Hello. I think hopefully some of the points that Davis brought up will actually be reflected again in my talk.
We're going to just explore some of the concepts around peace and then move on to have a look at
really reflections on my own practise within H-E and working as a lecturer and a researcher,
studying peace and trying to teach peace studies, political psychology at higher education.
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,
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.
Someone has never read the civil statement. What, like I can give you a copy afterwards.
But basically the idea is a number of scholars from all different disciplines came together in the
late 1980s and wrote some proposals that really indicated that since war begins in the minds of men,
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,
it wasn't something we were indeed predisposed to do and we could kind of move away from that.
But these ideas really aren't anything essentially new in a way.
If you look at Albert Einstein, for example, he's talking about these kind of things before previous to the Second World War.
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.
So we have to deal with these issues and move forward and try to think about solving our problems differently.
And again, Margaret, made in the research thing from social anthropology shows as well, at war is an invention you can find.
Cultures of war does not exist. People do not practise warfare. So, again, it's not a biological necessity.
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.
So when I look at someone, look at that in terms of psychology and try to understand the conceptions of
war and the concepts of peace and war that come from what they mean to us,
how we how do we get our knowledge of war and peace. Basically how we think.
But and peace is a developmental the change over time, the change with their experiences, change with age.
Peace is really a second order concept, people don't understand peace until they understand war.
Children play a war. They find it very difficult to play a piece.
So if you're if you work with children, children tend not to really understand peace till after they understand war.
So, Jeremy, at the age of eight, tell how about concepts of war, begin to develop concepts of peace.
I'm not going to want to listen too much data,
but basically the development of the understanding of peace and war really comes from our interaction with society,
the child's interaction with others. The influence of social agents on the child, the media and the church, education, et cetera.
And the sort of dynamic relationship that is a the child Slack's certain piece of information.
Some agents, for example, abdicate responsibility.
So when I grew up in Northern Ireland, for example, the education system didn't teach us about the conflict.
You learnt that from your parents? I learnt that in the community. Okay. So the influence of these different social agencies, well, are important.
So how do we get our understanding subjects of peace and peacemaking?
Okay, so basically their personal constructions, everyone's conceptions of peace. There's no objectivity to their subjective reality.
And the ideas about them are really influenced by a multitude of different factors, the child and the individual grows up.
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,
the s.m idea of what war is. The same idea of why war start and then become reality.
People then begin to think, well, this is actually hi, war starts. This is the reasons for conflict.
This is the reasons for peace. Because this whole is subjective knowledge becomes Shahd and actually fails if it's real.
I want the things that's important,
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.
Watch peace and peacemaking is change. So research we did with adolescents, Northern Ireland,
we looked at the impact of the peace negotiations on how people felt about peace, how people felt about war.
And on the peace process. And how to achieve peace really before the cease fires and and the early 1990s of the mid 1990s.
When you ask children, how would you bring peace to North, aren't they couldn't tell you. They just didn't know.
So it's after the cease fires, people began to see that they could create peace. That conflict could change.
The dynamics of the conflict were changing and things like that. So events can make a difference and interact.
Interactions and interventions can make a difference. Let's give it.
And this is a sort of a famous psychological experiment, really, from the late early 1950s, late 1940s.
I'm not gonna go into a whole lot of detail on sort of a lot of time,
but basically I was kind of like a Lord of the Flies on a kind of find it quite interesting that whenever
we establish we conduct this experiment the same time that Googling was actually writing the book.
But basically what Mustafa Sharif did was take a lot of 10, 11 year old kids, American kids,
cheque them all over to make sure that in any sort of psychological parliaments,
much not for things like religion, interest, height, weight, all this kind of thing,
took them off to summer camp and then really initiated conflict between them.
So these randomly assigned groups began to fight with each other. And then what he also did was intervene that actually reduced the conflict.
But what it really what this study really shows is that you can't influence these things, these things in a group.
It's not because these haven't be Americans or happen to be boys that had some sort of biological predisposition.
This idea that you can create a situation, social factors, things like competition,
cooperation, things that guy can actually change and cause conflict.
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.
This important study, and it shows us that peace and war really are in the mind in a way undercount be changed.
That cannot be altered.
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.
William James and his 1910 article, The Moral Equivalent of War.
This is the first two sentences of the article. Think that someone sums up the idea perfectly.
The war against war is as good as going to be. No holiday excursion, a camping party.
And I think back in 1910, William James was saying these ideas, the peace we needed to deal with highway view, war,
war and the need for the military and military life and the glory and the honour is sort of instil in our culture.
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.
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.
But it's interesting as well, the same time that the civil statement of violence was getting written.
There was some research done by my go at Goldstein, which actually looked sort of commonly held beliefs about war and conflict.
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.
People believe this is genetic influence. People believe that murder, terrorism, etc, call us a mob or crazy people.
So there's a sort of reductionist idea that changes how people feel about conflict and the inevitability of conflict.
And it's that attitude that stops us really dealing with issues of peace. So even today, you know,
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.
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.
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.
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.
What I'm really trying to create a sort of symphony of research and teaching.
I'm not sure how harmonious a symphony is a time share when you sit in market assets and things like that.
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.
These are particular aspects of peace, psychology, peace studies within a psychology curriculum since the mid 1990s,
actually building a module on peace psychology and bring in also aspects of peace,
psychology, peace studies and things like developmental psychology, social psychology. Teach them through those mechanisms as well.
As I say, you're trying to enter right into intertwined peace studies,
into mainstream psychology as well, trying to build it and study it theoretically. But look at these sort of concepts.
And more recently, we've actually began to develop our own standalone programmes.
We've developed that we're developing M.F. programming, conflict transformation. We developed to be a programme of war and peace studies.
So actually bringing these dedicated programmes to peace studies as well.
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,
as well as the sort of normal learning and teaching games that you always have to build into your molecules.
I try to achieve these things as well with modules to try to develop the students skills and critical analysis opinion,
get them to be able to promote rival viewpoints as well to understand the people don't think the same as them.
The world is a subjective place. People have different ideas under respect, opposing views and things like that.
Try to assist students in applying your intellectual tools to the analysis of real world examples of peace and conflict,
we heard it's something that's there. This morning's. Well, the Kroc Institute.
What they're trying to do is get the students look at current events, historical events,
and apply psychology to understand that, you know, the instigation, propagation of resolution of conflict and things like that.
Really, the idea is to help develop and inform the critical citizenry that idea is what I hope is when the
students finish their degree and for the modules of tech and they'll be more critical of the media,
be more critical of the government, and be more inclined to seek out information, criticise it,
think apply theory to that information and try to really understand what's real, what's false, what's propaganda, etc.
And how does it go so reflect and plan the symbol she and I repeat the same old song for over 15 years.
What's called? Well, what hasn't gone that well, I guess research a piece of conflict is stimulating and depressing.
And I mean, if you spend a week or two talking to victims of violence, you get some hiring stories.
Obviously not the most cheery of topics to be talking about. But, you know, all the other things are good as well.
What I find really with the undergraduate students is that the time I actually get to teach them by conflict resolution,
negotiation and peace building, trying to understand conflict, they already have very angry interviews and the reasons for war is already in there.
They tend to see war very much as biological and external one.
I mean, external to us. I'm trying to say that this is their fault. You know, Muslims are aggressive.
Germans are aggressive. There's something about these people that creates this violence.
And you know how they sort of use you trying to break this down to get within the teaching.
And it came with things like conflict resolution skills tend to be basically when you try to teach the theories about peace building things,
that they find it very difficult because they're used to negotiating and the way that they negotiate in the playground over resources.
Or if you're going to buy a car, you know, you argue about the price for a very,
very smart way of thinking that really has developed through their life. But again, you need to sort of kind of challenge as well.
Well, we're actually looking at something like the pasto is really trying to build it across the curriculum.
You know, if you have a module here, the modular is very difficult.
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,
sports, studies of all things, and history, politics, theology.
I try to get people to build aspects of that into their into the teaching English literature.
Media studies right across the curriculum.
As I said, you know, you can very maldita spray approach, so I'm teaching from a psychological point of view.
You know, any sort of discipline you could build out sparks of conflict, comfort, resolution into them.
It is possible to do that. Obviously, it's nice to see here that there is a lot more of institutional support.
There's a sort of a team of people who want to move forward. Peace studies at Oxford again.
And my own experience, having institutional support, having a vice chancellor, a dean.
They're willing to indulge you. Just these things is very important as well to have that support.
They will go ahead and put these programmes on.
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,
that the idea that the institution has a feeling that we need to be doing this is important.
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,
really change their ideas of what they want to do. People go on there to do at doctoral qualifications, master's qualifications, conflict resolution.
People going off to work for and geos and things like that. It really changes ideas what you want to do.
So it can have a really positive impact on the student as well. So just to conclude, just about on time as well.
And it's going to take us to get this civil statement, I think. Is this really what I march up to?
And the idea that I have really matches up to the sort of things that this this is the civils statement concludes as well.
But I think with a bit better sort of an idea that, you know, it's not really walk in the park.
If you look at William Jones is still right.
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.
And you have to challenge those ideas. That's that's the difficult part. So thanks very much.