Can we reconcile? Understanding the multi-level challenges of conflict transformation

Introduction This article is concerned with the challenges and (im)possibilities of reconciliation. Framed around the question, 'Can we reconcile?', in what follows I consider the political challenges involved in attempting to restore broken relationships and find ways to live together, democratically and non-violently, with radical differences (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, and Miall 2011 :246). The article advances both a conceptual and an empirical argument. First, following the work of theorists such as Andrew Schaap (2005) and Adrian Little (2014), inter alia, I argue that we need to rethink the intrinsic and potentially productive role of non-violent conflict in reconciliation and conflict transformation work, accepting conflict as both enduring and necessary. This approach draws on theories of agonistic democracy, and makes a normative claim for the need to keep open political spaces in which conflict can be engaged. Second, I argue that reconciliation necessitates attention and effort across the multiple socio-political levels at which transformation is required, and that these transformations may never be complete but are in fact more complex and open-ended than is generally acknowledged. This latter argument is intended to counter some of the impatience that imbues much discussion of reconciliation and conflict transformation, and the suggestion that people – and countries – need to put both the politics and the traumas of the past behind them and 'move on' from their conflicts (Christodoulidis and Veitch 2007 :1; Hirsch 2012 :3). Counter to this I argue that simplicity and impatience in reconciliation politics is not only unrealistic, it is, as the first part of my argument would suggest, inherently dangerous, as it drives enduring social and political conflict underground from where it will inevitably surface in unpredictable and violent ways. Reconciliation has become 'a component part of our political vocabulary' and a 'regulative ideal in political discourse' (Christodoulidis and Veitch 2007:3). Developing first in relation to 'transitional' societies emerging from periods of authoritarian rule or civil war, the politics of reconciliation has since expanded to include the efforts of 'established' or 'consolidated' democracies, notably settler colonial societies still grappling with historical wrongs such as Australia and Canada (Bashir and Kymlicka 2008 :3-4). In recent decades the term has become increasingly used in the political arena, moving from 'the seminary and the academy into public policy' (Hamber and Kelly 2009 :286). In response to this expansion of reconciliation discourse and practice, scholars of political science have engaged with reconciliation in both …