4.12.2010

Indigenous Peace-Making VS Liberal Peace

Cooperation and conflict

Indigenous Peace-Making Versus the Liberal Peace

ROGER MAC GINTY

Critical review,by: Hasbi Asyidiqi

The Rediscovery of the Indigenous and Traditional

After Cold War, there has progressed about the ideas of traditional and indigenous peace-making and dispute resolution in civil wars, it has made an increasing of credence among states, international organizations, international financial institutions and NGOs. Although the progress has given advantages for all states, the UN General Assembly failed to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It is confused, whereas so many international organizations such an International Labour Organization and Oxfam International’s Strategic Plan which have researched and concerned to the indigenous rights, the UN still failed to make a declaration fro indigenous rights.

In relation between indigenous peoples and international actors to civil war and dispute resolution, there has been greater interest in the actual peace-making techniques and practices on offer from indigenous group. Indeed, many international actors who have shown interest in these techniques could be described as bastions of the liberal peace. It means the indigenous peoples is only as tool, they are used by international actors as an object for researching.

The draft UN Declaration on the Rights of indigenous Peoples noted that such peoples should have access to mutually acceptable and fair procedures for the resolution of conflicts and disputes which would take into consideration the customs, traditions, rules and legal systems of the indigenous peoples concerned (UNHCR,1994: Article 39). What the UN declared, it is so contrary with expert argued:

In the late 1980s the communist world collapsed, and the Cold War international system become history. In teh post-Cold War world, the most important distinctions among peoples are not ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural. Peoples and nations are attempting to answer the most basic question humans can face: who are we? And they are answering that question in the traditional way human beings have answered it, by reference to the things that mean most to them. People define themselves in term of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs and institutions. They indentify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religous communities, nations, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity.[1]

What the expert means people who indentify themselves as cultural group, they have own interest, and different cultural will have different interest also. So, it cannot be mutually acceptable, because they have own interest.

A number of conflict resolution authors and practitioners have also high-lighted the importance of culture in dispute resolution. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) which respects many of the qualities found in indigenous and traditional approaches emphasized that win-win outcomes were possible, that ongoing relationship were more useful than one-off victories, and that third parties could play useful roles as invited facilitators rather than unilateral interveners. These approaches placed an emphasis on dialogue, social justice and conflict transformation (rather than resolution).

In its broadest sense, participation did not merely extend to local involvement in the implementation of development or peace projects that were conceived, funded and managed elsewhere. Instead, local participation was to occur at all levels of a development or peace project. The implications of local involvement were thus profound: not only could it guide how development was to be promoted (or peace secured), it had the potential to guide how development (and peace) could be defined. Ideas of participation have been the focus of much criticism, that they merely co-opt local elites into Western schemes or that the tyranny of participation steers communities towards technocratic and over-simplistic solution to complex social problems.

The liberal peace

Enormous academic energy has been devoted to testing the existance and significance of liberal peace, or the assertion that democracies do not go to war with one another. Instead, the liberal peace to be the concept, condition and practice whereby leading states, international organizations and international financial institutions promotes their version of peace through peace-support interventions, control of international financial architecture, support for state soverignty and the international status quo.

The key proponents of the liberal peace are leading states, international organizations and international financial institutions, natably the United States, UK, Australia, France, Germany, Canada, Norway, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Libral intervantionism is based on the belief that one model of domestic governance – liberal market democracy, it is superior to all others, while Ignatieff refers to its as an imperial ideology. Highly specialized forms of liberalism and democracy are championed: an open market liberalism that gives priority to the individual (rather than the kind group) and electoral democracy with notions of an appropriate civil society.

The liberal peace is also generically neo-liberal in its promotion of marketization, austerity programmes and the notion that the market will provide the motive force for peace and reconstruction.

Evidence of the apparently monopolising character and ambition of the liberal peace
is bountiful. The frequency with which the same actors and institutions are involved
in liberal peace interventions is revealing.[2]

Promoters of the liberal peace are able to mobilise a formidable suite of compliance
mechanisms to encourage conformity and to discipline attempts at deviance. The
obvious compliance tool is force or the threat of force.
But other compliance mechanisms abound, most notably the globalised free market that at once offers
opportunities but also considerable constrains.[3]

So, instead the liberal peace will membuat semacam perdamaian dengan cara institutional dan memberikan prosperity for all people, the institutionals also has their own interest such a monopolization.

Traditional and Indigenous Peace-Making

Social Anthropological Literature on War and Peace-Making in Traditional Societies

There are three factors that have encouraged studies of conflict resolution and the social anthropology of war and peace-making to pursue separete paths.

First, the influence of political science and international relations on the study of conflict resolution means that many of its principal referents derive from Western statist and institutionalist perspectives. Second (and related to the last point), both sub-disciplines often adopt different levels of analysis. While both adopt case study approaches, the cases in social anthropology are often highly specific micro-societies, usually units smaller than the object of study in conflict resolution (with the exception of examinations of personality and political leadership).

There are four themes which emerge from a review of literature on the social anthropology of war and peace-making in traditional societies:

1. The rituals of warfare and peace-making, has largely been absent from the conflict resoution literature.

2. Governance processes and structures. This theme describes the locus of power, leadership and decision-making styles and succession processes.

3. Cross-cultural communication. This is particularly relevant to traditional societies encountering ousiders.

4. The emphasis on exchange and compensation as part peace-making. In many traditional societies, the core of peace-making is the restoration of balance in order to ensure the sustainability of the society.

Conceptualizing Traditional and Indigenous Peace-Making

There are four points of clarification may help with the conceptualization of traditional and indigenous peace-making. First, despite the common conflation of the terms traditional and indigenous, the two are not interchangeable. A second conceptual point is that it should not be assumed that traditional or indigenous peace-making can be blithely equated with good or a higher normative value. A third conceptual point is that the notions of the traditional or indigenous can be hastily invented or cynically manipulated by actors in a peace-making process who attempt to benefit from the supposed higher moral value to be gained by labelling a practice or attitude as traditional. The fourth guiding point for the conceptualization of traditional peace-making is to caution against regarding traditional and Western peace-making as discrete conceptual categories. It would be appealing to conceive of distinct categories of peace-making with neathly contradictory qualities and sharply delineated boundaries.

A synthesis of Indigenous and Traditional Peace-Making with Western Peace-Making?

There is considered if there are serious prospects for a syntesis between Western and traditional or indigenous version of peace. In the contemporary era, despite the dominance of Western notions of peace, there are areas in which traditional and indigenous approaches to peace-making can flourish.

A contact between different cultures provide insights into processes of accomodation between conflicting versions of peace and peace-making. Not only did the institutions and practices of peace-making drew on indigenous and traditional sources, but the preferred notions of peace ( priority being given to reciprocatin and sustainable relationship) also reflected local cultural mores. Many indigenous groups used marriege as a key element in peace-making. This ratification of peace by matrimony amounted to reciprocal hostage-taking between formerly warring groups, if successful, it created enduring bonds between groups and ilustrated that future conflict would have mutual costs.

In the colonial era, the colonial power was established there were subjects, stripped of sovereignty and not regarded as legitimate opponents with whom to make peace. Although on the contemporary post-Cold War era, the conditions have encountered between indigenous and traditional forms of peace-making and dispute resolution, on the one hand, and dominant Western practices, on the other.

Conclution

1. Liberal peace is good. But the Liberal peace has gap, because the Liberal peace emphasizes on the intitutions and organizations. They also have their own interests such a monopolizing and intervantion.



[1] Huntington P. Samuel. The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. Page 21

[2] Dr Roger Mac Ginty,Professor Andrew Williams. Paper prepared for the International Studies Association conference.

[3] Ibid.