– Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

Over the course of my career as a practitioner and researcher in the field known as “peacebuilding,” I have worked alongside thousands of people in conflicted societies, including in Iraq, Burma, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, the Balkans, and elsewhere. In this article, I explore a dilemma I see in the field, namely the increasingly singular emphasis on grand narratives of peace, known as “Peace Writ Large.” I fear that this frame, while valuable in many ways, may have the unintended consequence of actually undermining inquiry into and support for the powerful micro interactions that occur in even the most polarized conflicts. I argue that we must not lose sight of the power embodied in “peace writ small.”

Since the mid-1990s, approaches to theory-building, policy-making and intervention in conflict have increasingly emphasized macro, long-term societal changes, first under the rubric of “conflict transformation” and now “peacebuilding”.

Building on Johann Galtung’s fundamental concept of positive peace (meant to contrast with “negative peace,” meaning the cessation of violence), “Peace Writ Large” articulates an expansive vision, embracing human rights, environmental sensitivity, sustainable development, gender equity, and other normative and structural transformations. (Chigas & Woodrow, 2009). Anderson and Olsen (2003:12) define Peace Writ Large as comprising change “at the broader level of society as a whole,” which addresses “political, economic, and social grievances that may be driving conflict.” Lederach (1997:84), integrates Peace Writ Large into his definition of peacebuilding, which is:

“…a comprehensive concept that encompasses, generates and sustains the full array of processes, approaches and stages needed to transform conflict toward more sustainable, peaceful relationships…Metaphorically, peace is seen not merely as a stage in time or a condition.  It is seen as a dynamic social construct.”

The focus in this article does not allow space for a full discussion of the rich dialogues and debates relevant to peacebuilding or Peace Writ Large. That said, I note that in my own work I have found that this meta approach expands our tools of engagement and pushes us to move beyond official “Track I” diplomacy and state-based mechanisms, to involve civil society, youth, women, faith leaders and others left out of traditional approaches to violent conflict.  I have worked with university educators in Iraq, police in Northern Ireland, resistance leaders in Burma, human rights defenders in Maldives, Lebanese youth, international observers in the West Bank, development practitioners in Timor-Leste, and others, to support them in articulating and strengthening their own roles in relation to peace. I have seen how a broad view of peacebuilding is critical for deeply transforming intractable conflicts.

However, I see that this trend also presents serious problems for theory and practice. Fundamentally, the problem comes down to what is being noticed and privileged in research and practice. As the lens widens to embrace a grander narrative of peace, dynamics of conflict and violence appear even more monolithic and without solutions. The fragile seams and small spaces, in which people and institutions do take enormous risks to engage across conflict lines, are overlooked or disregarded. They are obscured like hairline cracks in a massive obelisk.  These cracks represent micro peace capacities that must be noticed, analyzed, and strengthened. In fact, a recent report by a leading institution in the field explicitly prescribes this approach: “Rather than focusing on micro-level interventions, a systems approach to peace allows for macro-level planning and cumulative impact.” (Alliance for Peacebuilding, 2012:6)  My concern is that the increasing focus on Peace Writ Large actually leads us away from the very sites that offer some of the most innovative and powerful opportunities to change the dynamics of intractable conflict. I suggest that this could be one of many reasons that observers write increasingly of “incomplete” and “unconsolidated” peace (Daadler & Froman, 1999).

Therefore, I suggest we explore the power of the small in the context of the monolithic. Important preliminary research has already been done on the impacts of “peace writ little,” defined as “a local or community level of sustainable peace…coming from work on more effective mechanisms for resolving interpersonal disputes, land conflicts…or political, cultural and/or ethnic tensions at a local level.” (CDA Reflecting on Peace Practice Program, 2012:2)  However, I am here arguing for the need to look at an even more granular level of interaction, at what might be termed “peace writ small”.

Several social theorists have worked to illuminate the intrinsic power of the very small. In Violence, his epic exploration of the dynamics of social violence, Randall Collins focuses on micro interactions and face-to-face encounters, from muggings to the 9/11 cockpit fights. In explaining the importance of interaction, versus structures or institutions, Collins argues that, “…everything we have hitherto referred to as ‘structure’…can be found in the real behavior of everyday life, primarily in repetitive encounters. (Collins, 2008:17)

Social psychologist Peter Coleman’s groundbreaking work on intractable conflict focuses primarily on broad systemic and structural concerns.  However, some key concepts in his “Attractor Landscape Model” shed light on the power of micro interactions. For instance, “latent attractors”, are small but important anomalies in the conflict narrative. Individuals who transgress conflict norms to do business with enemies, serendipitous encounters, and mundane, (if hidden) interactions go against the script of the hegemonic conflict narrative. He calls these “latent attractors” because they may have the power to begin coaxing conflict out of its intractability. Coleman argues that, “These cracks in the foundation of our understanding of the conflict and of the other parties are often important sources of different information.  These latent attractors may prove to be avenues for escaping the conflict.” (Coleman, 2011:101)

Jeffrey Goldfarb’s work has influenced my own thinking and practice. Goldfarb describes the often hidden political power of everyday social interaction (Goldfarb, 2006). This power is particularly important in contexts of total institutions, authoritarian regimes, and intractable conflicts.

Goldfarb describes the overall framework as “the politics of small things.” He theorizes that everyday life is a significant domain for politics. Concurring with Foucault’s analysis, he notes that control, discipline and subversion are present and observable in everyday life. (Goldfarb, 2008).  However, Goldfarb sees something that Foucault missed: in such interactions, there are also possibilities for change. Goldfarb (2009) explains that

The politics of small things happens when people meet, speak and develop a capacity to act together on the basis of shared commitments, principles or ideals. Through these contacts, they develop political power. This power is constituted in social interaction. It has its basis in the definition of the situation, the power of people to define their social reality. In the power of definition, alternatives are constituted to the existing order of things.

He further asserts that when this power involves the “meeting of equals, respectful of factual truth and open to alternative interpretations of the problems they face,” it has the capacity to democratize relations and the social order. In my work, I have seen that these are precisely the conditions for building peace.

In illustrating the politics of small things, Goldfarb offers the example of a small group of people in an oppressive society sitting around a kitchen table, sharing frustrations, identifying “seams” in the smothering fabric of the regime, and discussing coping strategies. Alternative interactions, not condoned within the intractable conflict, are acted out at these tables. Therefore, these apparently mundane interactions become extraordinary sites in which people can reach outside of the constraints of repression and conflict. If we peer into markets, theaters, hospitals, pubs, schools, and even military checkpoints, Goldfarb asserts that we may see that “…people make history in their social interactions…democracy is in the details.” (Goldfarb, 2006:1) I have repeatedly found this to be the case in some of the world’s worst conflicts.

Microscopes in Action

I conclude my discussion with an example of “peace writ small” and the politics of small things in action. In 2005, I led a training and dialogue on peacebuilding with a group of Iraqis involved in economic development. The participants shared some goals, but the stratifications within the group were also significant, and the group was reflective of Iraq’s demographic diversity.

The event focused on increasing community participation in economic and political development.  One hallmark of the facilitating methodology I used in this initiative is allowing participants a great deal of freedom during the process.[1] Small groups engaged, discussed, and planned action. Participants moved freely from group to group, often appearing to exit the formal process altogether. People drank tea, smoked in the garden, and shared food. To a great degree, they met as equals.

Much of the interaction appeared totally unrelated to the task. At one point, one of my Iraqi colleagues suggested I should bring order back to the apparently chaotic process. I chose to not intervene.

In the closing plenary, participants each reflected on the experience, as they passed a symbolic item (a branch from an olive tree) around the circle. When the olive branch reached a young woman from the minority Turkoman community, she began speaking in the Turkoman language, rather than in Arabic or Kurdish, the two official (and dominant) languages of the country.

Suddenly, an older Sunni Arab man interrupted loudly, scolding her for not speaking in Arabic. He shouted, “Iraqis speak Arabic! Why are you here if you are not a real Iraqi? Speak in Arabic!” This man came from Baquba, a city that had seen intense violence. As we had agreed to allow people to conclude in any language, I reminded him not to interrupt. The woman quietly finished her comments.

When the olive branch reached the man who had interrupted, he started to say the foundational Muslim blessing, often invoked at important moments: “Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim – In the name of God, most Gracious, Most Compassionate…” After several words, he faltered and stopped. People prompted him with the next words of the blessing, but he held up his hand for silence. Then he started to weep, unable to complete his thoughts. He passed the olive branch to the next participant.

At the conclusion of the event, a participant complained that I had not really “taught” the group about democracy (one of their objectives). Suddenly, the elderly man who had interrupted earlier spoke up again, disagreeing strongly with the criticism. He insisted that the group had, in fact, “truly practiced democracy…because we were allowed to speak in our Mother Tongue and say what we needed to!” Others agreed, and the mood shifted to joyous celebration, unity and optimism, and away from tension and polarization.[2]

I maintain that this interaction was an example of the transformative power of the politics of small things and peace writ small. In this experience, the group transgressed the stultifying intractable conflict narratives. The historical pluralism in Iraq was re-embraced, and the ethnically divisive and anti-minority narrative of the Baath party (and of the current sectarian violence) was actively resisted. This group had met and spoken as equals, had developed a capacity to act, and ultimately had redefined the situation. This group engaged alternatives, which is miraculous in the context of intractable conflict. The man’s angry ethnocentrism, rooted in the intractable conflict narrative, had given way to tears and a renewed sense of freedom and possibility. A new narrative was enacted in that room, which, I believe, has long-ranging and important consequences for peace.

Conclusion

While I remain passionately committed to the optimistic vision of Peace Writ Large, I increasingly also believe in the power of the small to help guide the practice and study of peace building. A recent report by the Alliance for Peacebuilding (2012) argues that “Peacebuilding is on the cusp of a true revolution”. I concur, and I believe that the real revolution for the field will be in the details.

References

Peacebuilding 2.0: Mapping the Boundaries of an Expanding Field, Alliance for Peacebuilding, Fall 2012

Anderson, Mary B., Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – Or War, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1999

Anderson, Mary B. & Olson, Laura, Confronting War: Critical Lessons for Peace Practitioners. Cambridge, MA: The Collaborative for Development Action, Inc., 2003

CDA Reflecting on Peace Practice Program. Issue Paper: “CLAIMS AND REALITY OF LINKAGES BETWEEN PEACE WRIT LARGE AND peace writ little”, 12 March 2012

Chigas, Diana and Woodrow, Peter, “Envisioning and Pursuing Peace Writ Large”, Berghof Handbook Dialogue No. 7, Peacebuilding at a Crossroads? Dilemmas and Paths for Another Generation, Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, (2009), accessed at this Web address.

Coleman, P.T., Vallacher, R., Nowak, A. and Bue Ngoc, L., Intractable Conflict as an Attractor: Presenting a Dynamical Model of Conflict, Escalation, and Intractability (June 1, 2005). IACM 18th Annual Conference.

Coleman, Peter T., The Five Percent: finding solutions for seemingly impossible conflicts, New York: Public Affairs, 2011

—- “Polarized Collective Identities: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature”, International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, Teachers College Columbia University, p.3

Collins, Randall, Violence: a micro-sociological theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008

Daalder, Ivo & Froman, Michael, “Dayton’s Incomplete Peace”, Foreign Affairs

Vol. 78, No. 6 (Nov. – Dec., 1999), pp. 106-113, Council on Foreign Relations

Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge, New York: Pantheon Books, 1980

—-Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Random House, 1995

Goffman, Erving, The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959

Galtung, Johann, True worlds: a transitional perspective. New York: Free Press, 1981

Goldfarb, Jeffrey, the politics of small things. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006

—- “The Sociology of Micro-politics: An Examination of a Neglected Field of Political Action in the Middle East and Beyond”, Sociology Compass, Vol. 2, Issue 6, Nov. 2008, 1816-2008

—-“Resistance and Creativity in Social Interaction: For and Against Memory in Poland, Israel–Palestine, and the United States”, International Journal of Politics Culture and Society, Springer, Vol. 22 No 2, June 2009

—-Reinventing Political Culture: The Power of Culture versus the Culture of Power, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012

Lederach, John Paul, Building peace. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1997

—-Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996

Ross, Marc Howard, Cultural contestation in ethnic conflilct. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Vallacher, R. R., Coleman, P. T., & Nowak, A. (in press).  “When do conflicts become intractable? The dynamical perspective on malignant social relations.”  In L. Trop (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Intergroup Conflict.  New York: Oxford University Press.

[2] From ZM personal field notes.

We need to start much further upstream and concern ourselves with fundamental stories about “us” and “them,” for instance, with the figure of a certain rainbow-colored elephant named, in most cases, Elmer —who is a symbol of accepting difference, and the possibility of identifying with, indeed even becoming (for a day) the other. Well, he’s Elmer in English, the language in which the author David McKee first composed him, and allowing for a slight vowel change, he’s the same in various other languages. He’s Elmar in German, for instance. In Hebrew, however, he is “Bentzi,” short for “Ben Zion,” or son of Zion, and in a quite literal way, the most Zionist name one could possibly give or be given. Not only was the rainbow colored elephant’s name hebraized, it was changed to make him a Hebrew figure, i.e.an exclusively Hebrew, exclusively Israeli, figure. To be “Bentzi,” doesn’t only mean not to be Elmer. It also means to be the kind of being that can only be “in the land of Zion.”

It is noteworthy, indeed, worrisome, disappointing, imprudent and counterproductive that powerful voices within Israeli political culture, including Israel’s Parliament, want to change the narrative. These voices want to undercut Arab claims on East Jerusalem (mind you, not Palestinian, as they deny that there is such a thing as Palestinian). Repugnant as this is, I think the change from Elmer to Bentzi is even more significant.

Why? It seems to me that whatever magical powers naming might have, such powers are especially forceful for the youngest among us. When the unquestioned authority of a parent (or, perhaps a bit less so, of a caregiver or other “competent adult”) says, “This is Bentzi,” the Bentzi-being of this particular patchwork elephant is established as an absolute truth. The appropriateness of this categorical naming is my concern. Most of us, after we pass the unbridgeable chasm into the land where there’s no tooth fairy (I understand this happens roughly between the ages of 5 and 8), no longer hold such a truth to be true. I fear the new Hebrew name for the elephant is as foundational as a fairytale.

The narrowing of the world, then, and the self-enclosure of the social group that consists of  those who know ‘Bentzi-the-patchwork-elephant,’ in opposition to all those “others” who call him by a different name—just one different name, crucially—go quite far in ensuring that the next generation(s) of Jewish Israelis adopt the “changed narrative” of East Jerusalem, and “Eretz Israel” writ large. Bentzi takes them much further, I would say by a wide margin, than how the news agencies and the municipal authorities “officially” refer to neighborhoods located there. Call these districts by Jewish names or by Arabic names, as you wish, so long as we, the Hebrew-speakers all know Elmer as Bentzi, as “the son of Zion” and thus “ours alone.” There’s precious little space to conceive of “ourselves” as an enlarged “we,” the truth of Elmer, the “we” which is able to live in a state alongside another “we,” together sharing the territory that rests between the river and the sea.

It’s true that hebraizing the names of East Jerusalem neighborhoods will make a two-state reality harder to envisage or enact. But if we focus on these kinds of controversies, we let the deeper problem continue to get worse. The real battle of ideas isn’t over the “downstream” political exclusions like these. It’s over the much deeper cultural exclusions that transpire every moment, in every home and every kindergarten, far “upstream” and much harder to set right.

A religious edict forbidding Jews from renting or selling property to Arabs and other non-Jews is a most recent example that has caused great controversy.  My Israeli friend and DC contributor, Nachman Ben Yehuda, was quoted about the Rabbis edict in The Globe and Mail of Toronto: “Their ultimate goal is a theocratic state….In the meantime, they want to enforce division between the ultra-Orthodox and everyone else.”

But things look even more critical from the Palestinian point of view which became apparent to me when I came across an email note from Amal Eqeiq, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship who is studying in Seattle.  We worked together planning a research project on the politics of small things in Israel-Palestine.  In her note, she makes clear that the democratic legitimacy of Israel is at stake. I present her message today, unedited, hoping it provokes serious deliberations.

So, 50 Rabbis signed up a religious call- Psak Halacha – asking Jews to NOT rent for Arabs. Yes, I understand that they don’t represent everybody, and that they are taking advantage of religion for political gains, and that there are different opinions, and that it is not legally binding, and that some lefties will protest in the name of human rights and for keeping face, and, and, and…”Amal, don’t take it personally,”  BUT, WHAT THE FUCK?

Here is my observation about the (always guilty) Israeli media.

Haaretz says the letter is addressed for non-Jews (link) …they don’t say Arabs only…and I ask “really Haaretz?! 3anjad!! Thank you for watering down apartheid rhetoric. As a non-Jew, I feel much better now.

And of course, there is Yediot Ahronot with its more populist, yellow and sensational attitude. This time they called things in their name, because news about racism sells. In their article there was a sub-heading: “Bad Timing!” (link) And I am so curious to know when is a “good timing” for apartheid? Ya’ani, I want to know how to organize my life around that!

I checked out the list of the cities where Arabs (aka Palestinians, but it is probably blasphemous for these 50 Rabbis to so say this in the Biblical Hebrew they used in writing their petition) are not allowed to rent.  7 of these cities are within 15-20 minutes of my hometown Al-Taibeh. And of course there is Natseret Elit- built on the lands of Nazareth as well as Jerusalem. All the way from Seattle, I send a huge salute with the magnitude of Mount Rainer, to all my Arab-Palestinian family members, men and women, neighbors, friends, former students, ex-lovers and random folks who work in construction, plumping, water installation, remodeling, house cleaning, floor polishing and other maintenance jobs in Jewish towns. No, it is not Kosher for you to rent there, but your hard work and underpaid services are Glatt Kosher certified.

CNN: I will be waiting to see how you are going to cover this Jewish “fatwa.”