As I read the Honolulu Advertiser at breakfast, an advertisement with large red bold-type font caught my eye: “Woman Found Scrubbing the Floors.” What? Below the title was a young woman scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees. Next to her head were the words, “Husband said she was on her hands and knees for days – Don’t let this happen to you. Buy an Oreck Orbiter today.”
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The United States’ use of conflict resolution practices and theories as part of its nation-building strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq requires us to reevaluate the aims of the conflict resolution project. It appears from this precarious vantage point that the practice of conflict resolution is moving in a dangerous and ineffective direction guided only by its desire to reduce violence. Instead of critically investigating the implications of our work during the course of violent conflict, the envelopment of conflict professionals within the military and intelligence industrial systems puts the interests of Western powers and for-profit ventures above the needs of indigenous or “host” (if you prefer) populations. Conflict resolution, once a visionary movement to recognize the existence of universal shared human needs, finds itself in the uncertain position of being exploited as a supplement to the aims of a failing counterinsurgency strategy. A return to a vibrant debate about the relevance of human needs to the field is an essential part of rediscovering the human element underlying a liberatory practice of conflict engagement. Thus, a primary task of peace and conflict studies in an age defined by globalization and dominated by threat narratives should be investigating the ways in which human needs are manipulated to feed the expansive thrust of hyper-capitalism.
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It may seem strange, that in the first issue of a magazine devoted to theory, there is discussion of practice. Especially when Critical Conflict Theory (CCT) is a new idea just breaking onto the scene. Furthermore, CCT is yet to be well defined; hence the purpose of Unrest and the essays contained within issue zero. However, even as CCT is new, ill defined and entangled within a whole host of other theories, there are examples of people whose theory in use is primarily critical, even if it is not the espoused theory. Furthermore, illumination into Critical Conflict Engagement (the practice of CCT) may be useful to those interested in further developing or even adopting CCT as a dominant, or at least useful, theoretical frame. After all, as Jawaharlal Nehru put it “A theory must be tempered with reality.”
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