Position paper for IPT/JRCT
Workshop, 3 November 2003
The
Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust seeks “radical solutions” to global
problems of inequality and injustice. Its Draft Policy Document for 2004
to 2008 eschews approaches that are “about making problems easier to
live with”. The goal is to advance universal human rights in contexts
of inequality and injustice.
In this position paper I
examine some indicators for successful interventions and offer some
thoughts on the prospects of the JRCT approach in contexts of poverty
and violence.
In order to frame and initiate
interventions that address violence, we need to think about what
violence is (or is not). In the first section I briefly examine theories
about causes of conflict, violence and poverty. I then consider how
interventions to deal with (solve/ameliorate/manage) the consequences of
such conditions might be measured. I will look at three separate
categories: The personal, the institutional, the context and nature of
interventions.
Violence
–definitional considerations and causes
In the last couple of decades,
definitions of violence have been growing broader and broader. Whereas
dictionary definitions limited violence to overt physical acts
associated with aggression and intent, recent definitions have moved to
capture a wide range of acts and processes. Now, under the rubric of
violence, are included, for example, starvation in Africa. This is
regarded as structural violence which is an effect of the way in
which the developed world relates unevenly and unfairly to the
developing world. At the other end of the spectrum, at the interpersonal
level, we now have laws that stretch the concept to include verbal and
psychological violence. What has been created is a continuum along which
a variety of acts or processes which cause harm to people are deemed to
be forms of violence.
With such a broad definition of
violence (and I shall not try here to offer a single definition), the
number of possible causes rise. With the old definition, the agent of
violence was relatively easy to identify. Once such identification had
been managed, it was often a relatively easy matter to find a cause.
This was the territory of the detective and is today still the stuff of
TV detective programmes. Here the cause is invariably personal, which is
to say that the cause has something to do with the psychological make-up
of the violent person. He or she might be a psychopath or somebody
exacting revenge.
Once one widens the definition
of violence, the perpetrators of violence become ever more difficult to
identify. States, institutions of state and shadowy organisations are
held to be responsible for structural violence. Violence is no longer
just an act of commission, it may be a result of omission. The
unsatisfactory and slippery nature of trying to identify the agent and
cause of violence when operating with broad definitions of violence
produces the (often fruitless) search for the smoking gun. At the other
end of the scale, where it is easy to identify the agent of violence –
the person who commits psychological or verbal violence for example - we
have a different kind of problem. The perpetrator may deny culpability
and his or her guilt often rests entirely on an experiential claim on
the part of the party claiming to have been harmed.
The problem with the
conceptualizations of violence discussed above is that they see violence
as external, and not as something intrinsic to people. One of the major
advances of post-structuralism and a legacy of Foucault’s work is that
that it shows that nobody can locate themselves outside of power. In the
same way, we all have to acknowledge that violence cannot be identified
with certain perpetrators. And this being the case, we cannot deal with
violence simply be excising it from society or from specific social
locations (cf Morrell, 2002). Nor should we operate with good guy/bad
guy binaries.
A further complication
concerning attempts to redress violence is the cultural relativity of
the term. Globalising discourses, for example human rights discourses,
emanating primarily from the developed world, have reframed
understandings of violence. There are now supposedly universal
definitions to which all people subscribe or should subscribe. There is
something politically important in this process, but it runs the danger
of isolating alternative definitions and understandings. We can see the
problem most easily when we examine the extension of the definition to
include verbal and psychological violence. Even within the developed
world there are significant variations in understanding. Provocatively,
this can be seen in rap and hiphop music and the controversy around
Eminem’s lyrics. In the developed world, violence is often not
considered as a deed, but rather as a process which is in the civil
rather the criminal realm. This understanding places store on
contrition, forgiveness and making good, though retribution can equally
be part of the process. Whereas international definitions of violence
have steadily atomized the analysis of human actions, alternative
understandings have wanted to retain a holistic understanding of
happenings.
A second consideration might be
that some cultures accept that some kinds of violence are legitimate and
necessary. The most obvious would be in contexts of threat which involve
protecting one’s community. Where traditional ways are threatened or
undermined by global pressures, communities might stress values which
specifically challenge a global consensus. In an important work on
Uganda, Suzette Heald (1999) has shown how the Gisu retain an
understanding and appreciation of men as violent and work to ritualize
and control this violence rather than stamp it out. One could examine
other contexts – Palestine, Chechnya, for example – and possibly find
similar gendered cultural constructions.
What are the implications for
problematising the concept of violence for inequality, injustice and
reconciliation?
To reflect on this question, I
propose to examine four areas in which the efficacy of interventions
might be judged and to explore some indicators of such efficacy.
Personal
Many interventions have
stressed and still stress the importance of ‘empowerment’. What does
this mean? It can mean giving people the skills and the confidence to
express themselves clearly. For example, in HIV/AIDS work, empowerment
of women often means giving them the capacity to say no and protect
themselves from unprotected sex.
A problem of empowerment is that
it can utilize a model of personal transformation that focuses
exclusively on the individual and ignores the community context of
subjectivity. In Africa, for example, one might first and foremost be a
member of a clan or kinship group, and only secondarily ‘an individual’.
Or, at the very least, there will be times when one’s individual
identity are located more within a collective understanding (in terms of
what is good for the community) and require personal rights and desires
to be subordinated to the greater good. Equality models which insist on
a rather mechanical understanding may drive programmes to give women the
same rights as men without appreciating that role differences are
intrinsic to community cohesion. In my work in the field of gender
politics and transformation, I have increasingly found that
interventions that work with men are founded on an assumption that for a
better, more peaceful and harmonious world, it is expected that men
should become more like women. Men should be domesticated, peaceful,
caring and should not be engaged by or engage in physical encounters
that stress competition, strength, aggression. Not only does this
approach fail to elicit support from men, it also ignores that in many
societies men are asked to do work and take up roles which stem from
understandings of masculinity in which these values are central. Rather
than frown on such understandings, approaches which BROADEN the
capacities of men and which take the standpoint of equity (justice) as
opposed to equality are in my view much more likely to promote peace and
justice and contribute to the reduction of inequality. There are
programmes that are trying to do this, which work with local
understandings (Sampath), and it seems to me that these have a much
greater chance of success.
Institutional
Interventions cannot be
considered outside of their institutional location. For example, if an
intervention focuses on addressing sexual harassment, it is probably
best for such an intervention to have an excellent appreciation of the
gender regime of a particular school. I know of cases where
interventions seemed to work very well, only to find that existing (and
hidden) patterns of unequal sexual transactions between teachers and
learners continued undisturbed.
Intervention and Context
For quite some time now, the
critique of one-size-fits all interventions has been current. This
critique correctly points out that an intervention has to be sensitive
to context. It has to be shaped to the needs of local communities and
environments and cannot proceed from fixed assumptions developed in
other contexts. Despite this critique it is depressing to see how many
interventions, driven by demands for rapid transformation and donor
expectations of measurable impact, continue ambitiously to implement
interventions which are not context-sensitive. As already indicated,
many interventions are predicated on impatience and are often associated
with unrealistic expectations of scale and delivery. Where resources are
available in abundance (for example at the state level), the
intervention is often superficial. Where careful work with limited
resources is undertaken, a legitimate criticism may be of limited impact
in the context of the size of the problem.
Given the complexity of violence
and its history, it is probably true to say that it will take a long
time to build a culture of peace. This being the case, even small
interventions should be ongoing. Making a difference requires time,
involves forging relationships and shaping identities.
Some reflections on dealing
with Violence
South Africa has had many
approaches to dealing with violence (in whatever form it takes). The
security approach, using the criminal justice system, has understandably
been stressed. The number of crimes has been expanded, prison capacity
extended, the size of the police force increased. Another approach has
been to promote reconciliation. Primarily developed to tackle the legacy
of ‘political’ violence, this approach can now be seen to operate in
diplomatic work (eg peace keeping in the continent).
Most people would say that
violence needs to be handled together with job creation. Here progress
has been depressingly slow and it may be that we have to accept that
levels of unemployment will range between 40 and 50% (a consequence of
global economic pressures and choices of the national government). Since
NGOs can do little about this, I think that we need to consider that the
effects of ‘structural violence’ will be present in society and that
interventions will at some level be ameliorative rather than solving
(see goals of JRCT above).
But all is not lost. One area
which I think might fruitfully be explored is the promotion of caring.
Here the project is not directly related to dealing with violence, but
will have an impact on producing a culture of peace. In Scandinavia,
research has shown that with the encouragement of caring amongst men (in
the family, for children), levels of domestic violence have fallen. Men
are less likely to beat their wives and children, if they are involved
in parenting. South Africa has done virtually nothing to promote
fatherhood. In fact, national surveys such as the recent census, do not
even count fathers. Projects that focus on families and promote caring
are desperately needed. The state cannot deal with the HIV/AIDS
pandemic. Already home-based care is preferred to hospital care because
of the scale of the tragedy. Given that women are affected earlier than
men by HIV/AIDS, it makes sense to begin to include men in caring
activities. This will develop new, more peaceful, understandings of
masculinity and promote a culture of peace.
Conclusion
In changing, multi-cultural
contexts, it is a major challenge for interventions to steer between
existing values (which are likely themselves to be under challenge) and
a transformative agenda. It is not enough just to listen to local values
– these will always be mediated and reflect power inequalities of one
sort or another. But nor can such values be ignored. Nor is it enough
simply to enact universal formulae (for example, human rights edicts).
There needs to be sensitivity towards local situations.
I think interventions need to
be modest. Tackling violence, for example, should not be measured
against the goal of ending the huge range of violences that current
definitions offer. Rather they should be measured by their ability to
promote harmony and justice as understood by the recipients of the
intervention rather than by donor agencies.
I have begun to think that
interventions should promote and support processes that work, should
focus on areas of endeavour that have been unnoticed. My pet project of
the moment (and one shared by the HSRC) is the promotion of fatherhood.
With some exceptions, fatherhood is dealt with in Africa as an area of
male neglect and policy is designed to force men to meet their
responsibilities. I think that there is huge scope to support men to
take fatherhood seriously, to care for their children and, at the same
time, to find self-worth in themselves.
Approaches which gain the
support of as many of the people affected as possible are more likely to
succeed. In interventions that address gender inequality, identifying
men (even implicitly) as the source of the inequality has made them into
outsiders. In the same way, anti-violence projects which operate with
assumptions that some people are violent, run the risk of a) creating
social divisions b)missing the opportunity of finding out and working
with people who cannot be reduced to or equated with ‘their violence’.
Empowerment should mean working with all people, not just ‘victims’.
I am not sure that problems can
be solved in a context of global inequality, chronic unemployment and
poverty. It may be that ‘making things easier to live with’ is itself a
worthy, and maybe even ‘radical’ goal. It is a very important goal to
help people who live in impoverished conditions to do so with dignity.
No trust can do much about global unemployment and so long as this is a
feature of the developing world, so will violence be likely as people
struggle for limited resources. But within these contexts it is possible
to orient people to understand their lives in new ways. This involves
looking for ways of validating non-materialistic versions of living by
supporting cultures of caring and respect. It may involve working with
new modes of redistribution – sharing things communally or domestically
in new ways. It will need to keep on eye on the need to preserve
cultures as well as challenge violent relationships which promote
injustice.