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Science & the Human Person article

After Science?


On several occasions — perhaps most recently at an Occupy Wall Street protest rally in New York — philosopher and social critic Slavoj Žižek has remarked that we can imagine the end of the world but we cannot imagine the end of capitalism.

Žižek’s point, of course, is that it is a serious and strange paradox that we allow ourselves to think of apocalyptic destruction as possible, while rejecting the possibility of making relatively small changes to our economic systems and collective ways of life. This paradox is solved rather easily by taking Žižek’s point to its logical conclusion: the possibility for an end to capitalism is at least equivalent to the possible end of the world.

In any case, Žižek’s ruminations prompt us to seriously contemplate the end of the world.

The End of the World as We Know It

The world whose end I want to contemplate is the world created by modern science and its progeny, modern technology. If, or when, science brings an end to the modern world it has helped to create, is a world after science possible? Can a new world emerge after the quintessentially modern scientific worldview has worn and weathered?

Some might look to Alasdair MacIntyre’s seminal After Virtue, one of the strongest philosophical critiques of modernity in the 20th century, for one answer to such questions. Others might look to the foil of that book: Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the greatest critics of modernity in the 19th century.

I would like to look in a simpler direction: ecology.

As the natural sciences have grown more sophisticated and advanced, our planetary ecosystem has suffered tremendously unnatural harms. The late modern reaction has been to use science to fix itself, and there is some evidence of the efficacy of this approach. But no widespread act of contrition has been undertaken by science. After all, science promised a better, more peaceful world, but the last century has been remarkably and uniquely violent.

This violence has been widespread and is well documented in its human casualties. But it has also been devastating to other forms of life. Those who show concern for non-human forms of life also tend to hold a secular worldview that often fails to hold science accountable to its modern promises. The unapologetic appeal to science as the circular answer to its own failures is considered preferable to a regressive retreat toward some pre-, proto-, or pseudo-science.

This scientific preference is largely defensive, motivated by a fear of going “back” to religion. And for good reason: science has not yet given us time machines to go back and “fix” the religious past, and many religious reactions against modernity ring hollow or are downright dangerous.

Where Do We Go from Here?

What about a way forward? Is it possible to imagine what comes after modern science, without assuming that we must return to what came before it?

In the epigraph to Morris Berman’s The Reenchantment of the World, Octavio Paz puts it this way:

God and philosophy could not live together peacefully; can philosophy survive without God? Once its adversary has disappeared, metaphysics ceases to be the science of the sciences and becomes logic, psychology, anthropology, history, economics, linguistics. What was once the great realm of philosophy has today become the ever-shrinking territory not yet explored by the experimental sciences. If we are to believe the logicians, all that remains of metaphysics is no more than the nonscientific residuum of thought—a few errors of language. Perhaps tomorrow’s metaphysics, should man feel a need to think metaphysically, will begin as a critique of science, just as in classical antiquity it began as a critique of the gods. This metaphysics would ask itself the same questions as in classical philosophy, but the starting point of the interrogation would not be the traditional one before all science but one after the sciences.

The sentiment of this passage — and other similarly held views, including, in different ways, both MacIntyre and Nietzsche — is sometimes confused with a facile, religious romanticism of sorts. This is not the case, at least not for me. In my view, a return to religion cannot wholly turn away from reason and science, pretending as though modernity never happened. The insight from Paz and Berman is that re-enchantment begins in a way that is old and new, at once modest and radical: the mere possibility that there is something after science.

This recalls Žižek’s approach to his Marxist project. He consistently rejects all “returns” to the revolutions of the past century. The harder work, he claims, is to imagine the present possibility for life after capitalism. 

In a similar move, the way forward cannot be an either/or. We cannot rewind or fast-forward between religion and science. We will need a double-move, the sort of move we observe in flourishing ecologies: a balanced, attuned move that is neither ahistorical nor limited by historical possibility.

Most of all, this move will have to overcome the fears of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern accounts of the world. We must imagine the world anew, a world that has been, is, and never was. This will require a poetic, creative, and — in precisely this sense — a thoroughly “religious” imagination.

A New Enchantment

As Paz suggests, the new metaphysical interrogation of science would shift from a self-contained contemplation of past and present contending modernities, to a future-oriented imagination of how those contentions might themselves lead to something beyond modernity itself.

This new enchantment would not suffer from amnesia or nostalgia — at least not in its ideal. It would make new promises to be made, broken, and renewed.

Like the gods and sciences of old.

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Sam Rocha
Sam Rocha is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Education University of British Colombia as well as president of the Society for the Philisophical Study of Education. He is also the author of Things and Stuff, an edited collection of blog posts, and an unprofessional musician. For more information, see his website: www.samrocha.com. 
 
Governance, Citizenship, Rights & Obligations article

Beneath the Healthcare Wars: Difficult Questions about Living and Dying


Although the ongoing healthcare wars between Democrats and Republicans have been raging for some time now, the recent HHS mandate has ignited a more direct and particular conflict. Whereas the former was and is primarily political, the latter seems to be cultural. Regardless of what we call it, this recent battle in the healthcare wars amplifies a longstanding tension between secular/American and religious/Catholic cultures and worldviews.

Leaving aside policy issues and the constant stream of news—none more interesting to me, an alumnus of Franciscan University of Steubenville, than this report about my alma mater’s quixotic decision to discontinue student health insurance altogether—it might be worth considering a more fundamental human condition: the ways in which we live and die in the modern world.

A Hospital Is Not a Home

In modern nations, people live and die in modern institutions, ruled by modern policies, according to modern processes. While the quality of modern institutions does vary, they all share this simple fact: they are modern institutions. The rare exceptions prove the rule.

For example: my grandfather wanted to die in his house, not a hospital. His resistance to dying a hospital death, lasting until he could die at home, is not unlike the impulse of women who opt to bear their children at home or parents who choose to school their children at home. Qualitative questions aside, there is a palpable, descriptive difference between a home and a hospital (or a school).

“Home” is not a romantic exception to modernity, of course. Dying, birthing, and schooling at home are still regulated by policies and processes and are not wholly removed from modern institutions. (For example: home schooling is still a form of compulsory schooling.) After all, the most ubiquitous, totalizing modern institution is the modern nation-state; precious few, if any, homes escape the reach of this modern institution.

What the contrast between hospital and home does show is this: there is something about the way we live and die in modernity that is mediated by more than the perennial, ordinary whims of fortune. In modern society, there are no exits from living and dying as a distinctly modern person, a person who, ironically, guards and sterilizes herself from the whims of fortune through science and technology.

The question of health and healthcare, then, is not a generic question. It too is a question about who we are and what our living and dying is, exactly, under the inescapable specter of a modern institutions and worldviews.

Two Modern Healthcare Narratives

If we look closely at the healthcare wars, we see two narratives at work, narratives that reveal the natural tension between the United States and the Catholic Church. These narratives only compete at the surface; beneath their superficial disagreement we find an acceptance of the modern conception of the human person (the autonomous individual) and a modern, institutional, and an exclusively medical understanding of what “health” and “healthcare” are.

On the Right, we see a rugged individualism that was the hallmark of what was once called “liberalism.” By this libertarian logic, our health is not the same thing as our life—although the fact that most healthcare insurance pays for childbirth—and we are responsible for our health privately, outside the public responsibilities of the modern nation-state.

On the Left, we see an equally modern communitarianism that was the hallmark of the 19th century’s objection to the political liberalism that founded modernity. By this logic, the modern nation-state has a public duty to provide healthcare for its citizens. When we look deeper, we must realize that this modern, institutional form of “health” and “healthcare” is in one sense more ambitious and technologically robust and, in another sense, deeply limited in its medical and physical breadth and scope. This notion of healthcare has many of the same individualistic consequences when it is carried out. For one, it is incredibly “sophisticated,” expensive, and universally unsustainable. Communities cannot provide this program of healthcare.

In my view—influenced by a Catholic worldview—the Right is wrong to suggest that life and health can be separated from each other and that persons can exist as individuals first and foremost. (This reveals my basic agreement with the Left about the communal nature of the human person, and all of creation for that matter.) But it is equally misguided and counterproductive for the Left to think that the modern kind of care it advocates is sustainable and, more importantly, good for persons who are living and dying together.

Difficult Questions

Perhaps we ought to consider a question like the following: How can we live and die as fully human persons, communal beings who live in a fragile ecology, and not only enjoy a certain, reliable amount of physical health, but also experience other forms of health? Cultural and spiritual health, and more. Even if we are physically healthy, doesn’t it matter that we are living in a culture that is sick—and contagious? Can we finally separate our “health” from our moral and cultural environment?

The recent and ongoing healthcare wars all lead to—and originate from—mutually flawed conclusions. Even worse, they make us sick from their antics and their deep, philosophical agreement: they both believe in the project of modernity in ways that other worldviews do not. Herein lies the natural tension between the United States and the Catholic Church.

Beneath these predictable wars, packaged and sold as “news,” we might find unifying yet difficult questions about how we want to live and die—none more terrifying to the modern imagination than the question of suffering.

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Sam Rocha
Sam Rocha is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Education University of British Colombia as well as president of the Society for the Philisophical Study of Education. He is also the author of Things and Stuff, an edited collection of blog posts, and an unprofessional musician. For more information, see his website: www.samrocha.com. 
 
Deadly Violence & Conflict Transformation article

Kony 2012 and the Challenge of Forgiveness


The latest in modern social networking has focused enormous attention on the crimes of Joseph Kony. But the peace-making resources of ancient religious and tribal traditions offer the only way to heal the wounds he has inflicted.

Kony 2012 and the Politics of Retribution

Over the past six weeks, the world (almost literally) has witnessed the phenomenon of Kony 2012, the internet video that has now garnered over 100 million hits.  The video’s creator, Invisible Children, deserves credit for this remarkable feat of activism for social justice and indeed for drawing wide attention to one of the world’s most monstrous war criminals, Joseph Kony.

However, if the world were to learn about Uganda’s colossal civil war of a quarter century and attendant attempts to build peace only through Kony 2012, it would be missing an extraordinary story of peacebuilding whose characters are Ugandans themselves.

Kony 2012 focuses almost exclusively on Kony himself, the leader of the bizarre and murderous Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and calls for his arrest and trial.  The emergent hero of the video is Luis Moreno Ocampo, the famous chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who has indicted Kony and vows to bring him to justice.

Beyond the Politics of Retribution

What Kony 2012 does not show, though, is that even while the hunt for Kony continues, Ugandans themselves have made giant strides in reintegrating thousands of children whom the LRA had abducted and hundred of thousands of internally displaced persons back into their home cities and villages.  Key to this reintegration has been the practice of forgiveness and the larger ethic in which it is rooted, reconciliation.

Behind forgiveness and reconciliation, in turn, has been the leadership of the religious.  One of the world’s most effective examples of religious leadership in promoting peace is Uganda’s Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI), a coalition made up of a Catholic archbishop, Anglican bishops, a Muslim leader, and other religious leaders.  ARPLI leaders have traipsed through the bush to meet Kony and mediate between him and the Ugandan government and they crucially influenced the passage of the Amnesty Act of 2000, passed by the Ugandan parliament to encourage LRA soldiers to put down their guns and return home.  Most importantly, though, they have led the people of northern Uganda in practicing reconciliation and forgiveness between victims and perpetrators of thousands of horrible crimes.

The Challenge of Forgiveness

Forgiveness is not easy, especially of atrocities.  Often it is preceded by a painful airing of grievances and requires the simple passage of time.  Many choose not to forgive at all.  But as I discovered on a research trip to northern Uganda this past January, the people of the region have practiced forgiveness widely and frequently.  The explanation lies in good part in the Christian faith that northern Ugandans widely share, though which they view forgiveness as a participation in God’s redemptive work and are enabled by grace to perform an otherwise exceedingly difficult deed.  Forgiveness is enabled as well by the tribal traditions of the Acholi people, which contain rich rituals of reconciliation.

Invisible Children is right: Kony should be captured and tried, for he continues to perpetrate horrible deeds on civilians outside of Uganda, where he is on the lam.  Let us not ignore, though, the widespread popular practice of reconciliation and forgiveness within Uganda, motivated by religious faith, which deserves credit for returning vast populations to their homes and for significant strides in building peace.

Faith-Based Forgiveness in Action

As I had the opportunity to discuss on Fox News last week, a camera crew accompanied me on my January research trip to Uganda and shot the footage for what is now a video documentary, “Uganda: the Challenge of Forgiveness.” Sponsored by the Fetzer Institute and produced by Jason Cohen Productions, the documentary features interviews with Archbishop John Baptist Odama, the most prominent and most charismatic of the ARLPI leaders, as well as Angelina Atyam, who practiced and promoted forgiveness courageously after the LRA had abducted her daughter.  Though Kony 2012 was utterly unbeknownst to us when we shot our footage, our video now enters into conversation with it by telling another side of the story.

Religious leadership in building peace in Uganda also reflects one of the central themes of Contending Modernities, namely that religious versions of modernity make contributions to political and social life that are distinct from — and sometimes in competition with — secular modernity.  Perhaps unwittingly, Kony 2012 manifests some of the characteristic tendencies of secular modernity.  Ocampo and the ICC are emblematic of the legalistic and retributive approach to massive past injustices that dominates the international community today — the U.N., western governments, international lawyers, and leading human rights organizations.

These emblems of secular modernity are still looking for Joseph Kony, despite the unprecedented modern powers of Facebook and YouTube. While the hunt continues, religious leaders, acting out of their religious beliefs and drawing on ancient tribal traditions, may be making far more enduring contributions to peace and justice in Uganda.

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Daniel Philpott
Daniel Philpott is associate professor of political science and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame.  He is a coauthor, with Monica Duffy Toft and Timothy Samuel Shah, of the forthcoming God's Century: Resurgent Religion in Global Politics, and author of the forthcoming Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation.
Deadly Violence & Conflict Transformation article

Catholic Peacebuilding: A Personal View from Colombia (Part 3)


In Peacebuilding: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Praxis (Maryknoll, 2010) as well as in his forthcoming book, Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation (Oxford University Press, 2012), Daniel Philpott addresses the issues of transitional justice from a political perspective on reconciliation. He, like others, emphasizes the objective of restoring relationships that were harmed by injustice. This restoration includes all members of the community and not only victims and perpetrators.

Political Reconciliation in Six Difficult (But Necessary) Steps

Philpott distinguishes six practices of reconciliation that are essential to such restoration: the building of socially just institutions; acknowledgment; reparations; punishment; apology; and forgiveness (106ff).

These are very useful elements for several reasons. First, they go beyond what is called victim’s rights to identify practices that point towards the active transformation of the entire web of relationships in a community. Second, Philpott considers reconciliation as a social process, not only as something that happens between the offender and the offended. This widens the horizon of reconciliation and points towards a collective responsibility to restore broken channels of communication and harmed relationships. Third, he also emphasizes the role of the state, which is mainly responsible for the construction of just institutions, thus creating the frame within which the members of a given collective can create just relationships.

Philpott’s approach closely resembles the concept of reconciliation represented by Pablo de Greiff, head of research at the International Center for Transitional Justice, who prefers to speak about “civic trust” instead of reconciliation, emphasizing the state’s responsibility to adhere to its own legal norms and thus augment both its accountability and predictability. Fourth, Philpott, like Schreiter, does not shy away from addressing the highly controversial issues of forgiveness and punishment, which, in his view, are not mutually exclusive.

The Challenge of Restorative Justice

Building on the Colombian case, the fraught relationship between punishment and forgiveness leads me to make some recommendations concerning how to deepen some of the volume’s lines of analysis and thus advance the project of Catholic peacebuilding.

The concept of restorative justice noted in several of the volume’s essays, which seems to underlie Catholic reconciliation, is entirely absent from people’s perception or completely misunderstood as impunity. It is of utmost importance to elaborate on the strategy of restorative punishment and its relation to forgiveness, as it is important to clarify the background of forgiveness as an active decision by the victim to liberate him/herself from resentment without renouncing truth, reparations or even punishment of the perpetrator.

There is of course an enormous literature on the history of punishment (Foucault, Nussbaum, etc.), but reflection on its restorative value is very limited. This applies in particular to countries, where the prison system is so deficient and overpopulated that people leave the prison worse than they enter it, constituting more of a danger to society than before, while their victims are often left without any attention. These dilemmas need further refinement by Catholic theology and research on peacebuilding.

Blessed Are the Peacemakers…but Are They Legitimate?

John Paul Lederach’s article is characteristically full of rich and compelling illustrations of his main arguments, nourished by his vast experience in peacebuilding in places such as Colombia, among others, where he is the person of reference in this topic. His pyramid of actors distributed among the low-, mid-, and high-level is vastly popular and well known, which is why it is often used as a tool of analysis and strategy-building.

His comments on horizontal and vertical capacities are of immense value for analyzing not only the Church’s role in peacebuilding, but also for questioning the impact any organization might have on actors different from itself. If organizations did more analysis of their capacities to communicate horizontally and vertically, they probably would realize that they move in a bubble, without incentives to engage with those who think and act differently.

However, I worry that the pyramid leaves out important questions concerning the legitimacy and desirability of actors in the peacebuilding process. Indeed, there are at least two questions that require further consideration.

First, where would one locate illegal actors in this pyramid? If they are simply added to the three levels, this would suggest that they are of the same quality and enjoy the same legitimacy as civil society actors or universities. Paramilitary or mafia groups are situated in the high-level or mid-level simply because of their use of force and the accumulation of illegally acquired goods that provide them with power and coercive potential.

This leads me to the second point: the pyramid represents the situation in one given moment without including the perspective of change. There are actors whose disappearance or radical transformation would simply be indispensable in a peacebuilding process, because they are neither peace-related nor legitimate. This dynamic element is lacking and makes the pyramid too static.

The Challenge of Making Peacebuilding Principles Concrete

A third point emerging from my own experience on the ground in Colombia is that the principles on which the volume are based — such as solidarity, preferred option of the poor, subsidiarity or dignity — may seem transparent but are in fact subject to radically different interpretations. Given this fact, it would be useful to try to illustrate the application of these principles to post-conflict societies through concrete case studies. This would probably give some orientation and arguments to practitioners who try to establish “just orders” and “just relationships” on the ground. It would also give representatives of the Church a sense of what specific methods they might use to approach the problems of their constituencies, while currently their discourse often remains stuck at the level of abstract principle.

Conclusions

Here, of course, I do not address all the topics explored in this rich volume, nor do I mention every article. This was due to my focus on relating a few of its major insights to my own experience in Colombia.

Briefly, though, I want to underscore that the theological chapters by Kenneth R. Himes and Lisa Sowle Cahill are of immense value, because they demonstrate the power and depth of Catholic theology and social teaching for dealing with “real-world” problems. This is of particular importance in a time when the Catholic Church is often accused of being backward or a totalitarian, self-centered organization that abuses children.

I also read with interest the chapters on inter-religious peacebuilding in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. As a student of political science and international relations I was intrigued by the effort to develop a ius post bellum that orients peacebuilding activities. These reflections are especially important when humanitarian interventions for the sake of human rights or the Responsibility to Protect principle are followed by reconstruction efforts focused on stability and nation-building, but not on community-centered peacebuilding.

So, then, does Catholic peacebuilding as described in this book have the potential to meet the challenges of protracted violent conflicts in the real world?

The answer is a clear yes. Institutionally, the Catholic Church, together with partner organizations, covers a vast range of levels and spheres; it has members on every side; and it usually possesses the material and immaterial resources to build bridges and effectively accompany communities on their difficult journeys from conflict to peace.

In contrast to the state, vehicles of international cooperation, and political parties, the Church usually remains even when crisis erupts and often serves as source of hope for the people. Theologically, it draws on a variety of sources that orient the concept of a just peace, thus rejecting a merely security-oriented peace. Therefore, the Catholic Church has a huge potential for peacebuilding in its various forms.

However, the Church also has several shortcomings that limit its effectiveness as a peacebuilder. First, its very authoritarian decision-making processes arguably run counter to its emphasis on human dignity and rights. This applies not only to theological matters, but is a recurrent problem when the clergy feel that their position automatically provides them with a higher knowledge in peace-related matters. Second, the tendency to view conflict through the lens of a reflexive normative preference for harmony is sometimes an impediment to sober analysis. Third, Church-related organizations tend to be male-dominated, reflecting the absence of women in the formal ecclesiastical hierarchy. This tends to deprive peacebuilding-activities of important human resources. Fourth, it seems that in some seminaries future priests are not trained to concern themselves with the world’s tangible problems or to think systematically about them. Sometimes it is astonishing that well educated and highly sophisticated members of the clergy lack basic tools for analyzing the living conditions of the members of their parish or the state of the dynamics of the societies and systems in which they live. It seems that a new wave of aggiornamento would be useful.

Yet this volume is a major step forward. It contributes to a proper engagement with these and other issues surrounding the Church’s role in peacebuilding. The process that led to this volume was very involved and very demanding. It was also very organic, in that the volume was a natural outgrowth of meetings of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network — meetings that took place in different locales all around the world. The sheer global breadth of the network that incubated this volume’s reflections is one more factor that makes this project so exciting. And so catholic.

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Christian Wlaschütz
Christian Wlaschütz holds an MA in political science from the University of Vienna, Austria and one in international relations from Syracuse University. He worked three years as a political advisor to the Development and Peace Program of the Magdalena Medio region, formerly known as the EU-Peace Laboratory. The Archdiocese of Vienna financed his work. In June 2011 he returned to Colombia to conduct field research for his Ph.D. in political science on the contribution of transitional justice to peacebuilding. He is currently living in Bogotá.
 
Deadly Violence & Conflict Transformation article

Catholic Peacebuilding: A Personal View from Colombia (Part 2)


I am further drawn to reflect on the insights of Peacebuilding: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Praxis when I think of another conflict zone in the Magdalena Medio region, the southern part of the department of Bolivar. This zone is characterized by vast gold resources that have attracted several armed actors: traditionally the ELN guerrilla and, from the 1990s, the paramilitary forces.

Reintegration and Its Discontents

The villages I have in mind served as military bases for the paramilitary units commanded by Macaco, a notorious drug-lord, who was recently condemned to 33 years in prison in the U.S. In 2006 his unit demobilized, and a significant share of ex-combatants decided to settle in this area. In the beginning they constituted around 12% of the overall population, who had suffered under their actions for years. Not surprisingly, this situation caused tensions and uncertainty about the genuineness of their return to civilian life. The government invested considerable resources into politically “selling” the demobilization, but far fewer resources into a serious reintegration program.

The only organization present at this crucial moment was the Development and Peace Program, a Catholic peacebuilding initiative I began to describe in my previous post. The Program launched a process with a threefold objective: (1) to fortify autonomous, grassroots decision-making bodies; (2) to encourage the community to define criteria for the reintegration of the combatants; and (3) to start a collective reparation program.

The Value of Negative Peace 

In this context, several articles in Peacebuilding resonate very much with my own experience as an advisor in this conflict zone. Todd D. Whitmore’s article, based on practical experience in Uganda, challenges Catholic social teaching in several ways (155-189). Although the overall goal of peacebuilding is what Galtung called “positive peace,” which goes well beyond the end of armed, physical violence and includes the eradication of the so-called root causes of a conflict, Whitmore emphasizes the high value of a negative peace consisting in the cessation of hostilities. Speaking with the community’s leaders and observing at close hand their first attempts to organize independently of armed actors and to elaborate their own vision of the community´s future, I realized how much the end of notorious physical violence means to a community´s life and identity. Though they had not yet tackled the underlying structural issues, both Puerto Berrío and the communities in the Southern part of Bolivar started to breathe fresh air for the first time in decades and used this space to develop new ideas and social vision. This “negative peace” is of high value in itself and lays the foundation for sustainable work towards deeper reconciliation and “positive peace.”

A second element of Whitmore´s article is of utmost importance for an appropriate analysis of the suffering and loss caused by an armed conflict: his critique of the distinction of direct and indirect casualties. His argument is compelling and deserves to be read in its entirety; here I only want to give examples from my own experience that underline the need to include victims who were not killed by bullets, but were nonetheless killed by the effects of the conflict.

I was once told of a girl who could not be transported to the hospital due to an armed checkpoint that blocked the way. This girl probably would have survived without such an obstacle — so typical in such conflict situations. The decisions to finance local hospitals and schools are usually taken due to military considerations. So-called “red zones” that are not considered militarily consolidated receive no government investment, thus exposing the population to additional risks that would not exist without the context of conflict. This means that generations of students failed to receive an adequate education. And who knows how many people died of minor diseases due to the lack of health institutions

Whitmore’s admonition to consider conflict-related victims according to a public health methodology is thus highly relevant and useful.

“The Pitfalls of Politics”

I also would like to draw out an “insight from praxis” in dialogue with the article by William R. Headley and Reina Neufeldt (125-154). The project in the Southern part of Bolivar showed that Catholic organizations involved in peacebuilding are often confronted with what the authors call “the pitfalls of politics.” At the time the community process started, there was widespread tacit agreement among civil society actors that the government’s rapid demobilization of the paramilitaries was so flawed that civil society could not be directly involved in it. This stance, however, reflected not only substantial disagreement with the government, but also politically motivated and legitimate opposition.

However, the Development and Peace Program noticed very early on that the communities with which they were working would have much to lose if their only response to the demobilization was complete disengagement. This led to the opinion that the Program should help to create a space where issues such as reconciliation, reparation and reintegration might be discussed and tackled constructively. The potential downside was that this space for conversation would create endless discussion of whether participation in the demobilization constitutes an expression of support for government policies.

The political implications of peacebuilding must be considered from the start, all the more so because some faith-based organizations tend to be more focused on “doing good” than on analyzing the wider environment of their activities. As Kenneth R. Himes, OFM, observes in the volume, “A weakness of Catholic social teaching stemming from its communitarian vision is that conflict is viewed as more apparent than real; the organic metaphor of society, so prevalent in Catholic social teaching, induces a belief that harmony and cooperation are easier to achieve than is the case” (282). This perception leads to a lack of analysis of the actors and the environment of peacebuilding, with potentially negative consequences for the community, the organization, or the endeavor as such.

Transitional Justice: Truth and Healing

Several articles approach the question of truth and its relation with justice and reconciliation. These issues are usually dealt with under the rubric of “transitional justice.” The former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in his 2004 report, The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Countries, defined transitional justice as follows:

Transitional Justice comprises the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation. These may include both judicial and non-judicial mechanisms, with differing levels of international involvement (or none at all) and individual prosecutions, reparations, truth-seeking, institutional reform, vetting and dismissals, or a combination thereof.

This definition makes clear that transitional justice is not a goal in itself, but a means to achieve superior goals such as peace, reconciliation and justice.

In Colombia, communities, human rights organizations, and civil society usually refer to transitional justice as the triad of truth, justice, and reparation, sometimes complementing it with guarantees of no-repetition. Given that punitive justice and reparations are generally seen as the state’s tasks, the focus of civil society often lies with truth.

Schreiter distinguishes between the objective/forensic, the personal/narrative, the dialogical, and the restorative/moral truth. These distinctions are useful because they indicate where a society stands in the process of truth recovery. The last stage can emerge only after a long and arduous process. Indeed, it is so long and arduous that it “stands as a cautionary story intended to keep the conflicts of the past from ever happening again” (387). Colombia is also far from having a dialogical truth, which is a narrative constructed between victims and perpetrators. This points to a fundamental dilemma of the Colombian case. It is a country where, simultaneously, conflict-related issues and post-conflict-issues need to be engaged. This has major implications for reconciliation, truth and no-repetition, because no common agreement on the end of the armed conflict has been reached.

My own experience suggests that the focus of most ordinary people at the moment is on the forensic and the personal truths that answer the questions of who, what, how and why injustices occurred. In the case of Ave Fenix, it is the yearning to know where the remains of their loved ones are buried; the same applies to the relatives of the victims of the massacre of Barrancabermeja in 1998 and dozens of others in Colombia. Disappearance is particularly cruel because it leaves families in a state of permanent hope and uncertainty. To recover the remains of the victim and to re-establish his or her good name are the major priorities of most of the victims’ groups.

It is obviously of immense importance for many to know why their loved one was killed. Yet it is a tricky issue. Six years ago, I participated in a coincidental meeting between representatives of an armed actor and of communities. One topic of the agenda was the request from a family that the armed group explain why they had killed their son. The victim’s father and sister were present, and the representative of the group read a communiqué that shed light on the events that led to the youth´s death. In the end, they apologized, but what had emerged was that the death was simply accidental; it happened when everyone involved was drunk. So while the good name of the boy was re-established, the overwhelming sense was that his death was not only completely unnecessary but occurred under circumstances that did not help the family overcome their grief.

In other words, the truth may not be comforting; it may even increase a family’s shame, grief, or resentment. Indeed, far from fostering reconciliation, the truth may deepen the sense of anger and alienation between the community and the armed actor. So, while the demand for truth is highly understandable, it must come alongside a distinct and intensive effort to transform relationships. And this effort must include the promotion of a discourse that offers ways out of the narrative of suffering and resentment, and that identifies a realistic path towards healing (211).

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Christian Wlaschütz
Christian Wlaschütz holds an MA in political science from the University of Vienna, Austria and one in international relations from Syracuse University. He worked three years as a political advisor to the Development and Peace Program of the Magdalena Medio region, formerly known as the EU-Peace Laboratory. The Archdiocese of Vienna financed his work. In June 2011 he returned to Colombia to conduct field research for his Ph.D. in political science on the contribution of transitional justice to peacebuilding. He is currently living in Bogotá.
 
Deadly Violence & Conflict Transformation article

Catholic Peacebuilding: a Personal View from Colombia (Part 1)


In an environment that can be described as “hot” in every sense, it is refreshing to find a volume that combines the relevance and scholarly sophistication of Peacebuilding: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Praxis (Maryknoll, 2010), edited by Robert Schreiter, Scott Appleby, and Gerard Powers. In a series of three posts, I reflect on this significant set of essays in light of my own peacebuilding work in Colombia under the auspices of the Development and Peace Program. Of course, this work has been significantly affected — and buffeted — by the decade-long armed conflict and its attending violence.

The Development and Peace Program is a Jesuit-led initiative that emerged in 1995 as a joint endeavor of the Dioceses of Barrancabermeja, the Jesuits, the national oil-firm Ecopetrol, and the oil workers’ union USO (Unión Sindical Obrera). It was the response to widespread violence, extreme poverty and a virtual lack of civilian institutions in the region. The Development and Peace Program’s activities consist in the defense of human rights, income-generating projects, promotion of dialogue between civil society, communities and the state, development of a culture of peace, and many other activities. From 2001 to 2009 it was funded by the European Union under the title Peace Laboratory.

The River, the Refinery, and the Cathedral

After reading each of the volume’s essays, I stepped out of the offices of the Development and Peace Program, located in the Magdalena Medio Region in Barrancabermeja, Colombia, to enjoy the view from the balcony on the ninth floor. From there, I have a wonderful perspective on the Magdalena river, Colombia’s longest. To my right there is the old Cathedral that belongs to the Jesuits. Behind me is the oil-refinery, a symbol of the region’s wealth in natural resources particularly oil, gold and coal.

What does “Catholic peacebuilding” mean in this context? The Development and Peace Program may be categorized as a mid-level organization that builds bridges between local communities, grassroots organizations, international cooperation and the government, thus diminishing the social, geographical and cultural distance between isolated villages and the capital Bogotá. Consequently one may add that the Program is an example of a classical peacebuilding organization according to the “pyramid” model of peace scholar John Paul Lederach in that it has both vertical and horizontal capacities of communication and action. As a Jesuit-led organization, the president of which is the local bishop, it is firmly rooted in the Catholic Church’s structure. Through its variety of projects, initiatives and activities, it also covers a wide range of peacebuilding-related fields.

Victims and Healing

Viewing the Magdalena River, however, I have to wonder if Catholic peacebuilding in practice as well as in theory as explored in this volume is sufficient given an enormous range of grave challenges. For the river is not only the life-vein for a vast share of the population. It is also the country’s biggest cemetery.

I first realized the river´s tragic character as both a source of life and a symbol of death when the victims’ organization in Puerto Berrío, Ave Fenix, organized a symbolic purification of the river. From the 1980s onwards, in this town of around 70,000 people, situated some three hours away from Barrancabermeja, many thousands of left-wing politicians, young people, unionists and ordinary people were killed by the paramilitaries and their predecessors. In 2006, Ave Fenix organized the first victim´s week, inaugurated by a march for life from the cemetery to the main square of the town. Afterwards, the victims were remembered with bricks that carried their names. Many of them registered as disappeared in the mid-1980s — a terrible uncertainty for the victims’ relatives.

A year later, one of the main priorities of victims’ week is to re-dignify public spaces, including the Magdalena river. Entering the town one has to cross an impressive iron bridge, for kilometers the only connecting point to the other side of the river. This bridge was also used as an execution site, where people were killed and dropped into the river below, where they disappeared forever or were caught in the nets of local fishermen. Given these atrocities and the consequent social imaginary of the river as a place of death, one instantly appreciates the practical importance of rituals of purification and revitalization.

In his chapter in the volume, “The Catholic Social Imaginary and Peacebuilding,” Schreiter analyses in some length the role of rituals in peacebuilding. In addition to their role in linking the past with the future, Schreiter defines them as “alternative social formations” (228) insofar as they propose a social alternative, are based on participation, and are “rule-bound forms of aggregation, formations that have symbolic as well as empirical significance” (228). In Puerto Berrío these rituals concerning the river, in which fishermen had a significant role, constitute an attempt to combine the memory of the past with a vision of the future. At a time when death rates remain high, the vision to establish a town of peace, life, and community suggests a radical alternative to the present violence.

In another chapter by Schreiter, “Practical Theology of Healing, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation,” he describes the context of such endeavors of social healing: “Social healing has to take into account the lingering, toxic presence of the past in society; it must diagnose and mobilize the energies of the present; it must sketch out a vision for the future” (377). According to Schreiter, social healing has as its cornerstone the quality of relationships. It certainly depends on a significant number of healed individuals who can testify to the reality and power of the healing process.

The healing process consists of three inter-related phases: dealing with the past; diagnosing the present; and envisioning a positive future. The manner in which the past is addressed and remembered provides a clue about the design of the future. Justice makes clear that wrongdoings will no longer be tolerated. The second phase consists mainly of mobilizing resources for social change. This also means coming to terms with existing trauma, individually and socially. Here, a shift of narratives towards those that transmit hope and new possibilities instead of defeat and violation contributes to increasing the potential for positive change and a positive future. This narrative necessarily includes both victims and perpetrators; it avoids further polarizations (377).

Puerto Berrío, particularly due to the ongoing armed conflict and the permanent threat of the drug mafias, is far from being a reconciled town. But the initiatives directed towards truth-telling and the healing of memories, without excluding the possibility of integrating former perpetrators, include several elements that Schreiter deems essential for reconciliation. The enormity of the challenge and the wounds to be healed threaten to cause despair among those who have initiated these activities or try to support them. Therefore, Schreiter rightly starts his article by recalling the principles of a practical theology of reconciliation, the first being that “God is the author of reconciliation; we but participate in the work of God” (370). This prevents peacebuilders from overestimating their role. It also keeps them from regarding every failure as personal.

The Catholic Church in the person of the local priest and the competent bishop, but also in the form of Catholic-inspired organizations, played several key roles in these peacebuilding activities. First, it shielded the members of Ave Fenix from violent actors, who in 2006 saw any organized movement of victims as a potential threat. Second, it built bridges of communication to other organizations and authorities, which was essential in the politically charged environment. Third, it supported the endeavor with financial resources as well as space to meet. Fourth, it had some impact on the orientation of the organization. The use of the highly controversial term reconciliation and the potential for forgiveness, which have at least not been excluded as possibilities, is probably due to the influence of the Catholic Church. This is why the Church may also be seen as a moderating factor — not always welcome in an environment where political discourse and interests, feelings of revenge and mobilization of the victims often result in an opaque mix of goals and activities.

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Christian Wlaschütz
Christian Wlaschütz holds an MA in political science from the University of Vienna, Austria and one in international relations from Syracuse University. He worked three years as a political advisor to the Development and Peace Program of the Magdalena Medio region, formerly known as the EU-Peace Laboratory. The Archdiocese of Vienna financed his work. In June 2011 he returned to Colombia to conduct field research for his Ph.D. in political science on the contribution of transitional justice to peacebuilding. He is currently living in Bogotá.
 
Global Currents article

Catholicism and Economic Life in the Arabian Peninsula (Part 2)


In my previous post I examined some of the ways in which the Catholic Church in the Arabian Peninsula helps cultivate skills and competencies that enable its members to achieve successful economic outcomes. A second set of resources it offers could be called ideational resources — ideals, attitudes, beliefs, and values that have a long-standing, habitual nature because of their cultivation, whether intentional or unintentional, in various institutional settings.

Here, the classic example of how ideas or values contribute to economic outcomes is Weber’s argument, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, about how certain Calvinist beliefs and anxieties about salvation led believers to relentlessly pursue economic success. Along similar lines, Boltanksi and Chiapello argue that capitalism always needs an ideology to render it attractive to the people who pursue it.

So does Catholicism provide any such beliefs or ideals or attitudes that may contribute to the economic success of its adherents in Gulf Cities? And if so, do these constitute a distinctive “Catholic ethic” of sorts? Four main themes emerged from my interviews.

The Value of Discipline

When I spoke to administrators in Catholic schools in the region about whether the education they provide truly distinguishes them from other schools, they emphasized the importance of “values” such as “honesty,” “loyalty,” and “trust.” But they tended to talk about this contribution at an abstract level. When citing specific examples of these values, they often pointed to the presence of these terms in the school motto or mission statement. One school offered an example of specific practices: each day’s morning assembly began with a presentation by one of the classes depicting such values as courage, loyalty, or honesty, through a skit, song, or poem. In general, however, administrators found it difficult to provide more specificity about how these rather generic values were either taught or embodied in any unique way in Catholic schools.

When I talked to individual professionals who were educated in Catholic schools, they often said that the only distinctive feature of the education they received was “discipline.” Most respondents who attended Catholic schools, whether in the Gulf or elsewhere, said that there was a strictness, discipline, and order in their schools that they did not think was present in other schools. Some claimed that this educational experience imparted an expectation that they should be disciplined as well as a conception of themselves as uniquely disciplined people. Moreover, they also claimed that this belief and this self-conception served them well in their work-life, especially when they inevitably had to endure long hours doing tasks that they didn’t want to do.

This widespread experience of the distinctive discipline of Catholic schools seems to resonate with some classic studies of religion serving capitalism by generating “docile” workers. However, while a sense of discipline is a quality that my Catholic interviewees believe is valued in the workplace — and one that managers among my respondents value among their subordinates as well — they were not willing to go so far as to insist that they were more disciplined than others in the workplace because of their schooling, or that it necessarily gave them a competitive advantage in the workplace.

Optimistic Perseverance

When I asked one Indian manager what factors he considered key to success as a manager, he talked about the importance of trust in various ways — his need to trust employees, the need for his employees to trust one another, and for customers to trust that the company is providing them the best quality product they can. Subsequently, I asked him whether his religious beliefs or practices contributed in any way to this emphasis on trust. He replied that they played a crucial role, particularly in sustaining his commitment to the company in the face of regular obstacles:

The main thing is I trust God to provide what I need or what the company needs. Because there are people depending on the company for their livelihood. So it’s just not my talents that matters. If God doesn’t provide, I cannot do anything. So I always trust in God that he will provide me what is required for the people. So that sense is there — I cannot let them go empty-handed.

And this trust, he said, was cultivated through the practice of daily prayer, which helped assuage his anxieties in difficult situations. In this way, many respondents articulated how faith enabled them to be persistent and maintain a high level of commitment, providing a source of strength and positive outlook in the face of challenges.

One Spanish consultant, for instance, spoke of how one morning a particularly difficult client treated him harshly and disrespectfully in front of others in the office. A colleague later came to him and said, “Bad day, huh?” He responded, “No, not really. There is more to my day than this.” His faith, he said, helped him to maintain perspective about what’s really important, to be able to acknowledge the many good things and “blessings” of each day, and not to be defined by difficult circumstances. If not for this, he said, he would have quit long ago.

Servant Leadership

A second way in which faith seems to shape ideas that participants believed to be relevant to economic success was the idea of “servant leadership,” which was evoked by people of different nationalities working in different industries. It was also evoked by people involved in different church groups.

As one respondent from the Indian movement Jesus Youth put it, it was through his involvement in church that he learned that “leadership is servant leadership. It is to serve — it is not that you are a leader so you have to be served. Servant leadership: you serve others. So that’s the way I try to build my leadership and my management.” Similarly, a woman from the Filipino movement Singles for Christ described what she had learned from being involved in her group:  “The emphasis is always that the higher you go, the greater servant you become. We have a lot of teachings and mentoring that make you grounded in the fact that humility is the basis of this. And it’s not about leading, it’s about service.”

One Pakistani marketing executive said he used to carry himself with a lot of “arrogance and pride,” which “alienated people from [him].” It was after attending sessions on humility at a church group in Dubai that he realized that people had been avoiding him because he was quite obnoxious.

I learned that real leaders are also followers — [they] are those who don’t say much, but through their actions say what they say. That helped me, because then I learned that…there will always be somebody who will be a far greater expert than I am. Then when I joined my next company, I kept quiet… I did good jobs, but I didn’t boast about it. That raised [the] respect [that people had for me].

At the same time, this notion of “servant leadership” was not a unique prerogative of church groups. The same woman quoted above also said that this approach to leadership was one of the things that led her to switch departments in her company: “My current management — actually they come from that kind of a mindset as well, that is, we are here to serve people. And that’s one of the reasons I moved to this department.”

Work as Vocation

A couple of respondents articulated a third way in which religion provides ideational resources — a way that is closer to what one theologian has described as the “Catholic ethic” capable of driving capitalism. This is a sense of entrepreneurship as a vocation, a divine calling to engage in creative and innovative activity.

One respondent, an Indian entrepreneur who volunteers at the church several days a week, narrated how he left a well-paying job to start his own business in a completely different industry, primarily because he felt God was calling him to use his talent and creativity to make a difference in the world.

Now if money was the motivating factor, I would have continued in employment, right? Employment-wise, I had a situation that I couldn’t have asked for any better. I was the number-two man in an organization in Dubai. An American company where I had an American secretary. Now how many Indians can boast of that position in Dubai, right? I had check-signing authority… Virtually I was running the whole company… And then I found this talent—this unique talent that God had given me — and I felt that I must use it, for bettering myself and for making the world a better place. Today as I look back on that, I feel that I have achieved that, and I can let it grow even more and make the world a better place by ensuring that my products…will help me make the world a better place.

He is very explicit in attributing both his motivation for embarking upon his entrepreneurial endeavor as well the success he has experienced, to his religious beliefs.

I realized that these are [God’s] talents… Because the education that I had, anybody else can have. But in terms of the talent he has given us…you see when God says with him nothing is impossible…we too can do something that is virtually impossible. Jesus has told us in not so many words, right? So you believe in God, you believe in yourself, and you work towards that aim of doing his will.

Resource or Liability?

These findings suggest that, first, while Catholicism in many ways seems to provide some ideals, values, and beliefs that people say contribute to their economic success, there does not appear to be anything uniquely Catholic about these resources. There is nothing, in other words, that makes them inaccessible or unavailable to non-Catholics — whether trust in God, or the ability to not be overwhelmed by difficulties at work, or servant leadership, or the belief that God wants someone to use his or her talents to make the world a better place. Even the qualities that Michael Novak emphasizes in his argument about a “Catholic ethic” do not seem to be articulated by my respondents in any uniquely Catholic way. What is clear, however, is that Catholic institutions do provide the possibility for these beliefs or ideas to be cultivated with some regularity.

Second, from the way in which my respondents talk about the kinds of beliefs or values or ideas that sustain their commitment to their work, it appears that these resources are not simply abstract principles or ideals that are passively acquired (despite the way in which some school administrators, for instance, seem to talk about them). Rather, they are more akin to virtues — habits that need to be cultivated through practices such as prayer, reflection, and discussion. Families as well as prayer groups in church seem to be the key locations in which such ideational resources are developed. This seems to be supported by the finding that many respondents gave examples of parents or church-group members whose qualities and whose approaches to work and relationships have inspired them. Their example has given them models that they have sought to emulate.

Third, it is not clear that holding such ideals or beliefs necessarily contributes to economic success. What many of my respondents count as “success” in the workplace seems to vary. For some, it has to do with survival — trying not to get fired in a turbulent economy. For others, it has to do with maintaining one’s sense of dignity at work. For some others, it has to do with maintaining a certain quality of life in the workplace. For still others, it has to do with developing innovative products that make the world better. And pursuing these goals may at times even inhibit economic success or social mobility. Attitudes and beliefs about discipline, obedience, and perseverance, for instance, may serve one well in the position of a subordinate, but not necessarily in leadership roles. They may contribute to “survival” but not necessarily growth or mobility.

As for “servant leadership,” it may perhaps improve one’s quality of life in the workplace, and even contribute to recruitment and retention. But since its focus is on relationships rather than on organizational goals, it is plausible that subscribing to this style of leadership may at times serve as a liability for these managers.

The ideals that sustain entrepreneurship again come with a cost — for instance, the entrepreneur quoted above gave up a high-paying position in a reputed company to strike out on his own, and it took him several years before he saw any success. A few respondents narrated examples of how they rejected job-offers with a higher salaries and positions because they preferred their current work environment — the additional income and status would come with other costs they were unwilling to accept. Here, some mentioned that their current work situation allowed them the ability to maintain their commitments to church, which they would likely have to forsake if they took on more financially lucrative job opportunities. Various people similarly expressed ways in which their religious beliefs and commitments served at times as an economic liability — preventing them from moving to locations (such as Saudi Arabia), or accepting promotions that might reduce their free time, or accepting contracts that would lead to conflict with their beliefs (e.g., marketing birth control products).

Thus, it appears not only that some beliefs and ideas and attitudes fostered in Catholic settings in Gulf cities contribute to what some self-identified Catholics consider successful work outcomes. Furthermore, it also appears that their very conception of success is to some degree defined and shaped by their religious ideals and commitments.

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Brandon Vaidyanathan
Brandon Vaidyanathan Chair of the Department of Sociology at the Catholic University of America. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Notre Dame in 2014. He has researched and worked on the cultural dimensions of institutions in South Asia with his work being published in journals such as Business and Society and the Journal of American Academy and Religion.
Global Currents article

Catholicism and Economic Life in the Arabian Peninsula (Part 1)


The Arabian/Persian Gulf region is home to some of the fastest-developing cities in the world. Whether propelled predominantly by oil companies or free trade zones, the growth strategy in many of these cities relies on a massive workforce of foreign guest workers — from domestic help to laborers to professionals to entrepreneurs — the size of which often surpasses that of the local population.

In recent decades, most Gulf countries ruled out the possibility of foreigners becoming citizens (though there are occasional rumors that this might change). Governments here even refuse to call these workers “migrants” and insist on their status as “guest workers,” underscoring the impossibility of formal assimilation into the local population. This is even the case for the many thousands of second- and third-generation expatriates born and raised in these cities, which they have come to consider home. Since these cities also continue to see a flux of foreign workers, these regimes of “permanent impermanence” become extensions of people’s national as well as religious cultures.

In my research into these new hubs of global capitalism, I examine the role of religion—in particular, “foreign” religions such as Catholicism, and how they both shape and are shaped by these regimes. And it comes as a surprise to most people I talk to that Catholicism not only exists but is a significant presence in this part of the world.

Expatriate Religion

The labor force in these Gulf cities is comprised predominantly of people from South and Southeast Asia. The region also attracts a number of non-Gulf Arabs. Western Europeans and North Americans, although constituting a smaller percentage, remain noticeable due to their prominence as tourists as well as in top positions in corporations. While official statistics on foreign populations are not available, estimates from various sources (including embassies and churches) place the Catholic population in these cities at — astonishingly — between 10-30 percent, with a contributing factor here being the increasing Filipino emigration to cities such as Dubai and Doha.

In recognition of the importance of religion for the lives of the foreigners who sustain these economies, most countries in the region, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, have in the past few decades given foreigners the freedom of worship. Land and even sometimes buildings for Christian churches and Hindu and Sikh temples are funded by the government. People are deemed free to express their religious traditions within these delimited spaces, albeit under certain conditions (e.g., there are prohibitions against proselytism, accepting Muslim converts, expressing criticism of rulers, or “meddling” in government affairs).

While the space provided is often inadequate relative to the numbers of adherents, it nevertheless allows for the generation and sustenance of vibrant forms of community life that have been neglected by studies on the region. Research on cities such as Dubai tends to focus either on the consumerism, individualism, and civic disconnect among middle– to upper-class residents, or the harsh and even abusive treatment of lower-class workers such as domestic workers and laborers. Though acknowledged to some extent in one recent study, what has been largely overlooked is the role of religion, through institutions, communities, beliefs, and practices, and how these might be both shaped by the labor regimes in the Gulf as well as play a role in shaping them in turn.

In 2011, I conducted 75 interviews with expatriate Catholics in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Doha, Kuwait, and Dubai. The majority of the interviews were conducted in Dubai. Respondents were of diverse backgrounds: Indian, Filipino, Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian, Ghanaian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Spanish, American, Italian, and French. Most of these respondents would identify as middle-class professionals—e.g., bankers, accountants, engineers, and managers. In my interviews with them, one of the things I examine is how Catholic institutions contribute to members’ economic activity in these cities, either in the formal or informal sector. Even though churches here are set up primarily to serve a delimited spiritual function, they inevitably serve as sources of cultural and social capital which members see as contributing to their economic success and mobility.

Cultivating Technical Competencies

One of the prominent ways in which Catholicism shapes economic activity is by serving as a source of “technical” competencies or cultural capital — technical in the sense of having to do with techniques, skills, and practices that contribute to economic outcomes and social mobility. There are two ways in which Catholicism serves as a source of this form of capital.

Direct Cultivation

The first way is direct — when churches are directly involved in providing training in various kinds of skills in order to enable people to make money or improve their employment prospects. Courses on “survival English,” for instance, teach people how to better navigate job interviews or various situations from making small-talk to buying a car. During the planning meetings while one such course was being designed, the planning committee in one parish felt that the group they who could benefit most from such a course would be domestic workers. Improving English skills could help them gain more desirable forms of employment, such as working for a European or American family (who have a reputation for paying and treating maids better than employers of other nationalities), or landing an office job.

Other courses offered or being planned include training in assembling and repairing computers; using software such as Microsoft Excel; effective salesmanship; and even haircutting and manicuring. The courses are often offered for free and as part of church leaders’ belief that there is more to justice than “charity” (which churches also offer, e.g., by helping needy people with financial assistance). With many parishioners still struggling in the aftermath of the recession, the hope is that these skills could equip people with skills and competencies to help them gain additional income as well as switch careers.

Indirect Cultivation

A second way in which Catholicism seems to provide this form of capital is indirect. Various skills cultivated in church institutions for intrinsic, religious purposes are transposed into work settings to yield economic outcomes.

Soft skills. Those who were actively involved in leadership roles in church groups said that this involvement was instrumental in helping them develop what they described as “soft skills,” such as “communications,” “teamwork,” and “handing conflict.” Interacting in these church groups in a leadership role with people from different backgrounds — occupational, regional, and even national—they believe they learned skills that helped them succeed in the workplace as well. In some cases, people said that this training motivated them to pursue careers in different areas than they had initially planned, such as training, coaching, or human resources. The church thus provided them with skills that they found desirable and which they could further enhance as part of their careers.

Interestingly, the training in such skills that they received in these church groups was either from professionals relying on their experience in the workplace or from management texts such as Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Many saw a strong sense of symbiosis between faith and “effective management.” As one manager I interviewed who was also a leader in one of the church groups stated, “Basically, I think all the management principles came from the Bible.”

Event organizing. Another skill that several respondents mentioned that they learned from their involvement in church and which helped them in the workplace was event organizing. This was particularly the case among those who organized activities for their church group — from weekly group meetings to retreats to bringing down visiting speakers to entertainment activities to social service activities.

Presentation. Another common ability that various church groups cultivate is presentation skills, especially with software such as Power Point. Leaders of several groups told me that they rely on such technology so that their weekly activities, teachings, and worship sessions appear — in the various words that they used — “serious,” “relevant,” “credible,” and “professional.” One young woman credits the presentation skills she learned from her Arabic prayer group with landing her a job at one of the top hotel chains in the Gulf. At her job interview, before the actual interview she asked if she could give them a short Power Point presentation that she had prepared on herself and why she believed herself to be the right candidate for her job. Her sales pitch, she believed, worked, because it allowed her to highlight her initiative and her positive qualities in ways that might be lost in a conventional interview.

Etiquette. Some respondents indicated that something else  skills learned during their upbringing in Catholic households, which they said were generally more “westernized,” in the sense of familiarity with English and with western customs. One of my respondents — a motivational speaker — narrated an incident when he was giving a talk in Dubai to a group of [Indian] senior executives from major corporations.

During one of the meals it came to his attention that they were unsure of “basic [western] table manners.” Having grown up in a middle-class Catholic household in Bombay, this was an elementary aspect of his upbringing, while to these managers who had grown up in more traditional (presumably non-Christian) Indian households, it was not. Hesitant to do something that could possibly humiliate them, he asked, “Would you mind if I demonstrate and use you as an example and do a correction on it?” They said, “Yes, certainly.” I said, “You will not hold that against me, that I am correcting you in front of so many people?” They said, “Our parents didn’t teach us, our schools didn’t teach us, our universities didn’t teach us, our present employees don’t teach us. So if you teach us, do you think that we will be angry with you?” So I was a little taken aback to think that they would accept. I mean senior, well-educated managers!”

He believed that this incident and his impromptu demonstration of Western etiquette improved his professional reputation, and he is now trying to organize a seminar on etiquette at church. This, he believes, could benefit many people in their professional lives and social standing—by avoiding faux-pas which could come across (to westerners, presumably) as ignorant or uncultured.

These are some of the ways in which Catholic institutions seem to cultivate various skills and habits that contribute to members’ economic outcomes as well as social standing. This contribution, further, is to both the formal and informal economy.

Two points should be noted here. First, the above findings are not equally present across Catholic parishes in the region. I have had to refrain from mentioning the specifics of the parishes in order to maintain confidentiality. Second, I do not mean to say that non-Catholic religious institutions and groups, be they Christian or non-Christian, do not provide these or comparable skills and competencies. My intention here is only to focus on how one institution, Catholicism, provides this form of cultural capital.

In addition to the technical competencies discussed above, a further way in which Catholic institutions shape people’s economic activity is ideationally — through beliefs, values, and ideas that members say contribute to their lives in the workplace. This will be the subject of my next post.

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Brandon Vaidyanathan
Brandon Vaidyanathan Chair of the Department of Sociology at the Catholic University of America. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Notre Dame in 2014. He has researched and worked on the cultural dimensions of institutions in South Asia with his work being published in journals such as Business and Society and the Journal of American Academy and Religion.
Field Notes article

Contending Modernities in East London


In its religious intensity and diversity, east London is an exciting testing-ground for the Contending Modernities (CM) project.  R. Scott Appleby has summed up the project’s vision thus:  to explore the interaction between Catholicism, Islam and secularism, treating them as “three distinctive, internally plural, and overlapping traditions that have operated both apart from and in dynamic interaction with one another, thereby giving shape to the contemporary world we all inhabit.”

Contending Modernities & the Quest for a New Cosmopolitanism

The first phase of the east London project is entitled “Community Organizing, Migration & the New Cosmopolitanism.”  East London is an area with a long history of migration, and the religious and cultural diversity it brings.  Brick Lane Mosque in Tower Hamlets is a case in point: it was initially a Huguenot church, then became a Synagogue, and is now a mosque that caters largely to Bengali worshippers.

How do migrant communities with diverse religious and cultural identities shape a common life?  Professor Vincent D. Rougeau has argued for the possibility of a “new cosmopolitanism,” rooted in a faith and culture and also committed to the dignity of all human beings — and, in consequence, willing to work with neighbours of other faiths and cultures to negotiate and pursue a shared vision of the common good.

Applying this vision to his own faith and context, Rougeau writes that a “Catholic cosmopolitan” will be “a loyal citizen” who is also

rooted in a faith tradition that knows no political boundaries and is committed to the dignity of all human beings. The Catholic cosmopolitan should approach American society from a position of critical distance, and this means assessing American social, economic, and political life as a Christian first.

The east London project will consider the relevance of such a “cosmopolitan” vision to migrant communities in our local context.  Catholic and Muslim migrants have historically both been treated with some suspicion in the UK — in part because their faith involves loyalties that reach beyond the nation-state, to an avowedly international Church or Ummah.

The experience of Catholic and Muslim engagement in broad-based community organizing runs counter to such suspicions.  Community organizing harnesses precisely the “problematic” quality of these faiths — above all their loyalty to a truth that transcends the nation-state, and a “critical distance” from the status quo — as a means of working for justice in the local area. Many other forms of political engagement treat religious truth-claims as a problem, demanding, for example, that citizens frame all political demands and arguments in ways that make no reference to such “dogmas.” This move looks deceptively neutral.  In fact, it effectively silences those for whom religious faith is inseparable from wider moral and political commitments.

By contrast, community organising offers a way in which divergent ethical and spiritual worldviews — including Catholic, Muslim and secular — can be more fully expressed. For example, Citizens UK, Britain’s community organizing movement, seeks to build relationships across these “contending modernities” — relationships that lead to common action on issues where convictions overlap.  To give two recent examples, Catholic churches, mosques and secular trade unionists have united to campaign for a Living Wage and for an earned amnesty for undocumented migrants.

Community Organizing & the Wider Dialogue between Contending Modernities

In the context of community organizing, there is an “agreement to disagree” on more contentious and divisive issues.  It is hoped that the very process of building solidarity and trust through common action can lead on to a more constructive and peaceable conversation on these contentious issues.  This is illustrated by the way community organising has engaged with the practice of Scriptural Reasoning.  ‘Scriptural Reasoning’ is the communal practice of Christians, Muslims and Jews reading their sacred texts together — holding together explicit disagreement about their status with a desire to deepen relationships, grow in mutual understanding, and share with the others’ that which each believes to be true.  In churches, mosques and synagogues involved in community organizing, Scriptural Reasoning does not come at the start of the conversation across faiths; rather, it grows out of common action.  This leads first to discussion of the Scriptures that inspire such action and then to more difficult passages and issues.

The research in the east London project is being conducted by the Contextual Theology Centre (CTC), under the supervision of its Senior Fellow and recent Notre Dame faculty member, Professor Vincent D. Rougeau.  This collaboration grows out of an earlier research partnership between CTC and Notre Dame on Christian social action in multi-faith contexts.   The new programme involves research into the motivations for Christian, Muslim and secular engagement in community organizing, and the way these different worldviews negotiate the basis of a common life.

The research team is exploring these issues via a literature review and a series of structured interviews with Muslims, Catholics (and other Christians) and secular participants in community organizing efforts, in order to explore their aspirations and motivations in collaborating across religious and cultural divides for justice.  With additional funding from the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey, we are also undertaking a wider assessment of the state of civil society in these neighbourhoods in the wake of the summer riots.

The project has begun at a hugely eventful time.  The contribution of faith to a peaceable and just society stands at the heart of Britain’s political debate.  In the last month, we have been reflecting on the role of faith in the responses to  the London riots and the financial crisis.  Churches were at the heart of the local response to the riots as well as the ongoing debate about its causes.  The Occupy LSX Camp at St Paul’s Cathedral has the church at the heart of our national economic debate.  CTC’s research team has been equipping local churches to engage in that debate .  We have also been contributing to the ongoing public conversation, informed by our previous research on faith and community organizing, arguing in particular that engagement with Islamic and secular campaigners can in fact help the Church become more faithful and effective in its public witness.

Events continue to unfold at considerable speed. You can follow developments on our Faithful Citizens blog.

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Angus Ritchie
Canon Dr. Angus Ritchie is an Anglican priest. For over twenty years, he has served in parishes in East London involved in community organizing, playing a leading role in campaigns for the Living Wage, affordable housing, and a cap on interest rates. He is the founding director of the Centre for Theology and Community. His latest book, Inclusive Populism: Creating Citizens in the Global Age was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2019, and was recently discussed by Pope Francis at a conference of Catholics involved in community organizing.
Authority, Community & Identity article

Interreligious Dialogue and the State in Muslim Modernity

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The Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue (DICID) recently held its ninth annual conference on October 24-26, 2011. The only major interfaith dialogue event in the region, the conference is a state-sponsored event that brings together prominent scholars, practitioners, government officials, and interested publics, and aims to improve understanding and cooperation between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

Inter-Religious Dialogue and Social Media

This year’s theme was “Social Media and Inter-Religious Dialogue,” and the conference brought together an impressive group of international Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders and scholars from 55 countries, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Archbishop Patrick Kelly of Liverpool, the Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rabbi Herschel Gluck of London and the former Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr. Nasr Farid Wasel.

Panelists and discussants reflected on how religious leaders might interpret the moral insights of religious thought so as to provide ground rules for an ethical use of social media. Hence the proliferation of wordy paper titles like, “How to prepare and qualify individuals religiously for the use of social networking sites in the renaissance of community development.” In addition to the panel sessions, the conference included how-to workshops on harnessing social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter for the practical work of interfaith dialogue. Within a general recognition of the need to engage social media in order to use it as a force for good, voices of skepticism were raised about the effect of the medium itself on efforts at inter-faith community building. Most participants, for example, argued that dialogue requires face-to-face encounters to build trust, make community sustainable, and forcefully counter those who would do otherwise.

The setting of the conference—notably, its sponsorship by the state—was just as interesting as its theme, and revealed how the relationship between religion and state is being re-evaluated in contemporary global politics. This re-evaluation recognizes that religious institutions continue to provide public services which further the business of statecraft in a way that the state is not always capable of doing. Whether through reconciliation processes in post-conflict societies, religious political parties in emerging democracies, state-funded faith-based initiatives in the United States, or now inter-religious dialogue in Qatar, regimes are attempting to harness the power of religious projects in increasingly explicit ways. The advantages and risks of the new relationships between religion and states which form as a result, however, are not often well understood, and the DICID conference helped put both on display.

Opportunities for “Muslim Modernity”

The sponsorship of the DICID by the state of Qatar has clear advantages for advancing the success of inter-religious dialogue as well as its broader goal of peaceful coexistence among peoples of different religions. The most important of these advantages is that the DICID guarantees that a major event on inter-religious dialogue will be hosted annually in the heart of the Middle East. The promotion of such an event is good not only for world peace but for Qatar as well, and particularly for its ambitions of becoming the region’s leading global promoter of “Muslim modernity,” distinguishing itself from its glitzier neighbor, Dubai, by emphasizing culture, education, sports and the media.  As an economically powerful, Muslim-majority state, Qatar is burning to prove to the world the success of a religiously-infused model of modern Muslim society.  The DICID’s opening video, which was replayed continuously on a TV screen in the lobby throughout the conference, emphasized the promise of this vision, with moving images recalling Qatar’s media campaign to host the 2022 World Cup.

The success of this vision, so far, endows Qatar with a unique credibility within the Muslim-majority world to act as a trustworthy interlocutor with religious “others” in the West. Thus, the conference was able to include religious leaders and clerics from the Muslim world who might normally be suspicious of the political agenda of an interfaith dialogue initiated in the Christian or secular West (as many such initiatives are). An eminent cleric from Mauritania echoed the skepticism of many by saying, “I do not have much hope for the success of inter-religious dialogue, but I came because of the good work of the state of Qatar.” For inter-religious dialogue to bring religious leaders to a transformative discussion, it must convince these skeptics of its neutral design towards peace. As the conference’s host, Qatar can do much to build this confidence in the Muslim world.

The Limits of State-Sponsored Inter-Religious Dialogue

Yet the very nature of the conference as a state-led political project complicates this quest for a religious consensus that could build such peace.  As its host, Qatar justifiably uses its position of power to invite religious leaders to help in the task of creating order, security and peace.  The effectiveness of a meaningful consensus among religious leaders, however, is hampered when that consensus becomes a function of a political agenda, as opposed to a religious one.

In this respect, it was interesting to note the paucity of prayer at the conference, and the lack of any organized attempt at a shared sacred ritual among participants. Although the meeting began with a prayer by an Imam, the sacred content of the meeting remained very much in the background. In other inter-religious initiatives hosted by religious organizations, there is usually an attempt by religious leaders to appeal to a common transcendent source, to unify hearts and souls together and beg God for illumination, compassion and mercy. This transcendent focus is part of the explicit framework of religious leaders’ search for consensus and peace. And its absence at this event was not entirely overlooked either. One Jewish rabbi, for instance, at the end of his talk expressed the wish—while admitting the likelihood that it would not be taken seriously—that participants would join together in song.

Despite organizers’ efforts to keep the event focused on questions of whether and how different religious traditions could appropriate new technologies to better foster interfaith understanding, political questions—notably, frustrations about the situation in Palestine—remained simmering concerns that would inevitably erupt during unscripted moments such as Q&A sessions. The challenge that some participants posed is whether such dialogue, held so remotely from key centers of political power and decision-making, does any practical good at all for the real challenges faced by religious communities.

An additional challenge is how the state can allow such dialogue to flourish without setting serious limitations on the scope of the discussion. For instance, one Protestant pastor living in a neighboring Gulf country shared with the authors after his talk that the organizers had given him a slap on the wrist for having brought up a sensitive and taboo topic in the region—the situation of migrant laborers. His paper openly addressed the serious problems faced by many of these workers due to abusive employers—locals and foreigners alike—and was an impassioned plea for religious leaders to work together to solve this problem. Both his talk and the discussion that followed—in which a member of the audience attempted to deny the existence of the problem—were prematurely wrapped up. In a region where even implied criticism of governments is often met with punishment, it remains to be seen how a state like Qatar can balance this pursuit of open discussion and dialogue with its prerogatives to maintain its public face.

Implications

As the Bosnian Grand Mufti Ceric argued, part of the business of inter-religious dialogue is to ensure that the “serious business of politics is not left to politicians alone.” Inter-religious dialogue can help to do this by articulating universal truths about human existence and questioning, fustigating, and pulling politics (and each other) towards those divine ideals.  Religion, of course, is also too important a business to be left to religious leaders alone. It is the political imperative of constructing everyday peace and order that moves politicians to host initiatives such as these in the first place and to invite religious leaders to remember their vocation as mediators of divine compassion, including here on this earth. This represents a new model of religion and state in global politics, one in which religious and political leaders recognize their distinct, but dependent, universes of action and meet together in the public sphere to work towards the common good.

Qatar, therefore, has a difficult line to walk in order to encourage inter-religious dialogue without determining and constraining its agenda; to encourage an inter-religious framework for peace, but to set the dialogue free and to allow its religious logic and gifts to fill out the political imperative for dialogue today. If Qatar is successful in doing this—we should certainly hope for this—it will not only further its distinctive political prowess in the Gulf but will have also contributed significantly to the creation of a fruitful model of religion-state cooperation in the Middle East today.

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Michael Driessen
Michael Driessen is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. He teaches courses on Religion and Politics and co-direct the University’s Interfaith Initiative. His research interests include the nature of public religions in Catholic and Muslim societies and the role of interreligious dialogue in contemporary global politics.
Brandon Vaidyanathan
Brandon Vaidyanathan Chair of the Department of Sociology at the Catholic University of America. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Notre Dame in 2014. He has researched and worked on the cultural dimensions of institutions in South Asia with his work being published in journals such as Business and Society and the Journal of American Academy and Religion.