Research
This is a partial list of academic pursuits of our faculty. For more information on the academic interests of our faculty, see the personnel page.
| Paul Redekop | Culture of Peace and Cultures of Punishment (2005) |
| John Derksen | Peacemaking Principles Drawn from Opposition to the Crusades, 1095-1276 (2004) |
| John Derksen | Nonviolent Political Action In Sixteenth-Century Strasbourg: The Ziegler Brothers (2004) |
| Paul Redekop | The Mediator as Narrator: Practicing Narrative Mediation (2004) |
| Neil Funk-Unrau | Potentials and Problems of Public Apologies to Canadian Aboriginal Peoples (2004) |
Paul Redekop - Personal web page
"Culture of Peace and Cultures of Punishment" (2005)
| From the introduction A major obstacle to the creation of a genuine culture of peace is the widespread notion that it is somehow necessary and desirable to coerce and to punish people who do not do as we wish them to do. Mediators and facilitators, working in the criminal justice area, in family and divorce mediation, with workplace conflicts, and in many other areas, often find their efforts blocked by disputants who insist that somehow pain and suffering must be inflicted on those whom they feel harmed by. At the same time, newspaper headlines and television news stories amplify the complaints of victims of crime who demand harsher treatment of offenders, while the President of the United States declares that the death of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis is justified by the need to punish one aging tyrant. My own experience with this kind of punitive attitude, in victim-offender mediation, and in my efforts as an advocate of restorative justice have led me to explore the origins and causes of this desire for punishment.  Full article (PDF, 176 K) |
John Derksen - Personal web page
"Peacemaking Principles Drawn from Opposition to the Crusades, 1095-1276" (2004)
| From the introduction The Crusades of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are a well-plowed field, but few have written on opposition to them. This paper focuses on European opposition to the Crusades and asks about implications for efforts to resolve conflict and build peace today. It sketches the main contours of the Crusades, describes the opposition to them, explores what similarities there might be to major conflicts of today, and finally asks what lessons peacemakers might learn from the original Crusades. Full article (PDF, 172 K) |
John Derksen - Personal web page
"Nonviolent Political Action In Sixteenth-Century Strasbourg: The Ziegler Brothers" (2004)
| From the introduction Ever since James M. Stayer's Anabaptists and the Sword, scholars of the Reformation's nonconformists have recognized that among the Anabaptists, "apolitical pacifism" or "separatist nonresistance" was a posture consolidated only after 1560, and that especially in the first decade of the "Radical Reformation," Anabaptists held a range of attitudes toward the sword. Stayer identifies four quadrants on a compass: crusading, Realpolitik, moderate apoliticism, and separatist nonresistance. The former two are political; the latter two apolitical. Crusading and separatist nonresistance are radical; Realpolitik and moderate apoliticism are moderate or pragmatic....This schematization misses an orientation with an ancient history and made famous in the twentieth century by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., namely, political pacifism, or nonviolent political action. Full article (PDF, 176 K) |
Paul Redekop - Personal web page
"The Mediator as Narrator: Practicing Narrative Mediation" (2004)
| From the introduction The paper will seek to build on the work of Winslade and Monk (Narrative Mediation: A New Approach to Conflict Resolution) in the development of a working model for the practice of narrative mediation. The premise that the mediator must view the discourses of parties to a dispute as narratives is shared. However, the view will be presented that the mediator must also be seen to be living in a "storied world," because, as Winslade and Monk themselves would acknowledge, all discourse is in essence narrative discourse. Human experience is organized in terms of narratives. This fact raises questions with regard to the process of mediator intervention proposed by Winslade and Monk, whereby they would have the mediator step away from the narrative form, and "deconstruct" the narratives of participants, show relationships with dominant discourses, and so on, thus adopting what I refer to as a kind of "meta-narrative" stance. Full article (PDF, 176 K) |
Neil Funk-Unrau - Personal web page
"Potentials and Problems of Public Apologies to Canadian
Aboriginal Peoples" (2004)
| From the introduction From the interpersonal to the international level, the automatic response to any incident of injustice appears to begin with a demand for apology. "National apology is all the rage," claims Mitchell in an introduction to list of national apologies rendered from 1988 to 1998 - the "decade of atonement". Cunningham presents another exhaustive listing of recent public apologies, subdividing these into those made by individuals, professional and commercial organizations, religious organizations, spiritual leaders, governments and heads of state. Why has this apparently simple act of saying "I am sorry" taken on such importance in so many situations? Does the popularity of this one expression signal "the canonization of sentimentality" or"heartfelt contrition signifying the national capacity to suppress the impulse to harm others"? Full article (PDF, 168 K) |
