Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies

Rating:
Summary: Truly cutting-edge
Review: Lederach's work stands at the forefront of the emergent field of conflict transformation study. A professor at Eastern Mennonnite University, he also has extensive field experience. In "Building Peace", he focuses upon the necessity of constructing relationships across multiple social levels, de-emphasizing the role of political elites, and instead focusing both upon mid-level elites (bureaucrats, intellectuals, "influential" persons) and grassroots-level activism. He also stresses the need to develop long-range objectives, to delink expectations of short-term results from questions of involvement, and the need for implementation of training programmes to create what might be termed a "culture of peace" within the society: trained mediators indigenous to the society. In doing this, the hope is that the "parachute" problem of credibility (the idea that mediators are dropped from the above---IGO/foreign gouvernment, etc---and have no particular attachment to the conflict) may be reduced, and transformation of the conflict may be initiated.

Lederach's work is exceptionally lucid, and he draws upon a smorgasbord of substantive examples. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Truly cutting-edge
Review: Lederach's work stands at the forefront of the emergent field of conflict transformation study. A professor at Eastern Mennonnite University, he also has extensive field experience. In "Building Peace", he focuses upon the necessity of constructing relationships across multiple social levels, de-emphasizing the role of political elites, and instead focusing both upon mid-level elites (bureaucrats, intellectuals, "influential" persons) and grassroots-level activism. He also stresses the need to develop long-range objectives, to delink expectations of short-term results from questions of involvement, and the need for implementation of training programmes to create what might be termed a "culture of peace" within the society: trained mediators indigenous to the society. In doing this, the hope is that the "parachute" problem of credibility (the idea that mediators are dropped from the above---IGO/foreign gouvernment, etc---and have no particular attachment to the conflict) may be reduced, and transformation of the conflict may be initiated.

Lederach's work is exceptionally lucid, and he draws upon a smorgasbord of substantive examples. Highly recommended.