Conflict Culture Change

From Nobel Peace Prize nominee Sulak Sivaraksa comes this look at Buddhism's innate ability to help change life on the global scale. Conflict, Culture, Change explores the cultural and environmental impacts of consumerism, nonviolence, and compassion, giving special attention to the integration of mindfulness and social activism, the use of Buddhist ethics to confront structural violence, and globalization's threat to traditional identity.

This book analyses the current legal framework seeking to protect cultural heritage during armed conflict and discusses proposed and emerging paradigms for its better protection. Cultural heritage has always been a victim of conflict, with monuments and artefacts frequently destroyed as collateral damage in wars throughout history. In addition, works of art have been viewed as booty by victors and stolen in the aftermath of conflict. However, deliberate destruction of cultural sites and items has also occurred, and the Intentional destruction of cultural heritage has been a hallmark of recent conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, where we have witnessed unprecedented, systematic attacks on culture as a weapon of war. In Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Mali, extremist groups such as ISIS and Ansar Dine have committed numerous acts of iconoclasm, deliberately destroying heritage sites, and looting valuable artefacts symbolic of minority cultures. This study explores how the international law framework can be fully utilised in order to tackle the destruction of cultural heritage, and analyses various paradigms which have recently been suggested for its better protection, including the Responsibility to Protect paradigm and the peace and security paradigm. This volume will be an essential resource for scholars and practitioners in the areas of public international law, especially international humanitarian law and cultural heritage law.

After years of relative neglect, culture is finally receiving due recognition as a key factor in the evolution and resolution of conflicts. Unfortunately, however, when theorists and practitioners of conflict resolution speak of culture, they often understand and use it in a bewildering and unhelpful variety of ways. With sophistication and lucidity, "Culture and Conflict Resolution" exposes these shortcomings and proposes an alternative conception in which culture is seen as dynamic and derivative of individual experience. The book explores divergent theories of social conflict and differing strategies that shape the conduct of diplomacy, and examines the role that culture has (and has not) played in conflict resolution. The author is as forceful in critiquing those who would dismiss or diminish culture s relevance as he is trenchant in advocating conflict resolution approaches that make the most productive use of a coherent concept of culture. In a lively style, Avruch challenges both scholars and practitioners not only to develop a clearer understanding of what culture is, but also to take that understanding and incorporate it into more effective conflict resolution processes."

The cost to business of unresolved conflicts is high in terms of expensive tribunals; loss of productivity, resignations and potentially loss of reputation for both individuals and the organization overall. Written by authors experienced in the field, this book addresses these key issues.

The cost to business of unresolved conflicts is high; tribunals, loss of productivity, resignations and damaged reputations are serious consequences for all concerned. With increased organizational change in the form of changes in leadership, restructuring, downsizing, matrix management, mergers, acquisitions and systems changes comes increased political activity and the potential for either increased learning and growth or tension and unproductive conflict. Change agents, HR practitioners and managers need to be skilled at empowering others to use or resolve conflict effectively for a more productive working environment and greater employee satisfaction. Change, Conflict and Community takes readers through the essential theory and hands-on practice of working with change and conflict by considering: * How we can increase our understanding of the tensions that often exist when change is ever present in the organization * How to work more effectively with the dynamic relationship between change and conflict * How the idea of “community” can help us to work with the energy of change and human interaction Barbara Kenton is a freelance consultant and Director of WHooSH Whole Systems Health. She is an experienced consultant, mediator, facilitator, coach and trainer with over 25 years' experience as a manager and development specialist working with individuals, teams and organizations both in the UK and internationally. She has published a number of articles on the role of the internal consultant and challenges facing those in HR. She is a qualified workplace and community mediator. Suzanne Penn is an independent consultant, facilitator and coach with 20 years' experience in the HR and Organization Development field. She has worked as an internal and an external practitioner across all sectors and industries in the UK, mainland Europe and the US. A previous Assistant Director at Roffey Park Management Institute, she brings to this book particular expertise in leadership development, group facilitation, strategic HR and organizational change and culture. The HR Series The HR Series is edited by Julie Beardwell, Principal Lecturer in Human Resource Management at DeMonfort University, and Linda Holbeche, Director of Research and Policy at CIPD, and is designed to plug the gap between theory and implementation. The books draw on live examples of strategic HR in practice and offer practical insights into how to transform individual and functional delivery to improve value-added. Intended for serious HR professionals who aspire to make a real difference within their organization, The HR Series provides resources to inform, empower and inspire the HR leaders of the future.

Paul Bate makes sense of a huge range of issues which must be considered in the struggle for change. He has developed a framework that will help students, researchers and practitioners alike to focus on a variety of conceptual and practical matters relating to business culture and cultural change. Strategies for Cultural Change represents one of the most ambitious attempts so far to provide a comprehensive approach to the design and implementation of a cultural change programme. One of five books nominated for the Management Consultancies Association 'Best Management Book of the Year' Prize 1994.

The authors of Culture, Conflict and Counterinsurgency contend that an enduring victory can still be achieved in Afghanistan. However, to secure it we must better understand the cultural foundations of the continuing conflicts that rage across Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, and shift our strategy from an attritional engagement to a smarter war plan that embraces these cultural dimensions. They examine the nexus of culture, conflict, and strategic intervention, and attempt to establish if culture is important in a national security and foreign policy context, and to explore how cultural phenomena and information can best be used by the military. In the process they address just how intimate cultural knowledge needs to be to counter an insurgency effectively. Finally, they establish exactly how good we've been at building and utilizing cultural understanding in Afghanistan, what the operational impact of that understanding has been, and where we must improve to maximize our use of cultural knowledge in preparing for and engaging in future conflicts.

The myth of the peace-loving "noble savage" is persistent and pernicious. Indeed, for the last fifty years, most popular and scholarly works have agreed that prehistoric warfare was rare, harmless, unimportant, and, like smallpox, a disease of civilized societies alone. Prehistoric warfare, according to this view, was little more than a ritualized game, where casualties were limited and the effects of aggression relatively mild. Lawrence Keeley's groundbreaking War Before Civilization offers a devastating rebuttal to such comfortable myths and debunks the notion that warfare was introduced to primitive societies through contact with civilization (an idea he denounces as "the pacification of the past"). Building on much fascinating archeological and historical research and offering an astute comparison of warfare in civilized and prehistoric societies, from modern European states to the Plains Indians of North America, War Before Civilization convincingly demonstrates that prehistoric warfare was in fact more deadly, more frequent, and more ruthless than modern war. To support this point, Keeley provides a wide-ranging look at warfare and brutality in the prehistoric world. He reveals, for instance, that prehistorical tactics favoring raids and ambushes, as opposed to formal battles, often yielded a high death-rate; that adult males falling into the hands of their enemies were almost universally killed; and that surprise raids seldom spared even women and children. Keeley cites evidence of ancient massacres in many areas of the world, including the discovery in South Dakota of a prehistoric mass grave containing the remains of over 500 scalped and mutilated men, women, and children (a slaughter that took place a century and a half before the arrival of Columbus). In addition, Keeley surveys the prevalence of looting, destruction, and trophy-taking in all kinds of warfare and again finds little moral distinction between ancient warriors and civilized armies. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, he examines the evidence of cannibalism among some preliterate peoples. Keeley is a seasoned writer and his book is packed with vivid, eye-opening details (for instance, that the homicide rate of prehistoric Illinois villagers may have exceeded that of the modern United States by some 70 times). But he also goes beyond grisly facts to address the larger moral and philosophical issues raised by his work. What are the causes of war? Are human beings inherently violent? How can we ensure peace in our own time? Challenging some of our most dearly held beliefs, Keeley's conclusions are bound to stir controversy.