Recently, the Center for the Study of Conflict, Collaboration & Creative Governance (better known as 3CG) hosted a conference titled, “Reinventing Governance” at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The three-day conference drew peace and justice scholars along with peace practitioners from around the globe including individuals from Kuwait, India and Nigeria, to name a few. The conference was intended to “advance collaboration and constructive engagement across the private, public and civil society sectors” (Deetz, 2010) to promote sustainable peace initiatives. Presentations and panel sessions ranged from macro-level, international policy discussions to panels on grassroots governance. While interests of attendees often appeared specialized (i.e. strategic security, gender equality, pirating in international waters, local level planning, violence mitigation in developing nations, managing the commons: water, wildlife and economy, etc.), achieving peace through reinvented governance was the common aspiration.
Interestingly, the way in which each of the participants defined governance varied. In some ways, the variations were ostensibly divergent from the group majority while other’s defined governance with sarcastic skepticism. This in itself posed a challenge and a question for each of us to ask ourselves. If I dedicate my life to seeking peace and justice through governance, how then do I define governance and how do the others I am working with define it? To answer this question and find common ground of definition between opposing parties is a first step in the direction toward peace building. Other words that hold significance in our attempt to achieve sustainable peace include: community, self, other and peace itself. In the words of the 1992, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchú Tum,
“one of the threads that winds through the history of our peoples is, without a doubt, the recurring and chronic absence of peace. Be it because of greed, injustice, aggression, disrespect by some for the rights of others, or countless other reasons and causes, human beings, whole peoples and countries have found themselves under attack…peace is a way of life, both for the individual and for all humankind; it is a form of coexistence among peoples, lands, and nations, the deeper meaning of which we might call mature human development, with total equality for everyone…” (Collopy, 2000, p. 101).
It is a utopia that billions around the world long for, crying out in anguish or in silenced subordination. The goal is a lofty one that must be attended to even if it seems futile or fleeting. Far reaching it may sound, “Peace is no abstract; on the contrary, it must have profound social, political, economic, and cultural substance” (Collopy, 2000, p. 101).
Social provocation may come in the challenge of society’s social consciousness. For example, the ways in which we “justify” war; murder as casualties of combatant forces. We often tend to judge the side of an ideology that is not aligned with ours. The challenge then is a self-reflexive one.
Politically, peace is achieved when things go our way. Governance is good when governed according to our assumptions of what is right which is simply a derivative of what is to us, normal. This poses a moral and ethical dilemma for policy makers if ever they are to ask themselves the philosophic questions that lead to understanding our social and physical worlds rather than simply enacting policy predicated upon process orientations and past precedent (which is not always grounded in ‘truth’).
Economies of peace are burgeoning but insignificant in terms of gross expenditures on humanitarian operations. Approximately one percent of U.S. Department of Defense spending in Afghanistan is attributed to the civil operations sector and civil actors on the ground in Afghanistan (Strimling, 2010, October). Clearly, the focus is on military operations.
The cultural component then, is the variable that is dependent upon social, political and economic shifts and redirection. It may even be argued that cultural shifts are the cause of social, political and economic change. Regardless, each component cannot be viewed entirely independent of one another, but interdependent and working simultaneously, in a non-linear, hermeneutic fashion. A redistribution of a position to a principled approach with humanist priorities and long-term orientations directed at social change at home and abroad will be key to achieving the complexities of peace, surpassing whimsical utopian desires for peace.
Achieving this goal undoubtedly calls for the collaborative efforts across the private, public and civil sectors. The disconnect between practitioners of peace and academics in the field (often not seen as “credible” to practitioners) must also be dissolved. If peace and justice scholars and practitioners see a riff in their collaborative efforts, how then can we expect governance to promote peace on a local or global scale?
In sum, I have to say that we were unable to reinvent governance at this conference. However, a platform for progress was engendered.
About the Author: Michael Zirulnik is a research associate at CSPO and a doctoral student at ASU’s Hugh Downs School of Human Communication. He also is a lecturer at Fairleigh Dickinson University and works on labor resolution initiatives in New York and Washington D.C.
