What to Know Before You Go

[marct]

Hi Rex,

I actually agree with Steve here--and I am an academic, and of the kind that attends the sort of conference in question.

I'm sort of in a 6 of one, half dozen of the other mind about this. I think it would definitely be useful but I'm not sure it this is the right venue for it.

Having read the paper over several times, I'm not at all convinced that Malinowski (in particular) and some of the broader theoretical contextualization (in general) adds more to the analysis in substantive insight than it takes away in distracting from the central points. I often found that I wished there was further discussion of the why/where/how tos of each of the 10 questions.

That was the sticking section for a lot of people who commented on the first draft of the paper. There were three main reasons for keeping the Malinowski stuff in there:

1. establish a common ground between cultures/societies that is different from the individualistic one inherent in Maslow's hierarchy (i.e. basic needs for a culture rather than an individual);
2. establish a context for talking about distinctions between "culture" and "society"; and
3. establish a taxonomy for figuring out required vs. desired changes in social institutions.

I would have liked to go into more detail in the specifics, but that gets us into some real problems. First was length; I had to establish the common ground before I could do any analysis and the analysis, especially using cases, would be quite long. Second was audience; I made a choice, and I may well have made the wrong one , that it was better to get that common ground out of the way first in this paper and then expand on it later.

I think that we academics use theoretical jargon the way military folks use acronyms--it is partly to transmit complex ideas in a parsimonious way, and it is partly a tribal ritual intended to demarcate in- and out-groups

Oh, yes, that is so true .

BTW Marc, I'm not convinced that conflict is always linked to the primary failure of social institutions. Assuming that the ability to organize and project violence for the purposes of maintaining security or enhancing communal power is also rooted in institutions, it might also signal the excessive "success" of some (over others).

I don't think that I said that - I believe what I said was that it is always so linked in the case of failing and failed states. Conflict, or at least controlled and "rules governed" conflict ("conventional" in the sense of being governed by some type of convention) may very well be a major part of intra and inter-social systems. That's certainly not a "failure" for those systems. What I was trying to get at was that such "conventions" may be viewed as failures by other actors in the inter-social systems who will then construct those "conventions" as "failed", and that those doing the constructing are often based out of totally different cultural institutions.

Also, while I think you are right to assert the importance of justice in successful, stable conflict resolutions, I'm not sure I agree that "Finding a “story” that matches what all stakeholders can view as “just” is crucial to building a lasting peace" .. it may be enough that the parties view the outcome as "just enough" or "not too unjust" balanced against the costs of war (this is only a slightly tweak on your argument here--another advantage of jettisoning some of the theoretical contextualization or shifting it into footnotes is that it would allow you to pursue these issues more fully).

Aargh! Good point, and I'll have to rewrite that part. You're absolutely right; I was trying to get at "satisficing" behaviour rather than absolute agreement.

On shifting more of the theory into footnotes, I'm already at 134 and, even for me, that is a lot . Part of that is the referencing system (I hate that style!). Still and all, I was seriously thinking about moving a lot of the Malinowski material into an appendix, but that didn't meet the genre requirements <sigh>.

I think I am going to have to expand this into a larger work with a lot more examples....

Marc