AFTER VIOLENCE: 3R, RECONSTRUCTION, RECONCILIATION ...

There is a special aspect of the damage violent conflict does
to social structure and culture worth highlighting.
As a conflict gradually leaves the "before violence", and
enters the "violence" phase, five processes with deep implications
for structure and culture take place:/21/
- articulation: a complete conflict triangle takes shape, with
emotions/cognitions, violence and contradiction;
- conscientization: not only does the triangle take shape, but the
two invisibles, the attitudes and the contradiction, A and C,
become conscious in the minds of the parties;
- simplification: the conflict formation is seen as contracting,
to ever fewer actors and goals;
- polarization: the contraction ends up as reductionism to only
two parties, the (good) Self and the (evil) Other, over only one
issue, the issue where Self can most clearly be seen as right;
- escalation: all of this is then both a cause and an effect of
increasing violence, B, between Self and Other.
There is a simple relation between these five processes:
articulation and conscientization go together, so do escalation
and polarization, and simplification stimulates both of them. The
processes in Self and Other also tend to mirror each other; like
Self, like Other, with the media chiming in. As a result conflict
work becomes very difficult. People's minds are set.
Structurally the implication is separation in two social
camps, and as almost no conflicts today are really "internal" but
has outside parties intervening one way or the other, social
polarization is accompanied by world polarization. Wedges are
driven between regions/civilizations, countries, classes, groups,
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