By Emmaculate Asige Liaga and Cori Wielenga

SOCIAL COHESION FROM THE TOP-DOWN OR BOTTOM-UP?THE CASES OF SOUTH SUDAN AND BURUNDI by Emmaculate Asige Liaga and Cori Wielenga Both Burundi and South Sudan experience intractable conflicts which national and international actors struggle to resolve. Efforts to consolidate the nation-state and foster social cohesion seem to be unsuccessful. As has been well documented in the literature, top-down efforts to facilitate social cohesion by international and national actors are not enough to foster sustainable peace. Yet the dynamics and actors involved in bottom-up interventions for social cohesion are less well understood than elite interventions. This article contributes to a deeper understanding of the bottom- up interventions and explores the vertical integration between top-down and bottom-up efforts at social cohesion that exist along the local, national, and international trajectory in the two cases. Particularly in con- texts such as South Sudan and Burundi, which are characterized by societies that are held together through complex social and relational networks, and in which informal governance and conflict resolution mechanisms hold high levels of legitimacy, this under-researched aspect of social cohesion may hold critical insights in terms of consolidating nation- states. The article provides an argument for the consideration of bottom- up approaches for more integration of social cohesion mechanisms. INTRODUCTION In the context of increasing intrastate conflict in Africa, there have been questions around how people in a given political society cohere or “stick together.” Our discussion is situated in the growing concern with the limitations of statebuilding as a means of securing sustained peace and social cohesion.1 There is a growing interest in nationbuilding as an alternative way to approach rebuilding divided societies, but PEACE & CHANGE, Vol. 45, No. 3, July 2020 © 2020 Peace History Society and Wiley Periodicals LLC 389 390 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2020 questions remain as to whether nationbuilding can be engineered from the top-down, or emerges organically from the bottom-up. We argue that it is in the intersection of top-down and bottom-up interventions that sustainable social cohesion may occur. We discuss this in relation to the cases of Burundi and South Sudan which both have experiences of intractable conflict but are also characterized by societies that are held together through complex social and relational networks, and in which informal governance processes and conflict resolution mechanisms hold high levels of legitimacy. Many of these insights are based on interviews with members of international and local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in South Sudan and Burundi between 2011 and 2018. The interviews took part during a very unstable time in both countries. In Burundi, the instability was partly due to the impact of the previous civil wars that ended in 2005 while there was active civil war in South Sudan that started in 2013, three years after their secession from Sudan. This complicated traveling in South Sudan outside the capital of Juba; however, many organizations had their headquarters in the capital. The qualitative data we present here provide illustrative examples that draw out key insights about top-down and bottom-up approaches to facilitating social cohesion. We work from the assumption that sustained peace is not possible without a degree of social cohesion. Social cohesion, as with so many related terms, remains vague and ill-defined term that an array of actors have instrumentalized during peace processes. Some argue that social cohesion is at the level of trust and solidarity while theorists such as Ian Gough and Gunnar Olofsson2 have inclined toward social integration and system integration. This confusion in meaning let Ber- nard Paul3 to conclude that social cohesion is a “quasi concept” that is flexible enough to be used by anyone. Toward the definition used in this article, Joseph Chan, Ho-Pong To, and Elaine Chan argue that social cohesion is about how well people in a society “cohere” or stick together. Despite the vagueness, they call for a definition in which three components are simultaneously met. First, a cohering community is one in which there is trust. Second, a cohering community is one in which people are able to help one another and cooperate with one another. Third, a cohering community is one in which people share a common sense of belonging, which is manifested in their behavior.4 This examination of both top-down and bottom-up efforts toward social cohesion in South Sudan and Burundi helps to explain why elite Social Cohesion From the Top-Down or Bottom-Up? 391 processes to date have failed to secure sustainable peace and to assess what resources are available at the level of communities that might facilitate social cohesion. We start by discussing what we mean by describing these societies as “relational” and what the concept of the “relational society” means in terms of social cohesion. We then describe top-down and bottom-up interventions that have been used in attempts to promote social cohesion in South Sudan and Burundi to date. Finally, we make the argument that social cohesion is most likely to occur in the vertical integration of top-down and bottom-up efforts that exist along the local, national, and international trajectory in the two cases. The qualitative data from these interviews clearly indicate that any understanding of how social cohesion is fostered depends upon a deep understanding of the relational nature of the societies in question. RELATIONAL SOCIETIES There is a growing literature that stresses the relational nature of many African societies and that these societies are composed of complex networks of relationships. Harri Englund5 argues that the relationships between people need to be the starting point of the politics of recognition in Africa. The social contract is not between people and the state, in this context, but between people with one another.6 Thus, rather than recognizing or acknowledging distinct communities of dif- ference, one would acknowledge the relations that unite those groups, and to acknowledge these relations not only as something that is inserted between communities after they emerge, but as intrinsic to the very emergence of the communities. Of highest value in these communities is the well-being of the community as a whole. As Alcinda Manuel Honwana7 describes in the Mozambican context, If the relationships between human beings and their ancestors, between them and the environment, and among themselves are balanced and harmonious, health ensues. However, if they are disrupted in any way, the wellbeing of the community is jeopar- dised. There is a complex set of rules and practices that govern the maintenance of well-being and fecundity in the community. 392 PEACE & CHANGE / July 2020 These networks or webs of relationships have been understood not only to be between people, but point to the cosmological, or metaphysical. They include the relationships between the living, the not yet living, and the living dead.8 The intrinsic importance of the intersection of the physical and metaphysical is most visible in the cleansing rituals that are practiced in many African societies.9 However, interventions in divided societies tend to take a state- centric approach, with a focus on statebuilding and nationbuilding, rather than a focus on rebuilding the relationships between people. We argue that for people to cohere or “stick together,” a more com- prehensive approach is needed that brings together actors at the international, national, and local level. This fosters top-down nationbuilding and bottom-up organic relationship-building. Concepts within African philosophy such as “Ubuntu” give the idea that African societies may hold a specific way of being that allows for a particularly high level of social cohesion. The term “Ubuntu” was popularized during South Africa’s reconciliation pro- cess. In this context, Ubuntu was associated with the Nguni proverb Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, which Bishop Desmond Tutu in the mid-1990s translated to mean “a person is a person through other people.” Ubuntu stresses the way in which, within African philosophy, interdependency and community are emphasized over individualism.10 But the term has a much longer history, and terms with similar mean- ings can be found all over sub-Saharan Africa, such as Ujamaa in East Africa. There is some agreement, particularly among African scholars, that there is a shared African philosophy, or African humanism, across the continent. Richard H. Bell11 suggests this has to do with tradi- tional values of mutual respect for one’s fellow kinsman and a sense of position and place in the larger order of things, including one’s social order, the natural order, and the cosmic order. African humanism is often understood in comparison with Western individualism, and as the South African writer Mphahlele Es’kia argues, in contrast to this, the African begins with the community and then determines what the individual’s place and role should be in relation to the community.12 Social cohesion is also a term that has often been referred to in the South African post-Apartheid context, and has found its way into many policy documents related to nationbuilding. Beyond South Africa, the term is often found in peace agreements and policy Social Cohesion From the Top-Down or Bottom-Up? 393 documents in places such as Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya. It is a term that has increasingly been associated with political instrumentalization and attempts at enforced top-down unity by governments. In our analysis, we attempt to move beyond the binary between top-down and bottom-up approaches and begin to explore how these might be integrated. Bringing the terms “ubuntu” and “social cohesion” together in this study allows us to explore both facilitated top- down and organic bottom-up cohesion, by a variety of nonstate actors in Burundi and South Sudan.

Load more