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Civilizing
conflicts
"Conflicts are an
omnipresent aspect of all social systems. If these conflicts are discharged in a violent way and their destructive potential allowed to unfold
fully, they have the capacity to destabilize the established order of a society and even put it in
jeopardy. In contrast, however, a conflict that is resolved successfully can have a positive effect on the learning process in that we are able to adopt procedures and rules aimed at making sure that conflict is prevented from being expressed in violence and aggression,
and at channelling conflict in such a way as to make its peaceful resolution
possible. This means, then, that we are not interested in suppressing or abolishing
conflicts. To try to do so would be to try to realize a utopian dream. No, our interest lies in pushing back and
neutralizing violence from the way in which conflicts are discharged. Indeed, this is what we mean by
civilizing conflict.
When we use the term civilizing what we mean is creating a process that increasingly tames the passions of people through others in society. We understand this process as one of progressively
rationalizing and intellectualizing human existence, as a pathway from impulsive and naive actions to a more controlled and reflective way of dealing with our natural and society-related
environment.
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Norbert Elias once described this process fittingly as
"raising the embarrassment threshold" - as far as we are
concerned, this means a process of becoming embarrassed when violence is used in an attempt to resolve a
conflict. If a situation can be achieved in which the use of violence is
embarrassing, we will look for other ways in which to resolve our differences and forgo the use of
aggression. Another, perhaps even more important aspect, is that Elias also demonstrated that the establishment of the
territorial state had a civilizing effect which fundamentally changed the passions and standards of behavior of people. It served in strengthening people's emotional
self-control, and the mechanisms of this self-control became more and more
internalized. If the control of human passion and emotion used to be based on enforced external
control, the civilizing process serves in transforming enforced external human interactions into individual
self-control. (...) |
Passion control and self-control lead to greater security. Self-controlling and self-regulating people are able to increase their autonomy from their own instincts, are able to control their passions themselves and do not need to be restricted through the use of violence. (...)
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In the figurative sense, Dieter Senghass in particular has been able to demonstrate the relevance of the
civilizing process for its ability to limit and overcome the use of violence in relationships between
societies. "As far as the international system is concerned, two processes can be seen to have been very long-lasting
indeed. Power rivalries of differing scope and interdependencies of differing
density. Research into peace has spent time dealing with both of these
aspects. It dealt with power rivalries, because violence and sometimes war can
arise out of them; and with interdependencies, because they are able to infiltrate or cover power
rivalries. There is a dialectical relationship between these two aspects: |
The more undisguised the power
rivalries, the more difficult it becomes for interdependencies to cushion the effects of
conflict; the more strongly developed the interdependencies are, the greater the possibility of forcing power rivalries into the background and guiding unavoidable conflicts of interest into peaceful
channels. Indeed, it is the ability to transport potentially violent and warlike power rivalries into peaceful channels for resolving conflict that makes up the substance of the
civilizing process. To this end, then, it's all about transforming the nature of
conflicts. Power is not eliminated, but limited. It is caged in by making the conflict an object of
law.
The civilization of power rivalries and therefore politics appeared first in classic Western
territorial states. Step-by-step a monopoly situation was created within these states and the establishment of a society and economy in which work was
shared. The development of a legitimate state monopoly of power led to the de-privatization of
violence; an extensive network under conditions of competition turned rational purpose-based economical action into an imperative. Both of these aspects moderated practical
behavior. Moreover, a monopoly position of political power and economic power during the course of time provoked a call for democratic participation among large sections of the
population. And is was during this process that the democratic constitutional state developed step-by-step as the result of conflicts
going back centuries. The constitutional state enables institutional conflict
settlement."
Summarizing, it is fair to say that the civilizing process makes a contribution to overcoming collective
violence. It comes as the result of long-term change in the political structure and socioeconomic conditions for both society and
individuals. During the civilizing process, the cultural changes that lead to the moral
de-legitimization of violence, that is, to limiting the type and number of circumstances in which violence is still regarded as legitimate, become more and more
significant.
As far as international relations are concerned, the effect of the
civilizing process described above can be integrated into international law by either waiving or banning
violence. This is understood as meaning that a state enters into a binding obligation not to threaten or use aggression during disputes with other
states, be they expressed in a multilateral and abstract way or bilaterally.
Article 2 item 4 of the United
Nations' Charta for instance states: "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any
state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United
Nations." Yet for all this, there have been more than 160 wars since the end of the Second World War. The question now is whether it might be possible to limit and overcome violence from
another, a non-intergovernmental perspective. This is because while international law is continuing to de-legitimize the use of
violence, this de-legitimization cannot be pursued effectively because of the lack of an effective enforcement authority to regulate the relationships between
states."
[Taken from: Reinhard Meyers: Grundbegriffe, Strukturen und theoretische Perspektiven der Internationalen Beziehungen, in: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Hrsg.): Grundwissen Politik, 2. Aufl., Bonn 1993, p. 283-285]
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