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In the
following excerpt, Günther Gugel and Uli Jäger from the Institute
for Peace Education Tübingen
deal
with the principles of peace education work, which can be
determined as negative - against force – and positive - in favor of
peace. Further suggestions for addressing the central terms of war, peace,
violence and conflict can be found in Basic
course 2.
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[Johan Galtung] |
"Since
the middle of the sixties, reference has been made in peace education to
the concept of peace and force as postulated by Johan Galtung. The
Norwegian peace researcher suggests that we talk of force when one of then
following basic needs of man has been violated: survival, general physical
well-being, personal identity or the freedom to choose between various
possibilities. Force is always present when people are influenced in a way
that makes them incapable of evolving in a manner that is feasible
(structural force). He states the following as an example: "A life
expectancy of only thirty years was not an expression of force in the
stone age, but the same life expectancy today (whether due to war, social
injustice or both) would be classified as force according to our
definition."
After
Galtung had differentiated at the end of the sixties between personal or
direct force on the ones hand and structural force on the other, he now
goes one step further: "I mostly work using a triangle today: direct
force, structural force and cultural force. Structural force violates
needs, but nobody is a direct perpetrator and responsible in this sense.
Cultural force is the legitimization of structural or direct force by
culture". |
Johan
Galtung's concept has not only evoked approval but also criticism, in recent
times most strongly from the 'Commission on Violence. This is an independent
group of experts summoned by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany
to provide analyses and suggestions for avoiding violence, whose four volume
'Report on Force' was published in 1990. The commission used a narrowly defined
notion of force in its studies, with 'forms of physical force' being central to
this notion. By using the term structural force "the notion of force
mushrooms out into strictly inflationary proportions, since every form of
preventing human potential for development could be defined as force (...)."
The
limited definition of force steers the search for the causes towards
deficiencies and deficits in the personal character of the violent individual
and the social educational institutions of which he is a subject. Political
conflicts are transformed into legal ones in this manner. This perspective also
prevents analyzing force as a strategy for action of the individual who acts
violently and as a reaction to the personal experience of violence and impotence
in order to understand the reason why force is used (...).
Other
protestations against the broader definition are more extreme. Professor of
Education Andreas Flitner points out that a broadening out of the term force
leads to blurring causing the various stages of force to become obscure: "I
favor an economical and reduced use of the term, but do not want to be mistaken
for those who criminalize acts of force without seeing the correlation. (...)
With this plea for differentiation, I in no way want to place in question the
facts that have made so clear the close relationship between direct physical
force or force using weapons, and the type of evil acts of power wielded by
unchafed hands and superior minds. What I merely want is that we move away from
talking simultaneously of various levels and forms of action in a blurred manner."
This
criticism is to be taken seriously and forces all those who use a generalized
notion of violence towards precision, because the challenge for peace education
is not diminished by the term being broadened out. It is quite correct to refer
to the matter now being one of observing the interrelationship between the
escalation stages in the three levels of force in comparison to the past, and
searching for opportunities to dam the course.
As with
the interpretation of constitutions, the danger of political instrumentalisation
becomes clear when specifying terms. Since definitions are not just agreements
dealing with contextual meaning, but also questions of power. It is only
possible to draw the interests that lie behind this into light of day by way of
an encounter with the context and dialogue between all participating parties and
individuals.
However,
peace education does not just have its point of reference in the negative, by
determining what is to be understood by force. What needs to be comprehended in
terms of peace can also be defined, whereby a generally applicable definition of
peace neither exists nor can exist. Peace is often described as the state of
absence of war (negative peace).
But
this cannot suffice, since peace is more than a state of non-war and the silence
of guns: peace is also defined as a targeted process, the central issue of which
is to encourage people through their commitment to express their conflicts using
non-violent means, in order to increasingly secure human rights, social justice
and democracy.
The
path is the goal according to this, in just the same way
Mahatma
Gandhi
expressed
it. This process cannot culminate in a final state which, once it has been
achieved, never fades away. If peace is understood as a process, work can
continue permanently on its
realization based
on the absence of war.
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Peace
education sources its motive from peace utopias, from the visions of people who
have show that hopes and dreams are not individualistic, but can also be
combined with political commitment. The vision of
Martin
Luther King ("I
have a dream")
does
not gain its meaning by enumerating on a series of dreams, but by taking steps
towards freedom from violence which balance this vision, and are comprehensible
to everyone and hence capable of being criticised. Only in this sense is it
worth making reference to the importance of "role
models"
in
peace education." |
[Günther
Gugel / Uli Jäger: Gewalt muss nicht sein. Eine Einführung in friedenspädagogisches
Denken und Handeln. 3. Aufl., Tübingen 1997; Internetversion: http://www.friedenspaedagogik.de/themen/f_erzieh/fe3.htm]
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