NOTES

B.D. Bonta, 1996. "Conflict Resolution Among Peaceful Societies: The Culture of Peacefulness," Journal of Peace Research 33(4):403-420.

Bonta's basic argument is that nonviolent and peaceful societies (hereafter referred to as simply peaceful in his terms) exist which are fundamentally different from others in their worldview, ethos, value system, attitudes, practices, institutions, and customs. This includes their perceptions of human nature, conflicts, dispute resolution, and tolerance for violence. They are able to resolve conflicts nonviolently virtually all of the time. They contrast sharply with other societies including Western civilizations (p. 404).

A second component of his argument is that peace studies has a Western bias and needs to be balanced by consideration of nonviolent/peaceful societies. Peaceful societies challenge Western thinking (p. 405). [e.g., Chagnon, Gregor, Keeley, Wrangham-Peterson]

Bonta provides some very detailed and useful definitions.

"Peacefulness is a condition of human society characterized by a relatively high degree of interpersonal harmony; little if any physical violence among adults, between children and adults, and between the sexes; workable strategies for resolving conflicts and averting violence; a commitment to avoiding violence (such as warfare) with other peoples; and strategies for raising children to adopt and continue these nonviolent ways." (p. 405).

He notes that: "Evidence demonstrates that a modest number of societies have developed highly, and in some cases totally, nonviolent social systems" (p. 405). They rarely if ever have violent conflict (p. 406). [this essay based on 24, his book on 47]

He also notes that they are not utopias (pp. 405, 414) --- there are jealousies, gossip, resentments, and backbiting (p. 405), but they combine their world view of peace with a very realistic, pragmatic understanding of the results of violence (p. 414).

Bonta defines conflict as: "... the incompatible needs, differing demands, contradictory wishes, opposing beliefs, or divergent interests which produce interpersonal antagonism and, at times, hostile encounters" (p. 405).

"Conflict resolution among peaceful peoples is the settlement or avoidance of disputes between individuals or groups of people through solutions that refrain from violence and that attempt to reunify and re-harmonize the people involved in internal conflicts, or that attempt to preserve amicable relations with external societies" (p. 406).

Bonta identifies six strategies for nonviolent conflict resolution (pp. 406-409):

1. self-restraint

2. negotiation -

3. separation - avoid conflict by mobility

4. intervention - others get involved to avoid escalation of conflict, to defuse tensions, develop dialog, and restore harmony

5. meetings - decrease tensions rather than confront or decide

6. humor - defuse tension and resolve conflict through joking atmosphere and individuals skilled in this

[All of these are witnessed in incidents in Yanomami fieldwork and can be extracted from ethnographies even though authors have Western bias in favor of conflict and violence which they emphasize, but since good recorders of behavior, include inadvertently examples of nonviolent conflict resolution]

Bonta identifies five Western biases, cultural prejudices, or ethnocentrisms which are contradicted by the evidence of peaceful societies (p. 404):

1. all societies have violent conflict and warfare (even when conflict arises, and absent to rare, it is approached nonviolently (p. 408)

2. punishment deters internal conflicts and violence (at most, usually only ostracism (p. 409)

3. the threat of armed force helps prevent external conflicts and violence (even when peaceful societies have belligerent neighbors, they usually manage to resolve conflicts with them nonviolently, killing and warfare never seriously considered (p. 410-411)

4. conflict is best managed through reliance on political structures such as governments

"Individuals are expected to deal with conflict situations by walking away from them, by laughing them off, by displacing their feelings of anger in various ways, by smiling and being pleasant to everyone, by actively socializing with people with whom they may have unpleasant inner feelings, and so on" (p. 412)

"None of these societies rely on the power of the people as a political body to enforce the peace, with the sole exception of ostracism" (p. 412).

5. conflict has many positive functions, and as long as it is managed properly it should be viewed as normal, reasonable, beneficial, and helpful (p. 404).

Peaceful societies are based on worldview or cultures of peacefulness and nonviolence which includes psychocultural aspects and social structure but involve much more, a total system of peacefulness including cosmology, meaning, and conflict resolution mechanisms (pp. 413-414).

Furthermore, Bonta asserts that: "The basic reason for peacefulness in these societies is that the people are strongly opposed to actual physical violence and firmly in favor of nonviolence" (p. 414). Violence is never acceptable (p. 414).
These values are internalized through socialization and enculturation as well as through daily social interaction. In short, "... the peaceful peoples are intolerant of internal strife; they do not rationalize conflict and would not accept the possibility that violence is excusable in some circumstances" (p. 414). "Peacefulness is an absolute commitment for them. Most of their social, religious, mythical, cultural, psychological, and educational beliefs are derived from this worldview of their own peacefulness" (p. 414). "They view nonviolence as absolutely essential to the proper functioning of their societies" (p. 415).

Bonta says that "While these peoples resolve conflicts by using techniques that other societies also use, they emphasize certain strategies in unique ways" (p. 415). [This implies that peacefulness is latent in other societies as well (e.g., Yanomami)].

In conclusion, peaceful societies provide nonviolent precedents, heuristic models for developing peacefulness, and inspiration about peace being a realized possibility in some societies not simple an ideal, romantic, or utopian dream. The quest for peace is to be achieved, at least in part, in developing a peaceful worldview. As Bonta writes: "... the vision of peacefulness provided by these peoples: that human societies CAN be peaceful, that people CAN build virtually fail-safe structures for avoiding and resolving conflict, that punishments and armed conflicts are NOT essential for keeping the peace" (p. 416).

As to the second component of his argument, the ethnocentric nature of peace studies, it is implicit that peace studies are shaped by Western emic ideas of human nature, human society, violence, nonviolence, war, peace, etc., and are not etic (objective, neutral, detached scientific generalizations verified by empirical testing of hypotheses, etc.). Also, much more attention needs to be given to the emics of peaceful societies.

Are there any possible problems or limitations for criticizing Bonta's essay.

1. One possibility is the reliability and accuracy of the ethnographic accounts that he bases his generalizations on which he derives second hand from the literature rather than from firsthand fieldwork.

2. A second and more serious problem is that he does not carefully maintain a distinction between levels of violence or nonviolence from individual to interpersonal, intragroup, intergroup, societal, intersocietal, regional, national, international, multinational, and global. Interpersonal nonviolence is different from peace in my usage where the latter includes the former but is at a higher scale and involves more including the absence of war.

3. A third limitation is that he tends to focus on nonviolent conflict resolution and even though he indicates that more is involved in a peaceful society he does not really explore explicitly, systematically, and in detail cases of cultures of peacefulness. However, to some degree this is available in the literature (Bonta, Montagu, Howell-Willis, Sponsel-Gregor). In a necessarily brief journal article he can not do everything.

4. Bonta's general theoretical framework is mentalistic and emic, and thus subject to the same criticisms as others with this approach (e.g., see Harris 1979, Lett 1987).

Also see:

Bonta, Bruce D., 1993, Peaceful Peoples: An Annotated Bibliography, Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.