1 00:00:00,780 --> 00:00:06,750 Hello. I think hopefully some of the points that Davis brought up will actually be reflected again in my talk. 2 00:00:06,750 --> 00:00:10,440 We're going to just explore some of the concepts around peace and then move on to have a look at 3 00:00:10,440 --> 00:00:16,140 really reflections on my own practise within H-E and working as a lecturer and a researcher, 4 00:00:16,140 --> 00:00:21,180 studying peace and trying to teach peace studies, political psychology at higher education. 5 00:00:21,180 --> 00:00:26,760 I also look at some of the smaller things that come out of some of things that maybe reflect and why we need to bring in elements of peace, 6 00:00:26,760 --> 00:00:40,170 education earlier as well of the students before waiting DHV. So that's that's the kind of talk we're going to talk about. 7 00:00:40,170 --> 00:00:44,760 Someone has never read the civil statement. What, like I can give you a copy afterwards. 8 00:00:44,760 --> 00:00:48,540 But basically the idea is a number of scholars from all different disciplines came together in the 9 00:00:48,540 --> 00:00:55,120 late 1980s and wrote some proposals that really indicated that since war begins in the minds of men, 10 00:00:55,120 --> 00:01:01,380 it is in the minds of man that defence of peace must be constructed. The idea that war and fight was something that was invented, 11 00:01:01,380 --> 00:01:06,110 it wasn't something we were indeed predisposed to do and we could kind of move away from that. 12 00:01:06,110 --> 00:01:09,120 But these ideas really aren't anything essentially new in a way. 13 00:01:09,120 --> 00:01:16,800 If you look at Albert Einstein, for example, he's talking about these kind of things before previous to the Second World War. 14 00:01:16,800 --> 00:01:24,120 And again, put the idea that we need to really deal with these issues because wars become more destructive and nuclear bombs, et cetera, et cetera. 15 00:01:24,120 --> 00:01:31,300 So we have to deal with these issues and move forward and try to think about solving our problems differently. 16 00:01:31,300 --> 00:01:37,160 And again, Margaret, made in the research thing from social anthropology shows as well, at war is an invention you can find. 17 00:01:37,160 --> 00:01:43,340 Cultures of war does not exist. People do not practise warfare. So, again, it's not a biological necessity. 18 00:01:43,340 --> 00:01:49,910 But there's a view, a popular opinion in a way that there is a biological necessity, that war is something that we have to do. 19 00:01:49,910 --> 00:01:53,720 So when I look at someone, look at that in terms of psychology and try to understand the conceptions of 20 00:01:53,720 --> 00:01:57,070 war and the concepts of peace and war that come from what they mean to us, 21 00:01:57,070 --> 00:02:02,180 how we how do we get our knowledge of war and peace. Basically how we think. 22 00:02:02,180 --> 00:02:08,260 But and peace is a developmental the change over time, the change with their experiences, change with age. 23 00:02:08,260 --> 00:02:12,980 Peace is really a second order concept, people don't understand peace until they understand war. 24 00:02:12,980 --> 00:02:16,430 Children play a war. They find it very difficult to play a piece. 25 00:02:16,430 --> 00:02:22,250 So if you're if you work with children, children tend not to really understand peace till after they understand war. 26 00:02:22,250 --> 00:02:29,790 So, Jeremy, at the age of eight, tell how about concepts of war, begin to develop concepts of peace. 27 00:02:29,790 --> 00:02:31,330 I'm not going to want to listen too much data, 28 00:02:31,330 --> 00:02:37,410 but basically the development of the understanding of peace and war really comes from our interaction with society, 29 00:02:37,410 --> 00:02:45,310 the child's interaction with others. The influence of social agents on the child, the media and the church, education, et cetera. 30 00:02:45,310 --> 00:02:51,240 And the sort of dynamic relationship that is a the child Slack's certain piece of information. 31 00:02:51,240 --> 00:02:54,570 Some agents, for example, abdicate responsibility. 32 00:02:54,570 --> 00:03:00,000 So when I grew up in Northern Ireland, for example, the education system didn't teach us about the conflict. 33 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:07,960 You learnt that from your parents? I learnt that in the community. Okay. So the influence of these different social agencies, well, are important. 34 00:03:07,960 --> 00:03:12,050 So how do we get our understanding subjects of peace and peacemaking? 35 00:03:12,050 --> 00:03:20,130 Okay, so basically their personal constructions, everyone's conceptions of peace. There's no objectivity to their subjective reality. 36 00:03:20,130 --> 00:03:29,140 And the ideas about them are really influenced by a multitude of different factors, the child and the individual grows up. 37 00:03:29,140 --> 00:03:37,240 The other thing we have is a sort of subjective knowledge becomes shared across the population so people begin to have the same idea of what pieces, 38 00:03:37,240 --> 00:03:42,050 the s.m idea of what war is. The same idea of why war start and then become reality. 39 00:03:42,050 --> 00:03:46,490 People then begin to think, well, this is actually hi, war starts. This is the reasons for conflict. 40 00:03:46,490 --> 00:03:56,060 This is the reasons for peace. Because this whole is subjective knowledge becomes Shahd and actually fails if it's real. 41 00:03:56,060 --> 00:03:57,260 I want the things that's important, 42 00:03:57,260 --> 00:04:03,650 I think we're trying to look at how do we build peace is the fact that this is always a subject to change people's attitudes. 43 00:04:03,650 --> 00:04:09,060 Watch peace and peacemaking is change. So research we did with adolescents, Northern Ireland, 44 00:04:09,060 --> 00:04:15,220 we looked at the impact of the peace negotiations on how people felt about peace, how people felt about war. 45 00:04:15,220 --> 00:04:23,270 And on the peace process. And how to achieve peace really before the cease fires and and the early 1990s of the mid 1990s. 46 00:04:23,270 --> 00:04:27,780 When you ask children, how would you bring peace to North, aren't they couldn't tell you. They just didn't know. 47 00:04:27,780 --> 00:04:32,270 So it's after the cease fires, people began to see that they could create peace. That conflict could change. 48 00:04:32,270 --> 00:04:37,010 The dynamics of the conflict were changing and things like that. So events can make a difference and interact. 49 00:04:37,010 --> 00:04:41,560 Interactions and interventions can make a difference. Let's give it. 50 00:04:41,560 --> 00:04:49,220 And this is a sort of a famous psychological experiment, really, from the late early 1950s, late 1940s. 51 00:04:49,220 --> 00:04:51,980 I'm not gonna go into a whole lot of detail on sort of a lot of time, 52 00:04:51,980 --> 00:04:57,250 but basically I was kind of like a Lord of the Flies on a kind of find it quite interesting that whenever 53 00:04:57,250 --> 00:05:02,960 we establish we conduct this experiment the same time that Googling was actually writing the book. 54 00:05:02,960 --> 00:05:09,610 But basically what Mustafa Sharif did was take a lot of 10, 11 year old kids, American kids, 55 00:05:09,610 --> 00:05:12,980 cheque them all over to make sure that in any sort of psychological parliaments, 56 00:05:12,980 --> 00:05:17,090 much not for things like religion, interest, height, weight, all this kind of thing, 57 00:05:17,090 --> 00:05:21,470 took them off to summer camp and then really initiated conflict between them. 58 00:05:21,470 --> 00:05:28,910 So these randomly assigned groups began to fight with each other. And then what he also did was intervene that actually reduced the conflict. 59 00:05:28,910 --> 00:05:35,510 But what it really what this study really shows is that you can't influence these things, these things in a group. 60 00:05:35,510 --> 00:05:40,570 It's not because these haven't be Americans or happen to be boys that had some sort of biological predisposition. 61 00:05:40,570 --> 00:05:45,110 This idea that you can create a situation, social factors, things like competition, 62 00:05:45,110 --> 00:05:49,500 cooperation, things that guy can actually change and cause conflict. 63 00:05:49,500 --> 00:05:56,720 But even once you've caused the conflict, you can then actually intervene again and reduce that conflict and bring the groups back together again. 64 00:05:56,720 --> 00:06:03,500 This important study, and it shows us that peace and war really are in the mind in a way undercount be changed. 65 00:06:03,500 --> 00:06:06,250 That cannot be altered. 66 00:06:06,250 --> 00:06:14,860 So an away from a civil stemming the violence, and they argue that therefore we're not condemned to war on violence because of our biology on a date. 67 00:06:14,860 --> 00:06:19,690 William James and his 1910 article, The Moral Equivalent of War. 68 00:06:19,690 --> 00:06:24,910 This is the first two sentences of the article. Think that someone sums up the idea perfectly. 69 00:06:24,910 --> 00:06:30,290 The war against war is as good as going to be. No holiday excursion, a camping party. 70 00:06:30,290 --> 00:06:35,920 And I think back in 1910, William James was saying these ideas, the peace we needed to deal with highway view, war, 71 00:06:35,920 --> 00:06:43,000 war and the need for the military and military life and the glory and the honour is sort of instil in our culture. 72 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:51,550 We didn't think of a new way of changing that. And this is back in 1910. We still haven't moved to huge a huge much in the last hundred years. 73 00:06:51,550 --> 00:06:59,380 Not that much further on from that. But again, we need to sort of tackle these issues, tackle how we think about war and whether war is real. 74 00:06:59,380 --> 00:07:05,320 But it's interesting as well, the same time that the civil statement of violence was getting written. 75 00:07:05,320 --> 00:07:13,600 There was some research done by my go at Goldstein, which actually looked sort of commonly held beliefs about war and conflict. 76 00:07:13,600 --> 00:07:20,980 And again, I a going through all these ideas, but basically tend to show that there are some people who believe that war is biological. 77 00:07:20,980 --> 00:07:30,250 People believe this is genetic influence. People believe that murder, terrorism, etc, call us a mob or crazy people. 78 00:07:30,250 --> 00:07:35,980 So there's a sort of reductionist idea that changes how people feel about conflict and the inevitability of conflict. 79 00:07:35,980 --> 00:07:40,750 And it's that attitude that stops us really dealing with issues of peace. So even today, you know, 80 00:07:40,750 --> 00:07:51,040 people still have these sort of ideas and believe that this is what kind of a mythology of warfare and the kind of mythology of violence. 81 00:07:51,040 --> 00:07:58,840 And one of things that if you look at the civil state and the violence, for example, it suggests that we should do this all, take responsibility. 82 00:07:58,840 --> 00:08:05,820 I think about what we could do as an individual to try to stem those ideas by the violence and try to challenge these ideas. 83 00:08:05,820 --> 00:08:15,040 So I guess without question here, what can I do? I'll have a look at all the things I've tried to do as a psychologist to try to tackle these issues. 84 00:08:15,040 --> 00:08:18,610 What I'm really trying to create a sort of symphony of research and teaching. 85 00:08:18,610 --> 00:08:22,420 I'm not sure how harmonious a symphony is a time share when you sit in market assets and things like that. 86 00:08:22,420 --> 00:08:30,060 But it's an idea to try to bring this all together, sort of done as huddle of sort of research aspects of peace and conflict since demo page. 87 00:08:30,060 --> 00:08:37,750 These are particular aspects of peace, psychology, peace studies within a psychology curriculum since the mid 1990s, 88 00:08:37,750 --> 00:08:43,120 actually building a module on peace psychology and bring in also aspects of peace, 89 00:08:43,120 --> 00:08:50,020 psychology, peace studies and things like developmental psychology, social psychology. Teach them through those mechanisms as well. 90 00:08:50,020 --> 00:08:52,840 As I say, you're trying to enter right into intertwined peace studies, 91 00:08:52,840 --> 00:08:59,520 into mainstream psychology as well, trying to build it and study it theoretically. But look at these sort of concepts. 92 00:08:59,520 --> 00:09:04,740 And more recently, we've actually began to develop our own standalone programmes. 93 00:09:04,740 --> 00:09:11,050 We've developed that we're developing M.F. programming, conflict transformation. We developed to be a programme of war and peace studies. 94 00:09:11,050 --> 00:09:14,340 So actually bringing these dedicated programmes to peace studies as well. 95 00:09:14,340 --> 00:09:22,350 So those are sort of things I've tried to do, the challenges, these ideas. And the key is the activities sort of doing the teaching, 96 00:09:22,350 --> 00:09:26,580 as well as the sort of normal learning and teaching games that you always have to build into your molecules. 97 00:09:26,580 --> 00:09:31,530 I try to achieve these things as well with modules to try to develop the students skills and critical analysis opinion, 98 00:09:31,530 --> 00:09:36,240 get them to be able to promote rival viewpoints as well to understand the people don't think the same as them. 99 00:09:36,240 --> 00:09:44,040 The world is a subjective place. People have different ideas under respect, opposing views and things like that. 100 00:09:44,040 --> 00:09:50,010 Try to assist students in applying your intellectual tools to the analysis of real world examples of peace and conflict, 101 00:09:50,010 --> 00:09:53,270 we heard it's something that's there. This morning's. Well, the Kroc Institute. 102 00:09:53,270 --> 00:09:56,610 What they're trying to do is get the students look at current events, historical events, 103 00:09:56,610 --> 00:10:06,130 and apply psychology to understand that, you know, the instigation, propagation of resolution of conflict and things like that. 104 00:10:06,130 --> 00:10:10,330 Really, the idea is to help develop and inform the critical citizenry that idea is what I hope is when the 105 00:10:10,330 --> 00:10:16,210 students finish their degree and for the modules of tech and they'll be more critical of the media, 106 00:10:16,210 --> 00:10:21,640 be more critical of the government, and be more inclined to seek out information, criticise it, 107 00:10:21,640 --> 00:10:28,800 think apply theory to that information and try to really understand what's real, what's false, what's propaganda, etc. 108 00:10:28,800 --> 00:10:35,540 And how does it go so reflect and plan the symbol she and I repeat the same old song for over 15 years. 109 00:10:35,540 --> 00:10:41,520 What's called? Well, what hasn't gone that well, I guess research a piece of conflict is stimulating and depressing. 110 00:10:41,520 --> 00:10:46,740 And I mean, if you spend a week or two talking to victims of violence, you get some hiring stories. 111 00:10:46,740 --> 00:10:53,490 Obviously not the most cheery of topics to be talking about. But, you know, all the other things are good as well. 112 00:10:53,490 --> 00:10:58,590 What I find really with the undergraduate students is that the time I actually get to teach them by conflict resolution, 113 00:10:58,590 --> 00:11:06,930 negotiation and peace building, trying to understand conflict, they already have very angry interviews and the reasons for war is already in there. 114 00:11:06,930 --> 00:11:10,320 They tend to see war very much as biological and external one. 115 00:11:10,320 --> 00:11:15,150 I mean, external to us. I'm trying to say that this is their fault. You know, Muslims are aggressive. 116 00:11:15,150 --> 00:11:20,030 Germans are aggressive. There's something about these people that creates this violence. 117 00:11:20,030 --> 00:11:25,950 And you know how they sort of use you trying to break this down to get within the teaching. 118 00:11:25,950 --> 00:11:33,280 And it came with things like conflict resolution skills tend to be basically when you try to teach the theories about peace building things, 119 00:11:33,280 --> 00:11:39,280 that they find it very difficult because they're used to negotiating and the way that they negotiate in the playground over resources. 120 00:11:39,280 --> 00:11:42,670 Or if you're going to buy a car, you know, you argue about the price for a very, 121 00:11:42,670 --> 00:11:52,720 very smart way of thinking that really has developed through their life. But again, you need to sort of kind of challenge as well. 122 00:11:52,720 --> 00:11:57,030 Well, we're actually looking at something like the pasto is really trying to build it across the curriculum. 123 00:11:57,030 --> 00:11:59,930 You know, if you have a module here, the modular is very difficult. 124 00:11:59,930 --> 00:12:06,200 But one of things within the Senate tonight is we're trying to build it across a lot of different disciplines with things like sociology, 125 00:12:06,200 --> 00:12:11,210 sports, studies of all things, and history, politics, theology. 126 00:12:11,210 --> 00:12:15,170 I try to get people to build aspects of that into their into the teaching English literature. 127 00:12:15,170 --> 00:12:20,880 Media studies right across the curriculum. 128 00:12:20,880 --> 00:12:26,430 As I said, you know, you can very maldita spray approach, so I'm teaching from a psychological point of view. 129 00:12:26,430 --> 00:12:30,870 You know, any sort of discipline you could build out sparks of conflict, comfort, resolution into them. 130 00:12:30,870 --> 00:12:36,840 It is possible to do that. Obviously, it's nice to see here that there is a lot more of institutional support. 131 00:12:36,840 --> 00:12:41,940 There's a sort of a team of people who want to move forward. Peace studies at Oxford again. 132 00:12:41,940 --> 00:12:47,160 And my own experience, having institutional support, having a vice chancellor, a dean. 133 00:12:47,160 --> 00:12:52,400 They're willing to indulge you. Just these things is very important as well to have that support. 134 00:12:52,400 --> 00:12:54,540 They will go ahead and put these programmes on. 135 00:12:54,540 --> 00:12:59,580 And whether or not they're, you know, having to worry about marketing and how attractive the artist students and all these kind of things, 136 00:12:59,580 --> 00:13:06,450 that the idea that the institution has a feeling that we need to be doing this is important. 137 00:13:06,450 --> 00:13:12,960 And the other thing as well, I mean, one of the things you do find with the students is that coming into contact with this information could really, 138 00:13:12,960 --> 00:13:20,280 really change their ideas of what they want to do. People go on there to do at doctoral qualifications, master's qualifications, conflict resolution. 139 00:13:20,280 --> 00:13:24,840 People going off to work for and geos and things like that. It really changes ideas what you want to do. 140 00:13:24,840 --> 00:13:33,260 So it can have a really positive impact on the student as well. So just to conclude, just about on time as well. 141 00:13:33,260 --> 00:13:37,500 And it's going to take us to get this civil statement, I think. Is this really what I march up to? 142 00:13:37,500 --> 00:13:43,560 And the idea that I have really matches up to the sort of things that this this is the civils statement concludes as well. 143 00:13:43,560 --> 00:13:47,730 But I think with a bit better sort of an idea that, you know, it's not really walk in the park. 144 00:13:47,730 --> 00:13:49,260 If you look at William Jones is still right. 145 00:13:49,260 --> 00:13:55,030 It's very difficult to achieve these goals may be true, maybe true that we're not tied to our biology, but people do believe that. 146 00:13:55,030 --> 00:14:00,751 And you have to challenge those ideas. That's that's the difficult part. So thanks very much.