Violence Prevention Articles & Essays

This article is being collaboratively written and developed via an online moderated dialogue.

Evan

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Question: What is the root cause of domestic/international violence and is there a common root cause between domestic and international violence?

 

Evan,

I'm really looking forward to this online dialogue with Frema Engel. Recently I read her book, Taming the Beast, and I was struck how the 4 "Rs" she identifies in the context of workplace violence are so applicable to the international politcal violence prevention work I'm involved in these days. Recognition, Roots, Response, and Recurrence.

The question of root causes is obviolsy central to any effort to prevent violence or to reduce it if it is ongoing. But 15, even 10 years ago I would not have agreed (easily, or quickly) that working in domestic violence ( cases of absue in the home, usually perpetrated by men on women and children) was really comparable to working in international conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Now, I'm a little more inclined to say there is a strong comon denominator: violence as the abusive use of power.

Before I got around to distilling my experiences in cases of wife abuse and the many conflicts and wars I've worked in for the past 30 years, I would have argued more of an "IR" explanatory model for inter-state violence and a socio-cultural one for inter-ethnic, intra-state violence. That is, I would think that the inherent anarchical nature of the international state system would be a central explanatory concept for inter-state war (and even in the case of insurgencies, one might argue the rebels are using violence because when push comes to shove where States are concerned, shove it is).

And of course, there ar so many helpful models to look at causes of international and intercommunal conflict (proximate causes, triggers, structural causes). And we could add to these analytical concepts and models, demonstrating the complexity of international warfare and insurgencies within states. That discussion would seem to take us a long way off from domestic violence.

What concerns me is the focus on conflict itself, including even the aspiration to "resolve" it. I have come to think that the conflation of the two words, "violent" and "conflict" cause many of us to misplace the focus of our analysis and the ways of addressing conflict, wars. When the words are conflated, "violent" is an adjective describing a noun, "conflict". I find more every day that I work in "violent conflict situations" it is really the Violence itself that needs attention, as a noun in its own right. So the causes of conflict become violence (perceived or real) and these are either direct, overt, operational manifestations of violence OR structural. Hitting, kicking, removing, or shooting someone is obvious violence. So I keep thinking, how can we prevent hitting, killing? And is that done by helping people express conflict nonviolently? Yes, but if the hitting and killing are indeed cuased by deeper rooted strucutral violence and my analysis goes there, when I look at structural "causes" of conflict they turn out to be violence themselves. They are not just curious cuasal phenomenon. They are again perceived or real violence that is being done to a person, group or society. Of course, it seems more than reasonable they would give rise to conflict: to the "perception of incompatible interests", to use a comon definition in the conflict resolution field. But they may also give rise to various forms of direct viloence (riots, assassinations, insurgenices, terrorist acts, cvil wars). And the cycle of violence is apparent.

How does that aply to domestic violence? I don't know and I'm not even sure my thinking about the need to focus more on violence as the abusive use of power is correct.

I'm glad this is a informal dialogue and as I said, I look forward to Frema's first round of responses.

Ben

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Ben,

You really got this dialogue off to a great start. I'm somewhat reluctant to comment about international conflict and violence because as you know this is not where my experience has been. In recent years I've been concentrating my attention on workplace conflict and violence that is for the most part contained in work organizations, but has, in some cases, extended to the community in which these organizations are located. Nevertheless as an observer in world events, I think that we can draw a few analogies to the international scene.

Let me comment about the link between conflict and violence because I’ve been preoccupied with trying to understand this. I'm going to stick to my experience with workplace problems, although I am also comfortable commenting on family life as appropriate.  

First the obvious: chronic or unresolved conflicts lead to an exacerbation of tension, frustration, anger and entrenched positions.  When people reach the boiling point I see three things happening most often.  One, they turn their emotions inward and get depressed, burned out, or become physically ill.  Two, they become apathetic and "turn off", ignoring what goes on around them, and adopting the position that "it is none of my business". They become the silent bystander to abusers and their targets and ignore what they see happening around them. Third, they act out their feelings.  One can see it in their behavior - how angry, resentful, hurt and offensive they are to those around them; that is, they become violent.  The violence of course is often expressed verbally, or they become a bully in every sense of the word.  At times they take let out their feelings through physical behavior.  

These scenarios get played out all the time in the workplace.  One question I always ask unhappy employees is why they don’t leave if they dislike the situation and the people they work with so much.  Is it worth getting sick over, or letting the situation consume them?  The answer almost always boils down to people’s feelings/beliefs of some sort of acquired rights to be there, or else they don’t feel things will be better for them anywhere else.  These beliefs are not based at all on any hard evidence at all.  Nonetheless, it is very hard to move people out of this thinking into realizing there is a whole world waiting for them, and if they were to make a move they would probably have something better and they would certainly be happier working in another environment.   However, most people just do not like or want to change, and so they stay and tolerate the intolerable, becoming resigned to their destiny.

So we have unhappy people, believing they are right and the other person is wrong, not wanting to take the first step to settle their differences.  What seemed to be once, well functioning units becomes hostile and toxic. The environment becomes full of animosity and contempt and people can’t work together anymore.

What I have been increasingly struck with, is how entrenched people’s positions have become and how easy it is for workplaces to become hotbeds for conflict, violence and meanness.  I also see – from my experience intervening in these environments – that it is not so difficult to repair the problems when conditions are right.  In the workplace, it takes a senior person who is tired enough, who wants things to change and is ready to invest the time, money and resources to make it happen.  It also takes the right intervention (Here my Four R’s for Violence Prevention comes in handy, for you need to understand the Root causes) the right intervention (Response) and a strategic approach to resolving the issues and getting results (Prevent a repetition). 

Most of the time, I see how important it is to “set the stage” (strategic plan), and to “force” people to get involved, and be willing to participate in training, mediation or alternate dispute resolution processes.  How amazing it is to see how quickly resistance can be broken down and partnerships in peace-building formed when the process is planned, “staged” and the boss (“higher authority”) is involved. The critical steps with the approach is to coach the boss and have him/her involved in the process, be able to redefine the problem in terms of a performance issue, and make a demand for resolution.   

Having said all of this, I don’t understand really why violence is such a predominate behavior for so many discontent, angry, frustrated people.  I often wonder if humankind is hardwired for violence. Or, are we sorely in need of leaders of workplaces and governments like Dr. Martin Luther King and Gandhi, people with exceptional high morals, strong resolve in their beliefs, charismatic, and who are excellent role models and can lead the way.  It doesn’t work (in the workplace at least) when there are double standards, when people aren’t taken seriously, when leaders are weak or lack resolve for things to be different. It does work when leaders are involved, resolve problems, treat people respectfully (this doesn’t mean they always get their way) and able to build a sense of community at work.  

Where am I going with this? If we are to expand this thinking into the community and countries, would not the same apply?  Do we have double standards, do we tolerate or ignore so-called innocuous behaviors early on, do we set up conditions whereby people don’t feel they have any options other than to negotiate and talk out their differences?  Lastly (for today at least) do we have strong leaders with exceptionally high moral standards, who are charismatic, excellent role models, and who can lead the way?

Ben, I’m looking forward to your response and continuing this dialogue.

Frema

 

Frema Engel

Engel & Associates, Montreal

Organizational Architect:  Inspiring employees through community-building at work

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Hi Ben and Frema:
Thank you both for your thoughts about possible root causes that might be common between violence at the international and domestic levels.
Your replies raise some fascinating parallels between the possible root causes in the two contexts and it also provides a good transition to my next question about interventions.
As Ben notes, while looking at the International level there are certainly a lot of factors and causes of violence that are not relevant at the domestic level such as the inherent nature of the state system to cause inter-state wars but there are some similarities when we turn our focus to  violence.
It’s interesting to note that Frema’s Four R system can be applied to both domestic violence and international violence and, as it turns out, we’ve just explored the second R: Roots.
But, if we now turn our attention the third R (the Responses) we can see that Frema has already mentioned some important factors in her interventions that help workplaces become less violent. Two interesting things that she mentioned are the role of leaders and the strategic plan that guides the intervention.
So, I would invite Ben to now respond to Frema’s reply and to another question about interventions:
1-What role does the strategy of the intervention play at the international level? More precisely, could you comment on the notions of “forcing” people to the peace table and the role of higher authority in the intervention.

 

 

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Question: Are there interventions that are common between the the two levels ?

 

Question: What is the biggest obstacle to living violence free at the international/domestic level?

Question: Do you see lessons learned from efforts to reduce domestic violence applicable to international violence (i.e., intra-state civil war, the “war on terror”)?