August 20 - 26 from 2pm to 5pm
(Except for Sunday, August 23: 3pm to 6pm)
Location: Hauptschule Alpbach
Language: English
Chairpersons:
Astier M. ALMEDOM, Professor of Practice in Humanitarian Policy and Global Public Health, The Fletcher School, Tufts University, Boston
Wolfgang DIETRICH, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Chairholder for Peace Studies, University of Innsbruck
Guestspeaker:
Irene FREUDENSCHUSS-REICHL, Director General for Development Cooperation, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Vienna
Content:
The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) to reduce 'poverty' by 2015 are mostly unattainable; while the first decade of the 21st century ushers in fundamental paradigm shift in north-south inter-governmental cooperation. The power of non-governmental entities that are essentially unelected and politically (if not financially) unaccountable has been scrutinized. More questions than answers present themselves around the "Samaritan's dilemma": which strategies are viable for donors and to what extent are recipients participating in setting goals for sustainable development? If trust is fundamental to cooperation at all levels of human interaction; and a 'measurable' indicator of 'social capital' of the bonding and bridging/linking types, how does it square with notions of ‘national interest’?
Resilience research and policy as a basis for sustainability will be discussed with emphasis on human (cultural, social, economic) systems built on trust. While the MDG and related target-oriented policies may fail to deliver, or even detract attention from peace building; resilience thinking is redefining the terms of engagement with and between the so-called 'poor' on both sides of the development cooperation equation. This workshop will explain the difference between modern, post-modern and trans-rational approaches in peace and development studies, and present innovative methods of elicitive conflict transformation.
Literature:
"The Samaritan's Dilemma: The Political Economy of Development Aid" by Clark C. Gibson, Krister Andersson, Elinor Ostrom, and Sujai Shivakumar (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Peaces – an Aesthetic Concept, a Moral Need or a Transrational Virtue?, in: Asteriskos –Journal of International and Peace Studies 1/2 2006, Corunha/Spain. pp. 25 – 47.
Farewell to the One Peace; in: Peace Review, Journal of Social Justice(Volume 14/1, March 2002); San Francisco.
Schlüsseltexte der Friedensforschung / Key Texts of Peace Studies / Textos Claves de la Investigación para la Paz (= Die kommende Demokratie/2); Vienna, Münster. [LIT] (Co-editors: Josefina Echavarría Alvarez and Norbert Koppensteiner)
