Lessons for peacebuilders from choreography
December 6 2012: Dr Abul Kalam introduces the notion of choreography and it's application to peacebuilding. By introducing choreography in a peace context is it possible to draw parallels from the techniques applied in popular entertainment to better help peacebuilders design interventions?
Bhand Pather – using traditional theatre for peacebuilding in Kashmir
The notion of ‘peacebuilding’ emerged in this backdrop as part of an enduring process to attain peace. The objective is to promote a world free from the curses of conflict and war. Since the mid-twentieth century, much effort has gone towards conceptualising and building the blocks of peace. Yet, peacebuilding is yet to emerge as a substitute to the toxic cycles of conflict.
To compliment peacebuilding efforts, this article introduces the notion of ‘choreography’. The idea for introducing choreography in a peace context is to draw parallels from the techniques applied in popular entertainment to better help peacebuilders design interventions.
Design of choreography
The key role of choreography in entertainment is to sequence and synchronize motion or form in dance, entertainment or music. A choreographer is one who creates routines to impact the mind of the audience, designs sequences of moves by means of notation, specifies motion and form in detail mirroring, shadowing and signalling, and a range of other moves.
Choreography and peacebuilding
A seven-fold stage is shown in the charts below for a peace choreographer. The moves in the 1st 4-stages are focused on ranges of conflict, the 5th has a mix of levels in strategic continuum (red) and in peace continuum (olive green), the 6th identifies a peacebuilding continuum in both diagnosis and prognoses, with steps needed for transition from negative to positive peace, and the 7th focuses on positive peacebuilding. At every stage of this process peace choreographers must act as social engineers or physicians: building peace blocks, providing prescriptions, tune notation, specifying form in detail mirroring, shadowing and signalling.
Notations in conflict
At stages of diagnosis the peace choreographers may confront the complexity of a conflict situation, and will have to shape moves in such a way as to, as Johan Galtung envisions, “engineer away” conflicts. The conflict will identify structures of conflict/war, ideologies, parties involved, motivation and objectives, and more. The peace moves have to target each aspect to be successful.
Peacebuilding fails when a peace choreographer fails to diagnose what constitutes a conflict, what of conflicts constitute a threat to peace or how a peacebuilder can prevent escalation.
A conflict shapes itself in an ABC triangle: Attitude/perception moulds Behaviour, which then leads to Conflict in a vicious cycle (Chart 2). A conflict may be of low intensity or high intensity, moving through crisis to war. It may be at the individual, community, national or global levels. It may become asymmetric or symmetric, depending upon level of power structure, levels of weaponry used and may result in humanitarian disasters or mass slaughter (Charts 3-4).
A peace choreographer has to tune on delicate notation in every move, recording the tantalizing challenges of strategic decisions, being prompted to tune in a cohesive manner towards building peace, portending moves which may serve, if not as panacea, at least providing creative solutions to the up-and-coming problems of peacebuilding.
Building peace in a conflict is full of challenges. Conflict has its continuities, impasses, escalations and stalemates. Conflict/war both synchronize a process of escalation/impasse in a continuum of violence from the lower echelon of disagreement — low intensity conflict — to an upper plane of violence or hostile behaviour, raising intensity of conflict to the level of high intensity conflict or war. A conflict may be latent with/without hostile behaviour. An overt conflict is manifested in violence or hostile behaviour, which in a process of escalation may pass crisis and lead to war (Chart 4).
Peace design in a strategic continuum
Peace choreography becomes most challenging at the stage of ‘strategic continuum’. The players here are entrenched in high intensity conflict and posturing (Chart 5). This follows an implicit failure of conflict groups to identify their perceptual divide. This has ramifications for peacebuilding, as all moves to a ‘peace continuum’ are stalled due to the bargaining behaviour and the mutual rigidities of the partisans.
Nevertheless, a peacebuilder cannot but remain focused on a way to shift away from strategic continuum to a peace continuum i.e. moving through negative and positive peacebuilding to integration and development (Charts 5-6). Towards this end channels of communication must not be allowed to subside, and intermediaries must must work to raise confidence and hope in peacebuilding .
Negative peacebuilding
As conflict moves from latent/low intensity to overt or high intensity, the peace choreographer must remain focused how to make counter moves & ensure that the road to peace is not lost. A ‘policy dancing’ may (as is suggested in Chart 6; steps 1 – 6) follow at relevant levels of decision-making by those who are not merely interested in ending overt conflict, but as a way to shift all involved from impasse or stalemate to recognising mutual interests.
To begin with, this may involve peacekeeping. In such a situation a coordinated peace process has to be in place to curb the process of escalation, with peacekeepers preventing an aggravation of conflict, alongside efforts to show conflict parties their mutual interests in peace. Peace posturing must replace strategic posturing. Efforts may also follow to avoid spoilers damaging the peace process.
Multiple ‘policy dancing’ may have to involve high profile meetings between and among the conflicting parties. Regular levels of meetings at the operational and/or technical levels, and working with low-level contacts can be facilitated as part of confidence-building efforts. Communication, conversation, and dialogue may lead to mutual concessions. Conflict may thus step back to de-escalation, moving to a higher level of peacebuilding, passing through the dark tunnels with rays of light in view.
Positive Peacebuilding
Peace design at the level of positive peacebuilding must remain focused and active to exact or induce further concessions with the goal of finding a ‘win-win’ solution. Many issues may arise over a range of problems (Charts 6-7) which may need multiple ‘policy dance’ routines. An organic intervention process must ensue a shift away from strategic to peace continuum, lead to cooperative relationships, enabling the partisans to feel they have achieved success.
Externally imposed, or ‘top-down’, planning must give way to joint-venture development projects through economic cooperation and cross-community links. Promoting local harmony, ensuring justice and tackling structural inequalities must be a priority. Economic/technical aid or development support may provide incentives, but ought not to be misperceived as asymmetric inputs. Civil society must be drawn in as part of public opinion mobilization, with a particular focus on social inclusion of children, women and deprived communities in environmental protection, participatory planning and project execution so that development reaches the grassroots.
Conclusion
To bring the idea of choreography into a peacebuilding context may sound a little outlandish; but many a peace organisations are already using music and the arts to convey the universality of peace messages. Viewed in this context it seems proper to re-invent choreography in peace field, as it may enhance efforts to lay the foundations for peace. What seems pertinent is discuss is how to perfect an idea taken from entertainment for the unenviable task of peacebuilding in a peaceless world?
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Comments
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Ruth Musgrave on December 10, 2012
Thank you for this thoughtful article. I like the metaphor of choreography for peace building.
I would be interested to share with fellow practitioners in Bangladesh what this might look like practically so I would be gald to hear of any examples from the field which describe a “choreographed” approach to peacebuilding
Abul Kalam on December 14, 2012
Thanks for the feedback, which I do most sincerely appreciate, as your thoughts carry the realistic insight of a grass roots peace activist and you can foresee, as well, what is achievable and what the likely hurdles are. I do sense a bit of frustration in your response, in particular reference to Bangladesh, as you raise a number of pertinent questions touching on all encompassing areas of peacebuilding. The concerns are genuine and need to be addressed within the limited contexts of such communications.
When you re-read the piece in the backdrop of the illustrative charts (7 in all) you may get a clear view that choreography even as a metaphor is designed to be inclusive of peacebuilding at all levels, from grass roots to the higher levels of strategic decision making.
I am aware that MCC as a peace organization, with its multiple peace objectives, strives to widen peacebuilding networks in both developing and developed world, which is quite appropriate.
I am happy indeed that you mention Bangladesh, my birthplace, but it is not the only country that I have had in mind, as it is not an isolated island in the sea of conflicts; even if it were, as you are aware that Bengal has rich legacies of functional conflict resolution mechanisms dating back to the days of British Raj, most of which rendered purposeful services at micro-levels of society, even though the struggle against the Raj was most intense in Bengal than in any other part of British India.
If we limit our focus to current conflict spectrum in Bangladesh (i.e. corruption and violence or confrontational politics), it is not very different from the perceptible scenes of those in the neighbouring countries; rather they carry the same legacies, both in symptoms and manifestations. Politics, as you are aware, is part and parcel of an intensifying conflict system globally. Therefore, the pattern of conflict in Bangladesh can hardly be disjointed from the rest of the world conflict system.
As a lifelong academic I feel tempted to delve a little into the pattern of scholarly perspective on some of the relevant issues. The academic world has had projections from the illuminating writings of many analysts foreshadowing conflicts and violence. In the 60s James N. Rosenau wrote ‘linkage politics’, summarily relating state’s conflict behaviour both within and without, whilst almost three decades later Samuel P. Huntington, articulated his well-known thesis of ‘clash of civilizations’ where he prophesied culture causing “great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict”. Much of the last few decades have indeed wasted lot of human energies and world resources due to the resulting terror and violence, including stunning events such as 9/11, 7/7 and saw as well rising spectre of violent behaviour at all levels globally. Last year the UK itself saw outbursts of vandalism and violence affecting homes, shopping malls and streets of London, Birmingham and Manchester where theories of conflict behavior or theses of cultural conflict have had any relevance.
In the context of peacebuilding, I believe, those concerned like us should project pathways where hypothesized models of political and/or cultural divides would have least relevance. Sources and symptoms of conflict at all levels are to be diagnosed as they appear and prescriptions for medication should be applied as appropriate to the levels and conflict symptoms once they surface. .
The notion of choreography as applied in popular entertainment has been chosen purposely so that the peacebuilders in their designs can empower themselves to doing what the arts of entertainment can do or have endeavoured to achieve.
Returning to issues that confront peacebuilding in Bangladesh, a little backward journey may help recapitulate how powerfully the national consciousness of the Bengalis had been regenerated against the brutalities of the Pakistani army in 1971 through an artful application of the notations of Ravi Shankar (a son of the soil) and George Harrison (the famed English musician of the Beatles)? A smooth democratic evolution is bound to be daunting in a country that saw alternating struggles against the perceived enemies—imperial authorities, ‘internal colonialism’ and had the harrowing experiences of a Liberation War. It is not unnatural for societies like this to have a high intensity conflict/posturing etc between the political parties, violence, corruption, which do make peacebuilding an onerous task. . .
The case of Reen Shalishee Board, as introduced by A K Fazlul Haq during the British Raj serves as an example how to resuscitate peacebuilding from below. More recently, Ain-O-Shalish Kendra as an organization has been actively engaged in grass roots peacebuilding. Even at the official level there has been much publicity given to bring in ADR so that conflicts and litigation may be minimized. The Bengalis/Bangladeshis by tradition are also very music-loving, a legacy that has been highly enriched and deepened by Tagore, Nazrul, Lalon Shah, Abbasuddin, Hason Raza and more recently by Shah Abdul Karim. If their rhymes and tunes could have helped the Bengalis in a sustained socio-cultural regeneration towards creation of a national entity why those cannot now be turned into notations for rescuing the country from the quandary it is in? The Bengalis, after all, are supposedly dedicated to the creation of a ‘Sonar Bangla’ (Golden Bengal), as their national anthem (taken from Tagore) reminds them at all times! Choreographers are required to re-invent all this for the end of peacebuilding.
As for high intensity conflict/posturing etc, as you mentioned, involving the mainstream political parties the quest is indeed for power where the peacebuilders can hardly take any side, but they may at least tacitly help identify who the well-meaning patriots are and may also help redeem the much envisioned dream of Sonar Bangla.’ However, peacebuilders in the current context of Bangladesh cannot, and should not, become political partisans, but efforts may involve working for perceptual shifts or de-escalation at the levels with peoples/groups you may work with. The relevance of ‘policy dancing’, as is articulated in this context may require multi-level communication, conversation, dialogue or meetings, where possible or feasible as part of confidence building efforts for inducing mutual concessions. Contact-setting and networking, to begin with, would be most appropriate, so that credentials are known and credibility is established.