Innsbruck School of Peace Studies
Since 2002, the Innsbruck School of Peace and Conflict Studies has been developed by Wolfgang Dietrich and his team at the UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
The Innsbruck School of Peace and Conflict Studies became famous for its unique approach to peace research with the key phrase “transrational peaces” and with its specific and tough training method in the sense of John Paul Lederach's elicitive conflict transformation”. Both principles are applied in practice and developed further in the frame of the MA Program for Peace Studies.[1] The UNESCO Chair promotes further research in these fields and the publication of the respective results, in the following book series:
- Many Peaces Trilogy (Palgrave) by Wolfgang Dietrich: Interpretations of Peace in History and Culture (Vol. 1), Elicitive Conflict Transformation and the Transrational Shift in Peace Politics (Vol.2) and Elicitive Conflict Mapping (Vol 3, in translation).
- Elicitivas (Verlag Springer, featuring Juan José Albert Gutiérrez (translated by Matthias Gossner) and Winfried Wagner.
- Masters of Peace (LIT, Verlag Springer), featuring the works of Samrat Schmiem Kumar, Katya Buchleitner, Paula Ditzel Facci, Paul Bukuluki, Natalia Lozano Mancera, Alicia Dueck, Catalina Vallejo Piedrahíta, Noor Jdid, Kathleen McGoey, Billene Seyoum Woldeyes, Sophie Friedel, Adham Hamed and Morten Frederiksen.
Furthermore a series of edited Volumes has emerged in the framework of the Innsbruck School: Key Texts of Peace Studies (Die Kommende Demokratie Series, LIT) Palgrave Handbook of Peace Studies (Palgrave)
Norbert Koppensteiner,[2] a Dietrich-student and program coordinator at the MA Program in Peace, Development, Security and International Conflict Transformation, is another important representative of the Innsbruck School of Peace and Conflict Studies. In his book The Art of the Transpersonal Self he draws on findings of humanistic and transpersonal psychology. His work can be seen as a critique of some of Modernity’s founding principles like truth. Koppensteiner argues that the autonomous and self grounded subject, morals or solvability of conflicts have become sites of contestation and debate. He suggests to re-think some of those categories being debated in (post)modernity by invoking transpersonal and transrational transpositions. Asking about the continued possibilities for subjectivation, Koppensteiner sketches the outlines of an art of living for a subjectivity perceived as constantly emergent and in transformation, a subjectivity that dares to embrace conflict as part of its transpersonal relational becoming and that emerges through an ongoing transformation of the self understood as an aesthetic (Apollonian) and energetic (Dionysian) practice. The strictly relational understanding of peaces and conflict that Koppensteiner proposes is one of the central ontological assumptions of the Innsbruck School of Peace Studies.
Other important representatives of the Innsbruck School of Peace Studies are Josefina Echavarría, Daniela Ingruber, Jennifer Murphy and Andreas Oberprantacher. Each academic year leading international scholars of Peace and Conflict Studies visit the UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies and its MA Program at the University of Innsbruck.
Transrational Peace Philosophy
The Innsbruck School of Peace Studies is based on Wolfgang Dietrich's transrational approach to Peace Studies and is outlined in his Many Peaces Trilogy. Spanning continents as well as disciplines, Dietrich presents a panorama of diverse interpretations of peace in world history and culture. In a journey through time and space, Dietrich outlines the so-called five families of peace - energetic, moral, modern, post-modern and trans-rational. He stresses the importance of combining rationality and reason with human properties such as emotion and spirituality in applied peace work. This ontological assumption indicates a paradigm shift and proposes a new epistemological understanding of peace, which is at the heart of the Innsbruck School's peace philosophy.
Elicitive Conflict Transformation
Elicitive Conflict Transformation was first introduced to the field by John Paul Lederach in 1995 and is the applied method of transrational peace philosophy. In a rather basic distinction Lederach initially distinguished between three levels of conflict:
- Top Leaders
- Middle-Range Leaders
- Grassroots
Wolfgang Dietrich draws on Lederach and introduces a systemic understanding to this model, as outlined in the transrational model.
Elicitive Conflict Mapping
Elicitive Conflict Mapping is a brand-new tool that has been developed at the Innsbruck School of Peace Studies. By bringing together the theoretical and academic building blocks of the Innsbruck School of Peace Studies in a didactical format, with special emphasis on the graphic components, ECM aims to support those in search of:
- Understanding and clarifying the conflict episode
- Visibilizing the conflict parties
- Viewing the conflict dynamics at different levels and through different layers[3]
References
- ↑ UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies (2014): MA Program, available at URL: http://www.uibk.ac.at/peacestudies/ma-program/, last accessed November 19, 2014.
- ↑ Koppensteiner, Norbert (2014): Norbert Koppensteiner: Home. Available at URL: http://koppensteiner.wissweb.at, last accessed November 19, 2014.
- ↑ UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies (2014): Elicitive Conflict Mapping Available at URL: http://www.uibk.ac.at/peacestudies/ecm/, last accessed November 19, 2014.