CCTS
Review 40 - December 2008

Some Key Issues and Debates from the Plenary and Group Discussions

A full report of the plenary and group discussions which followed the presentations is not possible here. But some of the recurrent themes and questions that arose, and the debates around them, are briefly recounted below.

Culture and Fundamental Values

How does one deal with ethical issues on which there are sharp differences related to culture and religion? Homosexuality, for example, is regarded as anathema in many cultural and religions traditions, but for many, particularly in Western societies, the recognition of gay and lesbian rights is seen as a benchmark of a just society. A related question was whether, by insisting on certain values, one could be accused of seeking to impose Western cultural and ethical norms on people of other cultures.

One panelist recounted the case of a local primary school which was about to introduce sex education and in a context where 80% of pupils were from émigré families. This was not long after three schools in the city had been in meltdown over the introduction of homophobic literature. Her approach was to go to the school with a well-known local Islamic scholar and work with the governors and parents. They negotiated a deal whereby parents were given the option, within the central education authority’s guidelines, of taking their children out of that programme, and a separate one was introduced more in keeping with Islamic culture (though in fact it wasn’t just the Islamic groups that had a problem with the programme). There had been a problem but it had been possible to overcome it by anticipating it early enough and working with the right people who were recognized by the community as being on board.

Another panelist said they identified these issues as landmines in the work: if you didn’t look at them, and learn how to talk about them, you would step on them and they would blow up on you. Once in Kenya he was shocked at a school speechgiving at which most of the time was spent denouncing the evils of lesbianism. But what he learned to appreciate was the connection between cultural norms/questions of sexuality and colonialism. People said that we in the West used sex as a power weapon. There were parallels with the sexism issue. If you started from women’s lives, and acknowledged that they were constantly affected by sexism and said ‘Maybe you in the Muslim world can help us with this’, you might get somewhere.

However, another contributor disagreed. He referred to the critique by Amartya Sen of a certain kind of multiculturalism which involves turning a blind eye to the abuses which go on within different cultures. We did not have the right to go out to another country and try to impose certain values, but this was our society and we had a responsibility towards each other.

The previous speaker responded that he was not arguing that you should not challenge, for example, female circumcision, but that you should not do so whilst doing nothing about pornography in this country. In the school in which he and his colleague worked, 11-year-old children were exchanging the addresses of porn websites. We had to be aware of Western ‘cultural stupidities’ as well. The two of them came from socialist backgrounds but often worked with people of faith and had had to re-examine many of their own assumptions.

Did speaking out against certain practices in other countries amount to a form of imperialism, an assumption that Western values were somehow universally valid? In the discussion of this question, it was pointed out that what was now held up as Western culture had in fact been forged in the struggle of colonial peoples, or internal struggles by groups or classes that had been excluded from participation in public life or faced discrimination at various levels. Barak Obama, for example, would not be president of the US today had it not been for Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement, which challenged the racist values and practices in US society. One should also look to the transformative movements in societies where, currently, abhorrent practices such as ‘honour’ killings were tolerated, and give these movements space to develop.

The point was made that individuals and groups within a society could hold a particular view but at the same time accept that the mainstream held a different view. For instance Muslims and some Christians are opposed to homosexuality on religious grounds while accepting that this is not the prevalent position of the wider society. One participant said her Muslim faith was important to her and that Muslims do not believe there should be sexual relationships between people of the same gender. She would never want to impose her views on others, or wish harm to gays and lesbians. But did the fact that as she did not share, in this respect, the values of the country she is living in mean she should not be here? If she chooses to live in this country, does she have to change her value system? Another participant said it was important to be able to express one’s views, whatever they were, and to debate them openly with those who take a different view. What would not be acceptable would be to endorse any form of discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Internalized racism, one participant argued, causes some people in non-Western societies to see their own culture as inferior. But it is not the case that Western culture is at one level and other cultures are at another level below it and must strive to reach the Western standard. It is important to allow every society the space to change its own culture.

Challenging prejudice in daily life

Another focus of discussion was the importance of challenging racism and other forms of prejudice when encountered in the course of daily life, at a bus-stop or in a doctor’s surgery. Sometimes out of inertia, or failure of nerve, one keeps quiet, but it was suggested that it could be just as important to challenge prejudice at this level as to sign a petition or attend a meeting – perhaps indeed more important. One participant, who had spent some time in Sri Lanka, spoke of the extreme difficulty of challenging Sinhalese hegemony among a group of Sinhalese, or Tamil hegemony among Tamils in a Tamil controlled area. You sometimes wondered if there was any point in doing so, and decided you did not want to go there. But it could be equally difficult to engage with people in the human rights or peace movement who felt threatened if you challenged some of their passionately held beliefs and assumptions. The issue, one person remarked, was not just about having the moral courage to challenge irrational fears and prejudices but about doing so in a manner that had some chance of being efficacious. If you could stay relaxed and ask people why they felt or thought a certain way, and maybe have a joke with them about it, you were more likely to get somewhere.

Is relationship building an effective tool in conflict transformation?

The notion that bringing people together in informal settings would necessarily contribute to conflict transformation was strongly challenged by one participant. Despite the naïve belief, stemming from various experts in reconciliation, that encounters in themselves make a difference, there was no evidence to support this. Often they simply reinforced the negative images people had of one another. Unless people were on level ground and had the endorsement and support of community leaders, the encounters had little value. Another participant related this to the idea that if you ate a samosa or joined in Divali celebrations this would bring about community cohesion. For her, relationship-building was important but it had to involve real communication, including looking at the barriers and divisions, not pretending they were not there.

Social Change and Power

The issue of power of different kinds and in various contexts, including within political systems, was discussed in both group and plenary sessions.

One participant commented that in the presentations we had moved along a continuum from empowerment, in the sense of altering people’s personal capacity to choose how they behave, to empowerment in the sense of giving people more voice and influence on policies. The former could be seen as part of a containment or ‘prevention’ agenda, as against empowerment to bring about social and political change. If people simply ‘learned to behave better’, that could be an enemy of change. However, it need not be so, and did not appear to be in the work Hannah was doing.
The point was made that empowerment should not be confused with upward mobility. One way people can get more power in a situation is to become professionalized and upwardly mobile. An alternative model is exemplified by the shop steward whose power derives from the support of fellow trade unionists. The power of community activists, too, was based on the support they enjoy within the community. This was the difference between power over and power with.
Structural power as a form of violence was discussed. It was difficult for people in the dominant culture to understand it since they did not experience it themselves directly. It was so much part of the way society worked that it never occurred to many within the dominant culture to question it. It was also remarked that the middle class might have more ability to speak in a ‘politically correct’ way about race, while actually being quite racist and at the same time looking down on those in a different class who used racist words.

Closing remarks

Concluding the seminar, Diana Francis thanked the presenters for their stimulating input, which had provided the basis for an excellent discussion. She also thanked Adrian Platt of Conciliation Resources for his hard work in helping to organise the seminar and all the participants who had contributed to making the day a success.

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