Posts tagged with "power"



17. June 2020
The discussion so far, on power and violence, and power and nonviolence, necessitates that we briefly consider leadership. If we have established that peace work must address power, and must do so non-violently by taking up power itself, then the issues of leadership naturally arise. We can now make a few observations of the kind of leadership that might be effective and appropriate.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking against the Vietnam War (photo Minnesota Historical Society under Creative Commons license).
15. April 2020
Following from the last blog post on power and violence, we can start from a shared view that peacebuilding challenges the abuse of power. We have noted that technical implementation of programmes, or the dissemination of information, awareness raising or negotiating an accommodation between two violent opponents may all contribute to peacebuilding, but if they do not address issues of power then they do not go to the source of violence. We also observed that, by contrast, the most prominent...

12. February 2020
Conflict is all about power. So is peacebuilding. And peace work that fails to take account of power issues is hardly worthy of the name, nor is it likely to be successful. This post reflects on power and violence - the issues we face in our work. We’ve already made some comments about the need for locally rooted analysis as one essential foundation for any peacebuilding intervention, and based upon that presented the case for work that is strategic. The post on values hopefully signposted a...