Beyond Fragmentation: Integrating Diversity Within Development Cooperation as a Contribution to International Peacebuilding

Abstract

While fostering human diversity is a principal goal of peace and development work, plurality has itself become an immense challenge. The practical reality of fragmentation is of concern to the international development community due to the risk of inefficiency and rupture that it implies. Rooted in the conflict transformation approach of Lederach and Dietrich, this article advances a transdisciplinary perspective for fostering an integrated plurality within development work. Grounded in a relational approach, this article explores (1) the conceptual frame of development cooperation and its challenges for integrating plurality; (2) key premises to consider when building structures of development cooperation; and (3) the method of Theme-Centred Interaction as a useful tool of humanistic psychology for addressing the challenge of plurality in development work. This transdisciplinary approach may usefully serve in the critical examination of current development projects and the initiation of new ones.

Keywords::

• fragmentation
• organisation of international development cooperation
• plurality
• humanistic psychology
• Theme-Centred Interaction
• organisational structures
• integration
• conflict transformation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ As an example, fragmentation was the key concern of international researchers at the German Development Institute (GDI) Conference in 2013 (GDI 2013). More practically, see the OECD reports on the current aid architecture and aid orphans (OECD 2015).

² For the philosophical approach at the basis of this understanding of the ‘postmodern condition’, see Lyotard (1984).

³ On the decline of anti- and post-development, and the attempts to transcend their limitations, see Escobar (2000).

⁴ Similarly, Dietrich speaks of a ‘fundamental systemic contradiction between the logic of development and the psychologic of humanistic oriented peace and conflict workers’ (Dietrich 2011, 323).

⁵ For a historical overview and more detailed explanation of the differences between these two movements and the main actors of the Human Potential Movement, see Dietrich (2011, 80 ff).

⁶ I thank Norbert Koppensteiner for introducing me to this concept, which is widely used in humanistic psychology and little known in social fields. Despite lacking conceptual research on this notion, see Braidotti (2006) and Koppensteiner (2009) to get a deeper sense of its meaning. In this text, the concept of ‘unfolding’ is used as an alternative to the already overused and misleading concept of ‘development’. In contrast to ‘development’, it aims to emphasise the plurality of existing potentials, the connections amongst diverse actors in this process, and the lack of determination of a final goal or a value-judgment on ‘the right way to develop’.

⁷ The term ‘elicitive’ derives from the verb ‘to elicit’ meaning to bring forth or evoke and has been developed by Lederach in his proposal of Elicitive Conflict Transformation in contrast to prescriptive approaches, e.g. in Lederach (1995, 37 ff) and Lederach (2004). Originally, it was used in the frame of Gestalt therapy and humanistic psychology, where it is used synonymously with ‘evocative’ (O'Connor & Seymour 1992, 92). In the field of peace and conflict studies, Lederach uses it to characterise his transformational approach in contrast to the prescriptive idea of providing ‘a solution’ for a specific problem-object. The basic understanding underlying this approach is that conflicts are spaces of transformation where actors (including necessarily the conflict worker) can discover out of their engagement with each other and with the issue at hand new possibilities of (inter-)action.

⁸ Etymologically, the word ‘to heal’ derives from ‘making whole’ (Harper 2001–2013).

⁹ Importantly, while Cohn referred particularly to groups of individual human beings, her model is as well applicable to groups of sub-groups, where each sub-group participates as well as a unity within a bigger whole. Consequently, when Cohn elaborates on the ‘I’-aspect of interactions, her reflections are relevant both in terms of the interaction amongst individuals as well as in terms of the interaction amongst institutions. This last point is particularly important for the field of development cooperation.

¹⁰ Regarding the need of a leading participant and her particular role, see Cohn (1997, 188 ff).

¹¹ For more on the TCI work with big groups, see Cohn and Klein (1993).

¹² Cohn completes her system with a set of auxiliary rules, to which I cannot refer here. However, I will refer to some of them along with the explanation of axioms and postulates.

¹³ While this second axiom results from Cohn's particular value system and deserves to be discussed and revised if we aim to transcend moral structures of development models, it is not the main objective of this article. In this line, see Dietrich (2011, 190 ff).

¹⁴ Dietrich (2011, 320 ff) elaborates further on this critique pointing particularly at the connection between development projects and the projections they entail.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Florencia Benitez-Schaefer

FLORENCIA BENITEZ-SCHAEFER is an Argentine-German jurist and peace scholar at the UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies (University of Innsbruck). After finishing her PhD in law on the role of plurality in diverse models of international legal development (University of Vienna), her research focus has been on transformative approaches to social conflict.