Journal of Dialogue Studies, Special Issue, Vol 7

In 2008, the Council of Europe Ministers of Foreign Affairs set out a new framework for approaching ethno-religious diversity within member states. As a direct response to expressed concerns about the failure of multiculturalism, or at least of multicultural policies, Intercultural Dialogue was promoted as a better way of connecting communities. However, critics claim it is unclear how the approach differs from previous integration frameworks; furthermore, they argue that ICD contributes towards unequal platforms for exchange between minorities and the majority group and can reinforce exclusion. This paper examines such concerns by exploring practitioners’ understanding of the concept. Structured interviews were conducted with 52 delegates at the World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue held in Baku in 2015 These distinctive findings demonstrate that participants frequently discussed ICD interchangeably with other concepts and frameworks, most commonly multiculturalism and inter-faith dialogue, supporting claims that it has been difficult to define, even among practitioners attending a global summit on the topic. In addition, delegates from outside of Europe were more likely to highlight issues related to power imbalance when engaging with dialogue processes. The paper provides an important addition to empirically informed literature on both the conceptualisation and utility of ICD as a framework for engaging with diverse societies.

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This paper explores how dialogue was introduced by the author through a model of praxis called ‘Young People Peace and Change.’ It was developed through community-based research, and further supported by evidence from school-based youth work, with young people in two cities in England. The paper focuses on the role of dialogue as part of Photovoice, linked to the duality of our praxis to provoke consciousness and action. It is an exciting and innovative theory-driven approach that actively seeks to help young people identify, understand and transform pressing issues and challenges of peace in their everyday lives. The work emerges from the belief that part of the solution to young people and violence is embedded in their common concerns and aspirations for peace, which can be elicited by bringing them safely into dialogue. Furthermore, the project seeks to cultivate real change by helping young people to ‘speak’ and self-advocate through a range of methodologies including photography, photo-elicitation and public engagement, to inform youth serving systems. ‘Young People Peace and Change’ has been awarded and recognised for successfully engaging a significantly vulnerable community of young people (including those at risk of violence). It has great potential for replicability and wider implications for practitioners, students, policy makers and research.

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In edition 1 volume 1 of the Dialogue Journal I outlined the case for a three-tiered framework to theoretically position intergroup dialogue. The framework was based on a) the concept of difference between groups, b) the bridging of difference through an inclusive vision, and c) transformation framed through the understanding of predominant dialogue scholars, chief amongst which was Paulo Freire. Although useful, I found the framework inadequate, particularly when applied to conflict situations. In short it fails to appreciate and interrogate difference and its role in the dialogue process. In particular, it does not take account of the competing narratives upon which difference and conflicting identities can interact. A framework of moral psychology based on the workings of behavioural psychologist Johnathon Haidt was utilised to go deeper into the manner in which people construct their sense of cultural identity. Haidt argues that we position the cultural other according to broad conceptions of moral reality to identify with either the certainty of a cultural in-group or the flexibility of broad notions of humanity. This paper explores this augmented framework of dialogue in the case of negotiations to treaty between Aboriginal Victorians and the Victorian government in Australia. Data analysis on interviews of key figures in the treaty process, as well as the analysis of an online interactive campaign involving members of both groups, revealed a hidden complexity to the dialogue process and the discourses from which cultural threat is framed. The paper argues the case that well thought out theories around identity can augment our understanding of dialogue.

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The paper explores the extent to which citizen apologies and forgiveness are important tools of citizen diplomacy and peace-making efforts. In recent years, there has been an increase in the frequency of apologies by state leaders and research into the reasons for these apologies. However, there has been little research into apologies by citizens in citizen diplomacy efforts. This paper seeks to fill a gap in research by exploring the role of citizen apologies and forgiveness in citizen diplomacy efforts in transnational conflicts. Conflicts are no longer just state-to-state, but instead involve a whole host of state and non-state actors alike both in perpetrating conflicts and in peacemaking efforts. As such, there is a need to explore the diplomatic tools needed in building dialogue and improving relations between states that have a history of conflict. This research looks at case studies of conflicts involving Bosnia/Serbia and Libya/America. It can be concluded that citizens, as members of a collective, have the right and moral responsibility to apologise for offences of their states. These apologies do not serve as official legal acts of contrition, but as helpful diplomatic gestures of good will used to improve relations between states that have a history of conflict.

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This article is the second part of a two-part paper. The first part was my chapter ‘Hans- Georg Gadamer’ published by the Dialogue Society in Dialogue Theories II in 2016. In the 2016 chapter, I showed how Gadamer’s ‘philosophical hermeneutics’ as expounded in his great book, Truth and Method (1960), influenced conflict resolution attempts to overcome cultural clashes and inspired the United Nations millennial ‘dialogue of civilisations’ forty years later.

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This article is based on a four-month placement with the Colombian peace-building organisation Rodeemos el Diálogo (Embrace Dialogue, ReD) in London, as well as three years of working with the organisation in Bogotá, Colombia. It discusses the causes of violence in Colombia, the conceptualisation of dialogue, and ReD’s notion of a ‘culture of dialogue’. First, by explaining the coloniality of knowledge, power, and being in the Colombian context, I argue that the contemporary armed conflict is a legacy of colonial logics that are still being reproduced. Then, through a literature review on the concept of dialogue, I describe its origins, its potential to be a useful method to peacebuilding and the danger of it reproducing coloniality and control. Finally, I explain how ReD understands the ‘culture of dialogue’ and why it has the potential to resolve conflict in a non-violent way and take action against colonial-inherited inequalities and oppressions. I argue that to resolve Colombia’s violence it is necessary to address the coloniality of power, knowledge and being taking place. However, to address these it is of utmost importance to be able to acknowledge the existence of violence and to recognise the multiplicity of epistemologies that coexist in today’s world. Within these processes of recognition, culture of dialogue plays an important role.

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This research sought to analyse how the environmental educator process developed by a non- governmental organisation with maritime artisanal fishermen from the coast of São Paulo (Brazil) helped to foster dialogue to face the conflict of marine conservation versus fisheries. The data were collected through the analysis of documents and semi-structured interviews composed of a set of indicator questions divided into three categories: external aspects, internal aspects, and dialogical action and answers analysed using a synthesis of the ideas on dialogue of Martin Buber, David Bohm, William Isaacs and Paulo Freire. The results show the incipience of dialogue in the relationship between the actors. The external dialogical aspects were limited to the weekly frequency of the conversations and some formations of the participants in certain meetings. The internal aspects revealed the establishment of two types of relations: one anti-dialogical and another that we called incipient dialogical. In relation to the dialogical action, it was possible to verify the beginning of a process according to the principles of the culture circles, which did not have continuity. Regarding the pedagogical strategies adopted in the different environmental education meetings, it is possible to affirm that the one used in the participatory diagnoses was the only one that potentiates the emergence of dialogue. Finally, it was possible to find dialogical potentialities, which should be stimulated together with the creation of new ones, in order to allow the effective transition to a new model of fishing and society.

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The term ‘parental alienation’ describes a child’s irrational rejection of a parent and is the source of conflict in families, in psychological, legal and therapeutic practices which dispute its theoretical basis and causes. The increasingly reported issue is associated with children involved in high-conflict divorces or separations who exhibit psychological deficits reminiscent of child soldiers. In these cases, dialogues and mediation processes are highly regulated, often court-ordered, but both traditional and newer therapeutic approaches are controversial in terms of scientific and moral efficacy where it is believed a favoured parent is manipulating their children. The article takes the methodological approach of sociological poetics. This discourse analysis locates practical issues associated with parental alienation in the historical desire of eighteenth-century enlightened despots to win the inner consent of their subjects. The contemporary focus is at three scales; first, the World Health Organisation’s online debate about the recent inclusion of parental alienation in ICD11, the International Classification of Diseases; secondly, at the micro level in France where the concept of parental alienation is officially banned; and, finally, in debates about specialist treatments in North America. These empirical contexts suggest a vertical power axis transmitting and perpetuating despotism at the family level. The issues of manipulation, social pathologies, subjective truth, and ‘white-collar crime’ are examined theoretically and philosophically. It is argued that problematic professional responses to parental alienation (PA) which subordinate truthfulness to the goal of reconciliation call for vertical and horizontal reforms to ethically strengthen the role of dialogical truth.

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The paper considers ‘dialogue’ and seeks to begin to consider what has been succeeded and what has not yet been succeeded with the ‘Prevent duty’ in English secondary schools.

In July 2015, a legal duty came into force requiring that ‘specified authorities’ in England, which included schools, show ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’. This is popularly referred to as the ‘Prevent duty’. Prevent, developed by the Home Office in 2003 out of full public scrutiny, and only fully operationalised following the 7 July 2005 London bombings, has consistently been the most contentious element of the UK Government Counter- Terrorist Strategy (CONTEST).

Four years on, my research aim is to find out how the ‘Prevent duty’ has been enacted by school and college leaders in secondary schools and colleges in England and additionally, to discover to what extent, if any, the ‘Prevent duty’ has ‘securitised’ education and what effect, if any, it has had on free speech in schools.

I have rich data from school leaders and schools in various geographical locations. My key findings use the work of Stephen. J. Ball on policy enactment, explore different policy actor positions and consider how Prevent is impacting on schools, on the professionalism of school leaders and on concepts such as ‘free speech’ and ‘securitisation’.

Using Michel Foucault to think differently, I place my work in the global context of ‘An Age of Anger’. Can Foucault’s method be helpful in analysing education policy and practice or does such a lens blur our understanding? Is it possible to evaluate the ‘Prevent duty’ in terms of success and failure? How important is dialogue in this field?

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Based upon on a broad reading of quantum physicist David Bohm’s work and upon my organisational experience, I propose that effective interventions into problem situations require three aspects: dialogue, whole-system involvement, and identification of systemic issues. Without partnership of these three aspects, the real problem often hides in the crevices, leading interveners to focus on the wrong problem and to further solidify the original conflict. Concepts that underlie Bohm’s science and philosophy serve as metaphors for his process of dialogue as well as for this paper. In Bohm’s view the relationship of wholes and parts underlies scientific as well as all other processes. A problem arises from fragmentation, a breakage within the essential relationship of the parts that manifests in our societal, organisational and personal conflicts. His process of dialogue proposes to mend and reweave those fragments back into their participation in the whole. In dialogue, by placing a societal or organisational issue within its context and by viewing fragmentation from various perspectives, we begin the process of mending and rebuilding a broken issue back into wholeness. The image of the spiral suggested by Bohm describes the pattern underlying his dialogue, as well as the intervention model I propose. Brief narratives from organisational and societal-cultural interventions based upon these three aspects demonstrate their application in diverse situations and types of conflict.

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This article analyses different initiatives that have emerged from the top-down and everyday bottom-up peace approach after the peace agreement in Colombia and have led to establishing dialogues among different actors to contribute to the peacebuilding process. Three years ago, Colombia signed a peace agreement with the largest guerrilla group in Latin America. After this signature, the big challenge has been the implementation of the deal in the most conflict-affected territories, characterised by poverty, high rates of violence, unemployment, etc. Despite the pitfalls in building positive peace, many communities have started generating spaces by themselves and have created initiatives of peacebuilding through nonviolent actions, the acceptance of differences, active participation and empowerment and the acknowledgement that dialogue is the only way to achieve cooperation and to rebuild another story rather than conflict. This paper seeks to examine the different characteristics that have shaped dialogue-based practices when they are produced with a top-down and a bottom-up approach of peacebuilding. To do this, it is necessary to identify the parties participating in these encounters, their motivations, conditions that have allowed parties to establish a dialogue, and the results. This paper notes that in a post-conflict society, dialogues coming from the top-down will take longer in accomplishing positive peace, rather than the dialogues that have emerged from the bottom up which may be the engine to social mobilisations and the way to capitalise on social skills in achieving justice, truth, and reconciliation.

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In 2019, accusations of antisemitism in British national politics coincided with calls in Israel/Palestine for a state with equal political rights. These issues coalesce in contesting the meaning ‘self-determination’ in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. I consider the term ‘self-determination’ by examining the relations between the mythic and the political, the inclusions and exclusions of people from the political community. The paper begins with an example of the interconnections between the mythic and the political. The paper examines the term ‘self-determination’ within the IHRA definition. The definition is understood in two contexts: the Stockholm Declaration, the founding document of the IHRA; and, Israel by its constitutional laws. The last part examines the IHRA definition as moral and civil law. I end by suggesting that the UK government define the term, ‘self- determination’ in the IHRA definition as this may enable accusations in British politics to turn to dialogue.

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This paper attempts to investigate how Lamentations, chapters 1 and 2, conveys the notion of the absent comforter in proximity to Zion, asserting that the Temple of Jerusalem served Zion as her transitional object by emitting the presence of YHWH, thereby hypothesising that Zion’s tragedy during the Babylonian occupation of Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE was due to the destruction of the Temple. This event prevented Zion from accessing her transitional object and it consequently prohibited interplay, which according to Donald Winnicott provides the essential activity for liberating and creating a sense of self. Thus, this paper proposes that the author of Lamentations expresses grief in the form of emotional catharsis in order to resolve the internal conflict of losing the presence of YHWH. By examining the text of Lamentations in the light of Winnicottian discourse, one might discover a methodology to resolve the internal conflict of the absent comforter. This can be achieved by applying a dynamic that resembles a holding environment to circumvent anxiety, as the function of a holding environment provides a setting that perpetuates the presence of a primary caregiver. Dialogue is demonstrated between Hebrew Scripture and Winnicottian analysis, as both of these worlds of discourse demonstrate value of attempting to access the presence of a caregiver by expressing emotional catharsis.

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An intrinsic component of evaluating the success of a dialogue programme is the concept of transfer. This refers to the means by which the effects of dialogue extend beyond the immediate participants to their wider social groups and go on to influence broader societal and policy change. In this paper I am interested in exploring, from a psychological perspective, why positive dialogue effects at an individual level (i.e., the micro level) sometimes fail to motivate future positive behaviour in the local social milieu (i.e., the meso level). This failure of dialogue effects to permeate beyond the immediate group can mean that transfer is limited, thus raising questions about the effectiveness of dialogue interventions. Drawing on psychological research that looks at mechanisms of indirect contact (whereby positive effects of contact with an out-group member spread beyond the immediate setting) I propose that a factor which might hinder the process of transfer is a cognitive bias called vicarious moral licensing. I propose that by understanding the psychological mechanisms that stymie the transfer of individual attitudinal change in to group behavioural outcomes, one can better address the crucial question of how to maximise the degree of transfer following from dialogue

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