in science as
if scientists wore moral
blinders out of necessity in order to penetrate reality more
deeply. In light of the realities that face our planet today,
these blinders have to be discarded. E. F. Schumacher cites
Albert Einstein, who said, "Almost all scientists are economically completely dependent"; and, "The number of scientists who
possess a sense of social responsibility is so small" that they
are in no position to determine questions of the direction of
research.58
Even Leonardo da Vinci, who loved creatures so much that he
was a vegetarian, nevertheless invented instruments of war that
increased the violence of human against human-and indeed against
the nonhuman creation as well-and that set new standards for destruction. The new science will include moral responsibility for
one's findings. Science can no longer pretend to be morally
ob')ective any more than economics or business can. The
scientist operating out of the new paradigm will ask: What are
the moral consequences of my work? Who is profiting from it?
And at whose expense will some profit and others lose? When J.
Robert Oppenheimer remarked, on the first successful detonation
of the atomic bomb that he had helped to create, "Now we have
known evil," he was announcing a new era in science-an era of
interconnection, of moral responsibility. The alliances that
scientists often make with mass industry, mass academia, or mass
government with its mass mi itary can no longer be winked at.
Money does not excuse the immoral consequences of one's work. It
is, after all, the praxis of science, that is, technology, that
has conlbuted the most to the plunder of th's planet. We must
acknowledge this reality. The new paradigm scientist will see
the facts for what they are: a warning that our technology must
be shaped . by our values. If we have no values other than
profiteering or ego-tripping on our work, in this case our
scientific work, then we are a menace to the planet.
Another dimension to the new science is its rediscovery of
wisdom. Wisdom includes morality, but it also includes awe and
creativity. Wisdom therefore flows from mysticism. The mystical
scientists of our day, many of whom were cited in chapter 2 of
this book, are witnesses to the depth and power of their
vocation. As Thomas Aquinas put it, "A mistake about nature
results in a mistake about God." If sclentists are truly devoted
to listening to the revelations of nature and to passing these on
to the rest of us, then they are indeed involved in spiritual
work. Their learning and discipline amounts to a kind of yoga;
it helps to awaken the mysticism inherent in the rest of us. But
the scientist is so near to the powers of the universe and the
decision-making apparatus of our culture that she or he must
practice'spiritual disclplines along with the rest of us.
Otherwise the addiction to power can easily overtake the
scientist, whose temple, to use Eckhart's image, can be overrun
with buyers and sellers.
New paradigm scientists will engage in spiritual praxis, which
keeps the soul young and generous and helps it resist merchant
mentalities. New paradigm scientists will participate
(participation being a key virtue in the new paradigm) in the
quest for a spirituality both mystical and prophetic such as our
times demand. They will do the dances and undergo the rituals
that open the heart and delight the divine child in us all. They
will learn to resist anthropocentrism and will ask questions
about how their knowledge can be put to the service of ecological
and social justice and how their hearts can expand by way of the
wisdom they imbibe daily in encountering nature's mysteries.
This daily eating and drinking of the mystery of the transubstantiation of atoms, elements, molecules, cells, organisms,
galaxies, planets, plants, animals, beings of all sorts-these
encounters with the sacrament of creation-must be acknowledged
for what thcy are: sacred encounters.
One scientist who has been committed to bringing about a transformation in her profession is Dr. Beverly Rubik, founding
director of the Center for Frontier Sciences at Temple University
in Philadelphia. Her center publishes a semiannual journal,
Frontier Perspectives, and invites visiting scholars from around
the world to openly exam novel scientific claims. The journal
serves research and education in areas of science that are not
yet mainstream and maintains a growing database of frontier
scientists worldwide. Recently it published a book, The
Interrelationship between Mind and Matter, a collection of papers
presented at an international roundtable, sponsored by the
center, bringing together distinguished scientists from six
countries. Rubik introduces the volume this way:
The notion of separability between consciousness and matter
within science may be considered faulty, as certain
interpretations of quantum theory maintain that the obseryer
interacts fundamentally with the quantum system in the act of
observation.... A case can be made for the interrelationship
between consciousness and matter from medicine, anthropology, and
other disciplines. Can the question of their relationship be
addressed by novel scientific approaches? 59
Rubik decries the virtual stranglehold that the old paradigm of
science holds on research grants and academic advancement:
There are formidable, extraordinary obstacles for those who move
outside of the boundaries to explore unorthodox terrain or even
tributaries to the mainstream. These include a possible loss of
camaraderie and respectability, loss of funding, and loss of
scientific credibility with an inability to publish in mainstream
journals; even a loss of one's position may result.
But she sounds like she understands the prophetic vocation
that is demanded of those who will stand up for a new paradigm in
whatever profession they are committed to, when shc says it is a
difficult path, "only for the most adventurous, courageous,
pioneering individuals who are driven by an inner quest to know
what 1ies beyond."
She points out that historically science was usually changed by
those who dared to stand outside the dominant theories of the
day. Rubik speaks up for those areas of science that are
neglected one might say for those without a voice, whom the Bible
calls the anawim-when she says that scientized medicine simply
does not address the intimate relationship of the mind and body
and the importance of consciousness in the healing of a patient.
Science in genera1, she says, refuses to address "the subtler,
unquantifiable dimensions of innate mind, such as states of
consciousness, self-awareness, and volition. Nor are meaning,
value, and mind's teleological character considered relevant
to the present practice of science."6 Rubik has hope for her
profession, however, provided the academic system that is behind
it can change.
As more about the fundamental role of consciousness in the
universe is revealed and the new ideas promulgated, a basic
change in science will eventually occur. This change may be
bigger than just a paradigm shift, as the results at present
already challenge the epistemological foundations of science....
Multiple approaches to the study of consciousness need to be
supported. It is even possible that eventually a new science
will be born, a science that accommodates-the whole human with
fully realizable capabilities of body, mind, and spirit.62
As science transforms, Rubik believes, society will be blessed.
As science has powerful influences on society and the
environment, this new science will undoubtedly have bountiful
effects. A new cosmology, a reunion of science and spirit, may
manifest. . . . It can propel us toward a conscious evolution.
It can engender a new sense of awe and wonder about ourselves and
the cosmos. And, if the vision is great enough, it may lead to a
global renaissance.63
We can pray that she is correct; and more, we can work for
such a transformation. The Nobel prize-winning scientists and
the medical doctors who present articles in Rubik's book give
evidence that this hoped-for transformation is already well under
way.
Today the soul of the scientist is being emptied of
secularism--the flight from the mystery that is greater than us.
This resacralization and reenchantment of the scientist's work
might well begin with his or her university education, where the
spirituality of science might be included along with other
courses. As things now stand in our secularized academic
systems, the education of the scientist parallels that of the
doctor, minister, and priest for its lack of mystical awareness.
This is no way to make good work for good scientists Of the
future. Reintroducing the mystical dimension as well as the dimension of values to scientific education will, among other
things, create good work for many within and outside of the
scientific profession.