The Moral Imagination: the Art and Soul of Building Peace / John Paul Lederach

The Moral Imagination This page intentionally left blank The Moral Imagination The Art and Soul of Building Peace john paul lederach 1 2005 1 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Saõ Paolo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright ᭧ 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lederach, John Paul. The moral imagination: the art and soul of building peace / John Paul Lederach. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-517454-2 1. Peace-building. 2. Pacific settlement of international disputes. 3. Conflict management. 4. Social change. I. Title. JZ5538.L43 2004 303.6'6—dc22 2004011794 987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper This book is dedicated to Rose Barmasai So we rise Dust Dancers Sandals to the ground Between heat and fires. No matter the dark For she rises each night Smile bouncing Ancestor eyes lighting The Rift Valley sky. She, Rose. In Memory of Rose Barmasai March 9, 2000 John Paul Lederach This page intentionally left blank Thoughts for a Preface For a long time I debated with myself a rather disconcerting question: For whom was I writing this book? I have always operated with the idea that an author should pick an audience, in fact a single person exemplary of that audience and write to that person. But I wanted to write a book that could be of wide interest, one that would cut across multiple disciplines and appeal to policy makers and prac- titioners, to people in town halls and those kneeling for Friday prayers or sitting in Sabbath or Sunday pews, to social theoreticians and conflict professionals. The more you try to speak to everyone, however, the less you speak to anyone. Since I could not find an ele- gant solution, I suspended the question and I just started to write. About midway in the process of developing chapters, a sense of conversation emerged. I realized I was writing to colleagues in the professions of conflict transformation, mediation, restorative justice, and peacebuilding. I still entertain hopes that the ideas I wish to share and converse about will have a wide appeal, but my partner in the conversation is clear. This book started as a sequel. On completion, it feels more like a prequel. Originally I set out to write a follow-up to what is prob- ably my most well known book in the small universe where I tend to teach and work. The first pages of Building Peace: Sustainable Rec- onciliation in Divided Societies were written in early 1990, though the edition published and more broadly shared through the U.S. Insti- tute of Peace Press did not appear until 1997. For all practical pur- poses, the first draft of that book was written more than fifteen years ago. Much of what follows in The Moral Imagination is indeed se- viii thoughts for a preface quel in nature. The reader will find described the evolution and changes of my ideas, approaches, and revisions and specific references to how these developed since the writing of Building Peace. But The Moral Imagination is not an ad- dendum to something else. It has become an effort to find a way back to the source of my work, the wellspring of that which lies invisible below the surface but gives life to a stream that trickles, then flows. Building Peace could be understood principally as a book about the engineering of social change. That was not the expressed intent nor the language I used to describe it. But in all honesty that may well be a better way to situate the content. Based on experience, I sought to provide a theoretical framework to improve practical application. I have often said that the Building Peace framework does not suggest solutions. It poses a series of questions useful for think- ing about and developing responsive initiatives and processes in settings of deep-rooted conflict. Those processes, however, must be connected to the specifics of situations and contexts. That is still true and underpins the poten- tial usefulness of the book. Nonetheless, by its very nature, the framework lends itself to the design and engineering of peacebuilding. Therein I found a tension, present not only in the field at large as to how we move from destruc- tive violence to constructive social engagement, but present within myself. Through The Moral Imagination, I want to address that tension. In some regards, perhaps more than in any other book I have written, I discovered that taking up a conversation with my colleagues in the broadly defined conflict resolution field was in fact the carrying on of a conversation with myself as a conflict professional. Carl Rogers suggested that those things that are most personal are shared universally. I believe there is great merit to the idea, though it tends not to be practiced in formal academic writing. In the professional world of writing, we view with caution, even suspicion, the appearance of the personal, and lend a higher accent of legitimacy to models and skills, theory, well-documented case studies, and the technical application of theory that leads toward what we feel is the objectivity of conclusion and proposal. In the process, we do a disservice to our professions, to the building of theory and prac- tice, to the public, and ultimately to ourselves. The disservice is this: When we attempt to eliminate the personal, we lose sight of ourselves, our deeper in- tuition, and the source of our understandings—who we are and how we are in the world. In so doing we arrive at a paradoxical destination: We believe in the knowledge we generate but not in the inherently messy and personal process by which we acquired it. The Moral Imagination is about this messiness of innovation. I propose to explore the evolution of my understanding of peacebuilding by taking up the journey of where and how I have actually been in this world of experience that I call a vocational home. It is an effort to share what I have seen, the anecdotes and stories I have lived, and most important how ideas happened along the way that led to different, perhaps innovative ways of building social change. In thoughts for a preface ix this regard, as early readers of this manuscript noted, this is a book that takes a decidedly personal tack, with all of the strengths and weaknesses that accom- pany such an endeavor. As I wrote, I discovered that the writing was speaking to things of which I had been aware but had not fully addressed, much less embraced. On the front and back sides of peace engineering, I discovered that The Moral Imagination was finding its way to the art and soul of what I do. Historically, there has been a mostly unspoken tension between two schools of thought in this field, which I have heard hinted at in a number of conferences and the occasional question from the floor to a keynote speaker: Is building peace an art or a skill? Discussions have emerged between those who believe responding to conflict and building social change is primarily a learned skill and those who see it as an art. The Moral Imagination weighs in with a different view: Building constructive social change in settings of deep- rooted conflict requires both. But the evolution of becoming a profession, the orientation toward technique, and the management of process in conflict resolution and peacebuilding have overshadowed, underestimated, and in too many instances forgotten the art of the creative process. This book, as has been the case with my own professional journey, is a compilation of conversations about how we might find our way back to the art of the matter. I don’t see finding the art of the matter as a minor corrective to an otherwise healthy system. It requires a worldview shift. I will propose that, as conflict professionals, we must go well beyond a sideshow, well beyond lip service to attain the art and soul of constructive change. We must envision our work as a creative act, more akin to the artistic endeavor than the technical process. This never negates skill and technique. But it does suggest that the wellspring, the source that gives life, is not found in the supporting scaffolding, the detailed knowledge of substance and process, nor the paraphernalia that accompanies any professional endeavor, be it artistic, political, economic, or social. The wellspring lies in our moral imagination, which I will define as the capacity to imagine something rooted in the challenges of the real world yet capable of giving birth to that which does not yet exist. As does any author, I have my misgivings and anxieties about what I have written. They loom larger in this book than in previous ones. I feel as if I am venturing into arenas that, while rooted in my experience, have pushed me to listen to the philosophical and artistic voices within me. No book, and certainly not this book, can attend to the full range of hopes and wishes of a diverse reading community, though those are legitimate and important.

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