Many Peaces Magazine #2

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ELICITIVE MOTION:ONE WAY TO UNFOLD PEACE Page 6

THE FIRST FESTIVAL OF MANY PEACES: THE ‘WE‘ IS EXPANDING Page 18

CIUDAD MURAL:ELICITIVE METHODS APPLIED IN MEXICO Page 13

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E MANY PEACES

VOLUME 22015 - 07

THE ART OF LIVING SIDEWAYS: SKATEBOARDING AND PEACES Page 24

- 3 Editorial - 3

E D I T O R I A LDear readers, We are very pleased to present to you the second publication of the Many Peaces Magazine this summer. The release of Volume 2 comes in a unique summer term for the Innsbruck School of Peace Studies. From August 9th to 14th alumni, faculty members and peace fellows from all over the world will gather at the Grillhof Seminar Center to celebrate the 1st Innsbruck Academic Festival of Many Peaces! During six conference days, participants will engage in dia-logue and present their work on topics related to transrational peace philosophy and its applied method, elicitive conflict transformation. Generations of fellow peace researchers, practitioners and alumni from the MA Program in Peace Studies at the University of Innsbruck will meet at this occasion. The notion of the Many Peaces of course goes back to the concept that Wolfgang Dietrich introduced to the discipline of Peace and Conflict Studies in his well-known essay: A Call for Many Peaces. With the festival as well as this magazine we have tried to follow Professor Dietrich’s call. The plurality of peace perspectives has certainly reached the admissions commit-tee of the Innsbruck Academic Festival of Many Peaces and they have also received many creative ideas for workshops that will be offered during the festival. The diversity of the submissions leave little doubt about the groundbreaking idea that peace indeed shall be understood in the plural, which Dietrich introduced to us in the 1990s. In this volume, we are happy to present a variety of topics, ranging from Rosalie Kubny’s work as a peace facilitator working with dance and elicitive motion, to Egidio de Bustamante’s expe-rience as a doctoral researcher at Castellón de la Plana, the UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies’ oldest cooperation partner. We are also proud to feature creative and applied work in elicitive peace work such as a Consciousness Research group comprised of Innsbruck Peace Studies alumni, as well as vivid stories and images from the grassroots organization Colectivo Tomate in Mexico which alumni Tomás Darío shares with us.

The network of researchers who work on topics related to the Innsbruck School of Peace Studies throughout the world is growing and the quality produced is remarkable, like Sophie Friedel’s first monograph, The Art of Living Sideways, which we are happy to present as one of the lat-est publications in this framework. Meanwhile, Andreas Oberprantacher, a student of the first generation, has successfully finished his habilitation (postdoctoral lecture qualification) at the University of Innsbruck’s Department of Philosophy. Big congrats, Professor Oberprantacher, this is wonderful news for us all! We wish you interesting and inspiring moments with this magazine! The Editorial Team

Isabelle GuibertAdham HamedPaul LauerMayme Lefurgey

4 - Many Peaces Magazine

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T SGREETING NOTE 5

ELICITIVE PEACE WORKERS

ELICITIVE MOTION 6One Way to Unfold Peace, by Rosalie Kubny

CONSCIOUSNESS RESEARCH 10Exploring the Human Mind and Body, by Johannes Ludwig

CIUDAD MURAL 13Elicitive Methods Applied in Mexico, by Colectivo Tomate

COOPERATION PARTNERS

WHERE WORLDS GATHER 16The UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies’ Oldest Cooperati-on Partner in the Spotlight, by Egidio de Bustamante

ALUMNI PROJECTS

THE ‘WE’ IS EXPANDING 18How a Vision can Produce Networks, Structuresand also Open itself up, by Julia Felder

MOVING BETWEEN “I AND WE” 20Connection, Reflection and Replenishing at the first Alumni Sweatlodge, by Jessica Hawkins

MANY PEACES INTERVIEWS

THE ART OF LIVING SIDEWAYS 22Conversation with Sophie Friedel, by Adham Hamed

EDUCATION AS THE KEY 25Conversation with Franz Jenewein, by Johanna Mihevc

RESEARCH

NEW MASTERS OF PEACE 27PUBLICATIONS 30

APPENDIX

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION 32THE EDITORIAL TEAM 33

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Dear Peace Family,

As I write these lines to you spring has come to Innsbruck. A fresh wind is blowing. The sky is clear. The air is crisp, the sun of early May rising. Another online phase is well under way. A new cycle is beginning as the current students are preparing their assignments, commencing their journey through the semester. Reading the contributions to this second volume of the Many Peaces Magazine, it feels like breathing in the spirit carried by that fresh spring wind.

The texts speak of community and of emerging relational platforms. They relate stories about spaces held for each other like in the Alumni Sweat Lodge and the Consciousness Re-search Group. They report on common explorations of what it means to be a peace scholar and facilitator. The notions of the transrational and the elicitive are embodied here, enfleshed and painted with the colors of life, as is done in the contributions of Rosalie Kubny and Tomás Darío Pérez Vega. The magazine tells of projects completed and ready to be shown to the world, like the publication of Sophie Friedel’s Art of Living Sideways as newest Volume in the Masters of Peace. It brings news of theses completed and students turning into alumni, embarking on a new journey of their own. Congratulations to all recent graduates, like Layal Dorra, Mayme Lefurgey, Margrete Slettebø and Tanuja Thurairajah who are exemplarily featured here. From the program’s side I can report to you that there will be a large group of graduates receiving their diploma during the graduation ceremony this summer, maybe the largest one yet.

The fresh spring wind seems to have carried the seeds of Peace Studies far. Most recently to Brazil where a new Master Program in Conflict Transformation and Peace Studies is flowering, established by no less than an alumna of the program - Cerys Tramontini and her team. Once the wind brought some seeds from Castellón to Innsbruck, Egidio de Bustamante’s contribution to the current volume is a reminder of that. Now they are taking root in Brazil.

I am looking forward to that creative and novel space that will open up this August - when the hot summer wind blows through Innsbruck and fans the fires of inspiration during the Academic Festival of Many Peaces. The very fact that there now is a Many Peaces Magazine on its second volume finally highlights the vibrancy of this Peace Studies community and its flourishing.

All those new developments and initiatives show what is possible when dedication, effort and heart come together; at times with a little help from that serendipitous yet uncontrollable friend wind. Just like Franz Jenewein in the current volume, I still remember how Innsbruck Peace Studies began. I continue to be amazed by each present moment, am curious about what is still to come and remain grateful for this fresh wind and the transformations and new ideas it brings.

The people writing this magazine and those that feature in it – known faces all. Only a short time ago they were students. Now they are alumni, finding new ways of thinking and living peace and conflict. Adding their own touch, bringing in new ideas. Soon… who knows where the fresh wind will carry them and which fruits these seeds will still bear. But here and now the moment appears ripe. Promising. Full of opportunity. May we all use it, this Kairos, this grace of the current moment. May the fresh wind remain at our back. May the next steps be guided by the same spirit of adventure and innovation that carries this magazine and may we all continue to be enriched by it.

I hope you will enjoy the magazine!

Greeting Note - 5

G R E E T I N G N O T E

NORBERT KOPPENSTEINER is member of the UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies’ team as well as program coordinator and core faculty member of the MA Program in Peace, Development, Security and International Conflict Transformation. He teaches in Innsbruck and abroad and facilitates workshops on em-bodied practices of peace and conflict transformation. Contact: [email protected]


E L I C I T I V E M O T I O Nas a tool for inner peace have continuously been of interest to me. Even before writing my thesis, I started my dancing journey by discovering movement and its healing potential within my body and by taking part in the experience of others. Today, I am en-gaged in a training to become a dance therapist at the European Center for Dance Therapy in Munich, Germany (www.tanzthera-pie-zentrum.de) and I am already working with dance as a tool for inner peace work. I constantly witness and work with the potential of dance and the healing power of movement in the body and the psyche. The most important aspect I currently work with is my concept called elicitive motion, a combination of guided medita-tion and dance.

Defining inner peace

In this article, I will not focus on conflict transformation and dance, but on peace and dance. Not because one aspect is better than the other, but because I have realized that most attempts to transform or solve conflicts focus only on the conflict itself rather than on the potential of peace that is always present. I focus on peace.

I believe that peace is an energy that constantly flows within situations and human beings and sometimes needs to be unfold-ed. Conflicts, on the contrary, are blockages that stop this ener-gy from flowing. Conflict is not the opposite of peace, but rather

ROSALIEKUBNY

ONE WAY TO UNFOLD PEACE

TEXT BY ROSALIE KUBNY // PHOTOGRAPHS BY PAUL LAUER

I believe in the transformative potential of dance. I believe in the possibility to unfold peace - everywhere and in every mo-ment. I believe in elicitive motion as a wonderful resource for conflict transformation.

Everything started with the thesis I wrote for the Master of Arts Program in Peace, Development, Security and International Con-flict Transformation at the University of Innsbruck. My thesis deals with 5Rhythms Dance as a method for inner peace work. 5Rhythms Dance was invented by Gabrielle Roth and is by now a world-renowned movement and meditation practice that focuses on moving through five rhythms. Each rhythm has a specific qual-ity and theme that leads the dancer into an awareness of mind, body and heart.

Since I wrote my thesis in 2013, inner peace work, the poten-tials of elicitive motion and the question of how dance can be used

Elicitive Peace Workers - 7

E L I C I T I V E M O T I O N

part of its definition. In that sphere, I think that peace embraces conflict and that conflict is necessary for transformation. Thus, by focusing on unfolding peace, I mean focusing on transforming blocked energies into flowing energies again. Furthermore, I do not intend to focus only on peace, but on inner peace or, in other words, on the individual experience of peace.

Inner peace means being in connection with the inner self. The inner self includes the inner wisdom, the inner essence, the seed of life, love - however you want to call it. Inner peace is a dynamic condition: it can always be sensed but is also always determined by the individual subjectivity of those who perceive it, which under-lines why there are many inner peaces. Inner peace is connected to and in resonance with the outer macrocosm, yet it is an indi-vidual experience. Therefore, inner peace needs to be unfolded by each individual in order for them to transform their own conflicts, blockages, or traumata. This process can be supported by outer circumstances, people or situations, just like I, as a facilitator, can assist a person in unfolding his/her inner peace.

Inner peace equals outer peace?

If I believe in inner peace, logically inner peace work exists as well. Inner peace work is the (conscious and/or unconscious) activity of unfolding inner peace. Inner peace work holistically creates in-ner space for one’s self, giving attention to and reconnecting with it. This can be done alone and/or with the help of a facilitator and/

or in a group. The space in which this work develops lies inside each individual, yet it is (consciously and/or unconsciously) in resonance/relation with the outside/others.

Transpersonal psychology assumes that by working on one’s inner state of consciousness, allowing transformation and heal-ing on that level, one can transform and thus ease realities in the outer world. In other words, outer peace cannot be sustainably established without inner peace. There is a connection and reso-nance between the inside and the outside, even though the inside remains an entity within the outside. Inner peace work deals with the internal side of the human being and has nevertheless impacts on the outer. This implies that inner peace work is not only a heal-ing or transformation tool for the individual, but for the collective (un)conscious too.

Dance as support to the unfolding of inner peace

For the past four years, I have had to do a lot with dancing bodies through dancing on my own and facilitating dance workshops. I work with children, young people and adults. The workshops dif-fer in their theme, but are always about meditation practice and dance. Today, I mainly work with children with mental disabili-ty. By working with disabled children I can observe how some of them enjoy communicating with their body, because sometimes this is the only way by which they are able to communicate.

To me most people in the world are at war with themselves. That’s a bigger war than any of the ones

that are on the outside.JONATHAN HORAN


pressed mood. Equally, conflicts are manifested as blocked ener-gies in our bodies. Therefore, moving the body is a tool to make these blockages flow and shift again. The ‘outcome’ of this shift or transformation is not as important as the simple fact that there is a shift, hence a change.

Everything but breath is Ego (John Kelly)

Body and breath are strongly interconnected. By activating the body, the breath gets more intensive and conscious. Breath is an-other important element that allows us to stay in the present mo-ment, relax and get into a meditative mood. It is a gateway to one’s inner world, because by concentrating on breath one shifts the focus from the outside world into the inner. Breathing constantly without holding back is a movement in itself and enables ener-gies to flow again. Thus, through breath, it is possible to transform blockages and change pain into pleasure. The first movement we did after our birth was breathing. Breath reminds people that they are alive.

It is possible to dance at every moment and in every situation. However, a facilitated group setting can support certain aspects of inner peace work. The main aspect of dancing in a group creates a feeling of belonging. Since human beings are relational beings, this feeling contributes to inner healing. Furthermore, the group acts as a mirror and can represent important aspects of daily life. The group as a mirror can show aspects and facets of oneself that one is not aware of or even avoids. Often the group energy encour-ages oneself to look at these topics and the energy field created by the dancers altogether can be supportive in a healing process.

What is elicitive motion?

Since my master thesis I have been working on and developing a method that I call elicitive motion, which is inspired by 5Rhythms Dance, bodywork therapy and meditation practices. The prin-ciples of that method deal with the dancing person and his/her movements. The main subject is to elicit the motion out of the dancer and work with the material the dancer has to offer. One starts from the knowledge of the body that is already given. Just as in elicitive conflict transformation, elicitive motion places the focus on the person and his/her potential or resource in order to

support him/her unfolding in-ner peace. In that sense, the elic-itive approach of elicitive conflict transformation can be transferred to that method. In other words, every motion already lives in the dancer, every dancer already con-tains the dance in him/herself, it just needs to be given space to unfold.

The elicitive approach is creative, spontaneous, intuitive and flexible. In order to unfold peace, one needs to adopt creative approaches. Dancing is a way of expressing and, in my eyes, ex-pression is vivid creativity. Moreover, thanks to dance a constant transformation of energies takes place. This transformation is indeed a healing in motion on the dance floor. More concrete-ly, elicitive motion is a method that contains guided meditation and dance. I believe that the connection of the two is very fruitful. First, the guided meditation brings oneself into a state of aware-ness, mentally, emotionally and bodily. From there, one directly

It is amazing how dance as a tool for conflict transformation and for a peaceful social coexistence gets more

and more acknowledged.

Besides, I implement projects with youth associations and schools. For example, I am active in an association called Frie-den leben (www.friedenleben.com) that works with young school kids up to 10 years. The association’s goal is to create an awareness of peace and conflict in the school kids’ life. Thus, trainers teach Nonviolent Communication, discuss the issues of anger, violence and bullying, but also focus on individual peaces. Further, they combine this training with dance and body awareness sessions. It is amazing how dance as a tool for conflict transformation and for a peaceful social coexistence gets more and more acknowledged. School teachers can actually see through the body movement of their pupils the change that occurs in them. Another association I work with believes that in order to have a better communal co-working and be prepared to work in foreign countries, body awareness and group experience are necessary and can be created through dancing.

I have also started offering my own elicitive motion seminars. I am grateful to witness all these bodies in motion and I am still amazed and reassured to realize that moving the body is a gateway to transform blockages and thus unfold inner peace. Dance offers the possibility to explore and understand holistically certain topics within the body. It moves the focus from the mental towards the bodily being. Through movement and expression one can get in touch with one’s inner self and bring energies into flowing again.

How does dance support the unfolding of inner peace by bringing blockages into flow again?

In this article, and in general, I use the term dance as the descrip-tion of an action in motion, which is to say moving the body. Most people see dance as a performance or as a sequence of steps, but for me the term dance goes further. I put it on the same level as motion or movement. Thus, body movement and dance are in-terchangeable and describe a motion of the body, which could al-ready be a dance.

By moving the body, one generates a body awareness that takes the dancer to a total awareness of the present moment. Moving the body is a kind of meditation that shifts the focus from the mental towards the bodily being. Being in the body gives the dancer a feeling of being connected with what is happening in the present moment; the here and now. Unlike the mind, the body is not able to be somewhere else than in the moment and the space in which it moves. The body can only be here and now. When it moves, it takes over and the mind starts calming down. Whatever is present is be-ing felt. That does not mean that every sensation is pleasant, but even when pain, anger or fear are felt, it is in the present moment that these emotions appear. Dance reconnects with the body and establishes a gateway to the inner self. That reconnection with the inner self gives a glimpse of what our true being is beyond the patterns we follow in daily life.

By moving, one gets in touch with emotions that are part of everyday life. Dance contributes to the opening up of emotions by bringing them into motion. It offers the space to express and explore emotions/feelings and get in contact with them, which should be a vital part of our life. However, emotions are often suppressed and, as a consequence, manifest in bodily pains or de-


starts to move with what is in the present moment without inter-rupting the state of awareness. It is about becoming aware of what there is AND starting to move it. Meditation brings oneself to a stillness from which one can start flowing again. The guided med-itation can focus on different topics such as fear, anger, pain, and really make participants present. Then, with that in mind, heart and body, one can move.

The music is an important aspect, because it is the link between the meditation and the dance. Thus, I normally start with very soft and supportive music at the end of the guided meditation, in order to strengthen the feeling and awareness of it. Slowly, the

music gets louder, stronger and guides into movement. I support this process with some spoken words and instructions. During the dancing session itself some instructions are given too and I always try to establish the emotional link with the meditation of the beginning. I have experienced the richness of the combina-tion of these two practices and I will continue experimenting and working on it.

Since I have started my dancing journey, there is no doubt for me that dance is a wonderful and reliable tool. Yes, I believe in the transformative potential of dance. And yes, I believe in the pos-sibility to unfold peace by dancing - at any time and everywhere. So let’s dance!

ROSALIE KUBNY (WT’11, ST’11, WT’12) is currently living in Vienna, Austria. She works at Caritas with children with mental disabilities. She also implements different projects with children, young people and adults, always using dance and body movement as the main tool for working with the inner self, transforming blockages and creating body awareness. She is on her way to become self-employed, already working as a facilitator for dance seminars. Contact: [email protected]

web: www.elicitivemotion.commaster thesis: www.5rhythms.com/wp-content/uploads/Kub ny_Master-Thesis-word.pdf

Just as in elicitive conflict transformation, elicitive motion places the focus on the

person and his/her potential or resource in order to support him/her unfolding

inner peace.

Thanks to the non-profit association „Tanzraum-Innsbruck“ for supporting this Volume.

web: www.yoga-innsbruck.com/5-rhythms-innsbruck.html contact: [email protected]


While travelling to Innsbruck last summer to plan the first Academic Festival of Many Peaces, I had some additional plans in mind. For a long time, I had been dreaming of establishing a research and peer consulting group dedicated to consciousness research on both a theoretical and practical level. My hopes were to find a few motivated Innsbruck alumni who would like to start this group with me. I am happy to announce that some wonderful colleagues were ready to make this vision become a reality. In the following article I want to tell you a little about us, our work and our ideas.

Creating a space for the exploration of human consciousness – Our intention

When we first met in Vienna, what this research group could stand for and how we could work together was astonishingly clear to us. Surely, one of the reasons was our shared background in Innsbruck MA Program for Peace Studies along with our com-mon experiences in consciousness work and in different methods of therapy and self-awareness. These parallels led to our swift real-ization of the direction in which to move forward.

Before and after our time in Innsbruck as MA students, all of us have completed additional trainings in various methods of therapy and conflict transformation including theatre work, dance

C O N S C I O U S N E S S R E S E A R C H

JOHANNESLUDWIG

EXPLORING THE HUMAN MIND AND BODY: THE CONSCIOUSNESS RESEARCH GROUP

BY JOHANNES LUDWIG


therapy, trauma therapy, constellation work and body-oriented therapy. It was obvious to us that we wanted to work with these methods in the form of a peer consulting group. However, we wanted to study these techniques for their range of application in applied consciousness studies both on a theoretical and practical level. Our intention was to create a space where the different as-pects of the human consciousness could be explored, made visible and connected. We knew that this would only be possible in an established framework, where there is mutual trust and in which personal topics could be shared.

Therefore, our second step consisted in creating a framework in which these principles could be achieved. We agreed on con-fidentiality, so that all shared personal topics would be protected and remain within the group. By doing so, we wanted to provide a fertile soil in which long-term relationships based on trust and openness could grow. This also includes taking over responsibility for oneself and communicating one’s personal needs and feelings. Furthermore, we agreed that in the event any problem would arise we would look inside ourselves first and try not to project onto ex-

ternal circumstances. This concerns not only our group dynamics, but also our public relationships. This is in my opinion crucial, as it can in many cases allow for the avoidance of entanglement on a personal and institutional level, since most of the topics we fight in the outside have their corresponding counterparts in the inside.

Nevertheless, practical work stems from a deep understanding of theory in which we must be well versed. This is especially neces-sary when dealing with methods from different backgrounds and treating issues that are a consequence of trauma. Trauma-work in particular requires an increased awareness on all levels, as we are not only confronted with conscious parts of our psyche, but also with unconscious or split parts that we may not be aware of. Therefore, it is essential to understand the various philosophies in psychotraumatology, the diverse states our psyche can be in, as well as insights into different forms of therapy itself. For these rea-sons, we would share and discuss key texts from different areas of consciousness studies and psychotherapy in order to gain insights into these very fields of interests.

Putting theory into practice – Our first meetings

Having good intentions is one thing, but making them a reality is another. Beside the previously described ideas and their realiza-tion, many other factors contribute to productive teamwork. Un-deniably, a significant contribution comes from the people them-selves. Without motivated people, who do not have the stamina to stay the course in difficult situations, the whole undertaking may be destabilized. Another important factor is the location of the as-sembly, which in itself shapes the atmosphere of a group meeting.

After our first gathering, minor issues arose regarding these two factors . As a matter of fact, scheduling issues and the absence of a suitable assembly spot prevented the second meeting from taking

Whatever kind of psychological issue we deal with, there is a corresponding

bodily expression that should be taken care of or, at least,

be recognized.


place. Furthermore, the loss of a pair of participants lead to the questioning of future meetings. Nevertheless, we pushed forward and were excited by the arrival of new members who enriched our group with their previous work and their presence. Thus, today, our group consists of five people: Sophie Friedel, Matías Gossner, Isabelle Guibert, Rosalie Kubny and myself. In addition, we locat-ed a picturesque mountain hut which would fulfil all our needs in concerns of a safe and undisturbed environment for our second meeting.

And so, a few Skype meetings later, we found ourselves in the familiar and beautiful Tyrolean Alps with a new and fresh spir-it. Everybody was feeling the mutual trust in the group and the “heimish” atmosphere of the place. This allowed for us to share really openly and dedicate ourselves to our voyage of self-discov-ery and research. We started the day with guided meditations, fol-lowed by some intense and eye opening constellation work, and ended it with pleasant discussions about body-oriented psycho-therapy and Matías’ translated and recently published book Zärtli-chkeit und Agressivität (tenderness and aggressiveness). One of the main topics of the weekend was trauma theories and the con-stellation of the intention, a form or constellation work developed by the German psychologist and trauma therapist Franz Ruppert. Since I have been trained by him and have been researching in the field of psychotraumatology in general, I would like to provide a short insight into this method and our work with it.

The constellation of the intention, also known as trauma con-stellation, is a method that has emerged out of a psychotherapeu-tic context. As the name already suggests, it is based on bonding and trauma theory. This means that a constellation is looked at under this very theoretical background, just as an eventual inter-vention of the therapist in the constellation happens on the base of this theory. Such an approach is especially important in the case of so called “bonding traumas” or “symbiotic traumata” which constitute the most common form of traumatization. A symbiotic trauma can, for example, result from a traumatized mother-child bonding, by which the child has been entangled in the trauma-tization of his/her mother or, through bonding processes, even further back in the traumatization of previous generations. In this concern the more-generational aspect becomes very important, as many of our problems and even physical “sicknesses” have their origin in the traumatization of one of our ancestors. In the ma-jority of the cases we are simply unaware of it, for the traumatic event has been split up from the day-to-day consciousness due to several unconscious (survival) mechanisms. Yet, this does not mean that every constellation has to be about trauma, but that when a trauma becomes visible it must be dealt with in a produc-tive manner.

Our group is open to any kind of personal topic, since it is the freedom as well as the responsibility of the client to choose his/her intention. This is also the reason why this kind of constellation work is called “constellation of the intention” and why every con-stellation begins with the setup of the intention. The constellation of the intention allows the therapist to minimize the risk of entan-glement, as well as decrease the risk of retraumatization in gener-al. Such an approach makes the format very suitable for a group structure like ours. The constellations themselves may be intense, but when everybody takes on responsibility, it can be a very pro-ductive work, as we have experienced in our meetings so far.

To finish this small synopsis on practical work,, I want to point out the importance of the body in this whole context. Whatever kind of psychological issue we deal with, there is a correspond-

ing bodily expression that should be taken care of or, at least, be recognized. The body is our best “measurement device” support-ing us with its wisdom and helping us with the re-integration of a traumatic experience. Techniques like yoga, bioenergetics or mindfulness work in general can be enormously helpful in this regard, as they allow us to breathe new life into our whole inner system.

Where to meet in the future…

As we are a research group, our plans are not only to work for our-selves, but also to share the outcome of our research. We try to do this in different ways. On the one hand, our group is/wants to be a supportive basis for all of us to expand in our respective specialties, may it be through a Ph.D., a book, an article, a workshop or a lec-ture. On the other hand, while being institutionally independent, we are ideologically affiliated to Innsbruck MA Program for Peace Studies, as well as to the Chair for Applied Consciousness Studies of the Department for Psychosomatic Medicine at the University Medical Center Regensburg (Germany). In other words, we work along the tradition of the transrational philosophy and the elici-tive research methods as promoted by the Innsbruck School and we share the transdisciplinary and experiential approach in Ap-plied Consciousness Studies as practiced in Regensburg.

Cooperation brings on new insights and grows us as a whole. With that being said, we are happy to announce that we will be present at the Symposium “Bewusstsein für Frieden” (conscious-ness for peace) on the 17th of October 2015 at the University Medical Center Regensburg, where we will introduce our work as well as lead some workshops.

If you are interested in our work do not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to inform you about further developments and eventual public meetings.

JOHANNES LUDWIG (ST’09, WT’10, ST’10) is currently doing his Ph.D. at the Chair for Applied Con-sciousness Studies at the Department for Psychosomat-ic Medicine, University Medical Center Regensburg. He has been trained in Yoga-Therapy (R. Sriram) and in More-Generational Psychotraumatology/Constellation Work (Franz Ruppert). He is researching on Trauma, Yoga and Buddhist Psychology. In 2014 he founded the Consciousness Research Group. Contact: [email protected]

web: http://symposium-bewusstseinswissenschaften.de


C I U D A D M U R A Lple’s surrounding. I have observed both the phenomena of con-nection and disconnection among people. As Colectivo Tomate we state that when there is more connection among people, the gap of mistrust decreases and therefore allows trust to emerge.

When trust is present, different possibilities of action arise. We share Marshall Rosenberg’s understanding of connection among people: speaking from the heart and listening from the heart. One root of this project is the idea of Wolfgang Sutzl on how to show peace (mostrar la paz), taking as an example how easily violence has a resonance in Mexico. But what about alternatives to demon-strate peace and live peace? Another idea comes from Wolfgang Dietrich’s concept of transrationality on how to understand our-selves beyond modern and postmodern realities based on reason. Most rituals that we create are to be understood beyond reason. Another key aspect is rooted in John Paul Lederach’s approaches to elicitive methods of conflict transformation bringing forth the knowledge and experience that already exists. These theorists and ideas are the grounding sources of inspiration for Ciudad Mural.

We are not here to change things

As members of Ciudad Mural, we go to a community and start speaking to the people we find there. We tell them about the possi-bility of creating a corridor mural. We ask and seek input from dif-ferent people perceived as stakeholders: we map1 them and meet with them. An example of stakeholders is Doña Rosario, a seven-ty-four year old grandmother who connected her grandchild to

TOMÁSDARÍO

ELICITIVE METHODS APPLIED IN MEXICO

BY COLECTIVO TOMATE

The association Colectivo Tomate started the project Ciudad Mural in 2009 and implemented it in the barrios of Xanenetla in Puebla, Hércules in Querétaro, América in Mexico City and in the town of Xicotepec in the sierra of Puebla. Altogether Ci-udad Mural has painted around 150 murals in Mexico, filling barrios with colors and stories, creating processes where trans-formation is possible. My participation in this project led to the inclusion of elicitive methods regarding the way we connect with people, our role as facilitators and the design of our mes-sages around the project.

Sources of inspiration

Ciudad Mural (Mural city) is about the possibilities of creation out of elicitive methodologies, addressing youth and communi-ty members. It creates rituals, celebrates identities, and sets the hearing and sharing from the heart. It begins with an invitation by which people’s talents are offered within and for the community. It is inspired by what would be possible if people connected among themselves instead of living life in disconnection with other peo-


the project. She was concerned about the insecurity in the small plaza where her house was located. Since the project, she has led a group of people who take care of the plaza. Another stakeholder is Alejandro, a forty-five year old man who manages the public market in the barrio of América in Mexico City. He engaged in the project and introduced us to other merchants who participated in painting and sharing stories. We simply find people who are eager to collaborate. Sometimes, it even seems that they have been wait-ing for this invitation to come. When we reach out to interview people in the community, we often find more than what we would expect. Yet we have also been faced with the narrative that peo-ple do not want to participate or that it is dangerous to speak to someone you do not know. This has turned out to be a disempow-ering narrative within communities. Anyhow, when people start taking on the invitation to participate, the effect it has on others is amazing. If there was something they thought they could do for the community, when it comes to action, this ‘something’ starts growing and growing.

We do not go to communities to change things, our project does not look for changes in the sense that something ‘should’ be different than how it currently is. Our project invites to action and, within this action, several other actions can be unleashed. We do not look to ‘resolve’ things, we are here to work in the collective process of creation in togetherness. Seen in another way, we set out elicitive methodologies for conflict transformation. We work on the context and structure of non-violence and we work with those who want to engage with us. If someone refuses to have his/her house be painted, we respect this no. Our aim is not to get a yes. We consciously do not seek to impose ideas, but create a space where other ideas can emerge, create a context of connection. We have found that the muralism movement is a profound way to connect people with each other.

Who paints the murals?

It is a key factor of engagement when it is the homes that are being painted. We do not relate to the mural as something painted on a wall. A wall could be anything. We paint sacred places where people live. In a metaphor we paint the skin2 of the family, with respect, care and cariño3. When someone agrees to have his/her home painted, we make sure s/he understand what the project is about. Many people ask us what will be painted. We paint the stories that the people from the houses share with us. We look to listen, share and spend some time with them. We ask them what they inherited from past generations and what they would like to leave to future generations. We ask about their stories, what they enjoy about life, what stories form part of the history of the people who live there, what events they remember have happened in the community. The interpretation of all those stories is what is paint-ed in the mural.

Once Colectivo Tomate has entered the community, got to know the people and offered dialogue sessions, we launch and open a call for artistic contribution. First, we look for local art-ists within the community; we make posters and go to schools and universities. We ask who could be potential artists within the community. Secondly, we use our social media platforms. And thirdly, via emails, we invite artists who have already worked with us. We look for a very specific profile of artists. This profile is closely linked to the understanding of what the project is about. We ask anyone who is interested in participating to fill out an ap-plication and send some samples of his/her work. We offer them

our workshops, put at their disposal housing, meals and a space to give their own workshops, give them the possibility to be part of Ciudad Mural, a return ticket from their home and a symbolic stipend.4 We look for committed people who are willing to share their talents with the community and be the esthetic interpret-ers of the local identities. The application form includes questions such as: Are you willing to let go of your EGO in order to create something for the community? Do you understand that the proj-ect is for the community and about the community?

Painting process and rituals

The painting process is done within a two week period. Artists spend those two weeks in the community and are introduced to the family/home they will be painting. During that time, the art-ists and Colectivo Tomate live under the same roof. We give train-ing in the following fields: Non-Violent Communication, Role of the Citizen, Trans-rational Theater, Paint Production out of nopal5 slime and Participative Leadership. During the workshops we seek for other talents within the community and invite the communi-ty members to give their workshops. For example, we have had Break dance and Soap elaboration workshops. We also invite the artists to give their own workshops. Thus, so far, we have had Fan-zine Elaboration, Mandala Painting, Stencil Creation and others.

Every night we cook for each other and have a sharing of what happened during the day. We gather in a circle with flowers in the center and some candles. We share who we met, what hap-pened and what we learned. It is important for Colectivo Tomate to take responsibility for the space. Part of this responsibility is transmitted through communicating to each other non-violently. This non-violence is set into practice among the artists and within the community. It is a seed that we take care of.

We create rituals when the whole process begins. There are rit-uals too when the artists arrive, are received by the community and informed on what will happen. During the interview rituals with the families, before the interviews between the artists and the families, we speak about what they look for and how to conduct the interviews. The families are very open to share, yet this sharing comes little by little, once people meet and connect. The drafts of the murals are presented by the artists to the families for their approval. Once the drafts have been approved, we create a ses-sion among all the artists to give feedback to each other about the drafts. Feedback is given regarding technique and interpretation.

I like the murals, their creation gathered the teenagers who partici-pated in them. The days when they were painted there was a bunch of

children helping. This activity is very important. We all like them, even

the police comes to make sure no one harms them. The people who live across the street also watch them.

JOSÉ, MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY


At the end, there is an internal closing ritual with the artists and the people who participated in the organization of the project. We make vocal sounds and resonate together for one last time, we express what is to be said in order to let the project end. We acknowledge what we have created together, we hold our hands in the circle, then we take a step back and then another step back. By each step we take, we make sure that everything is said. We take the very last step back until our circle of hands break and each one of us goes back to their everyday life.

The last part of the process is the celebration ritual to which we invite the whole community. We go to local radio and TV stations and everyone who is interested can join. Then, we make a tour that reviews each mural. When all the people are by the mural, the artist and the family stand in front of it and tell the story of what the mural is about. When the celebration comes to an end, we hand in written awards to all the actors who were involved in the process: families, community members, media, sponsors, art-ists, everyone who made this Ciudad Mural happen. Most likely the community organizes themselves and offer everyone a meal and… we celebrate! For we created something together.

Outcomes and context

Out of the first project we did in the barrio of Xanenetla in Puebla, the community organized itself to create a communal library for children and teenagers. They donated a space and got funding to make it happen. Ciudad Mural caught the attention of the munici-pal authorities who then invested USD$ 1.1 million to improve the public services of the barrio. In the barrio of Hércules in Queréta-ro, Ciudad Mural inspired the local youth and a paint company called Osel to continue filling the city with murals. Querétaro is currently one of the cities in Mexico with most murals.

It is very important for me to mention my perception of the current context in Mexico, where there has been an increase in the official narrative to target the youth as criminals. A clear ex-ample is the forced disappearance of the forty-three students of Ayotzinapa by the military, druglords and municipal authorities. Another example is an increase in the punishment for street graf-fiti in Puebla, where someone can get up to six years of prison for painting a historical building. In May 2015, a policeman acciden-

tally shot Ricardo Cadena, a fifteen year old boy, on the pretext that he was making graffiti on a wall.

This context also reaches Colectivo Tomate. The governor of Puebla launched the construction of a thematic park by the pyr-amid of Cholula. Paola, one of the five members of Colectivo To-mate organized nonviolent actions to express the no to the proj-ect. People held hands around the pyramid – my father was part of that circle. In retaliation, the state launched an arrest warrant against Paola accusing her of beating up policemen and taking over Cholula municipal government house. Actions alleged to be done on a day Paola was outside the country. Since then, she has not come back, fearing she could be arrested. So yes, this is the place where the movement we are creating takes place.

The artist took pictures of the children he met in the city kiosk – there were so many children and there was a girl who asked me for a portrait. So, the mural is about this girl who has jicote (specie of bumblebee) wings staring at an eighty-eight butterfly (endemic regional specie). The butterfly is typical of that region and is in danger of extinction. The mural is thought for the children and dedicat-ed to them as they helped in the creation.

This home is that of a family of musicians. The man painted on the wall is one of the founders of a music group that has just turned fifty. The man passed away some time ago, so the family asked me to paint him so as to honor his vocation. I used a photograph the family gave me; a singing bird comes out of his hair. This makes allusion to the importance of the music in this town.

TOMÁS DARÍO (WT’10, ST’10, WT’11) is a facilitator in elicitive conflict transformation through transration-al theater and mediation. He is a university lecturer and has worked for an NGO on dialogue processes and con-sensus gathering in Mexico and for the Mexican Senate, setting public hearing processes, for the creation of national laws on Alternative Justice. He also holds a BA in Law. Contact: [email protected].

web: www.colectivotomate.comfacebook: Colectivo Tomatetwitter: @tomasdario; @colectivotomate; @ciudadmural

1 We create a map of where and who we met and ask them what they think about the project and who else we should get in touch with.

2 In Innsbruck I made a theater image representation where people had some paint on their fingers. In silence, they walked from the outside and met in the center; once they met, they could look into each other‘s eyes, acknowledged themselves and slowly paint each other’s faces. Colectivo Tomate uses this exercise in conferences and talks to illustrate an action that entirely respects and acknowledges the other.

3 Affection4 Just recently we have offered a stipend of USD$ 100-150. The amount depends

on the funding we have gathered for the project.5 Type of cactus


It was the middle of summer time, and I was enjoying the sun, the beach, hanging out with friends. I was ready to start a Peace Mas-ter abroad, where I was going to spend the next two years. When I arrived at my new place it was a very cold and cloudy day. I did not know a single person in the city, which also seemed very empty, as I did not see anyone on the streets on that Sunday. Did I not think of these things before coming? How could my excitement fool me so bad? Where did I end up?!

I was about to discover this only a couple days later when the International Master in Peace, Conflict and Development Studies at Universitat Jaume I of Castellón de la Plana, Spain resumed the academic year in their second semester. Though a little afraid, on my first day of classes I discovered, a beautiful crowd of people from all parts of the world. There, I saw a multitude of diverse, hybrid and intercultural understandings of peace in dialogue. This Master’s program has admitted people from over 100 countries in its 20 years. That makes Castellón a delightfully rich and queer environment that really challenges mainstream understandings of peace and conflict studies and offers a conviviality of different perspectives.

Once I became part of this unique group of people, I could see the vibrancy of their activities and how they connected with the university, the city communities and the world outside them-selves. A month had not even passed, and I was already par-

W H E R E W O R L D S G A T H E R

THE UNESCO CHAIR FOR PEACE STUDIES’ OLDEST COOPERATION PARTNER IN THE SPOTLIGHT

BY EGIDIO DE BUSTAMENTE

Egidio de Bustamante is a PhD Candidate at Universitat Jau-me I in Castellón de la Plana, Spain. Universitat Jaume I is a place that has been an academic home for generations of stu-dents from the Innsbruck School of Peace Studies. He shares with us his unique insights about life as a peace scholar in Cas-tellón.

Cooperation Partners - 17

ticipating in an incredible initiative to support Haiti’s displaced people after the earthquake in 2010. I saw all the students of the program and alumni organize a solidarity event together called Comidas del Mundo. This brought all the university to its Agora square which is located at the center of the University. I saw people dancing to different rhythms from their different cultures and also got to try traditional and homemade food from where the peace students came from. This was just one of the many initiatives tak-en in which I participated as an MA student.

An activist spirit characterizes the Peace Master in Castellón, engaging people to not only think and but also act peace. In my first year I saw a manifestation against violence in Mexico and an event to support fellow students in need. I helped my colleagues paint the walls of Castellón with billboard-sized pictures with the faces of their own inhabitants in order to demonstrate its intercul-turality. Also in my first year, my friends created an event in sup-porting the tsunami victims in Thailand, a recent group created a support network for Syrian refugees and students from many years have been supporting a Roma community in the outskirts of the city. This is only a glimpse of what the peace students promote in the city.

Another great feature of the program is its structure. Organized in four terms, the first term focuses on Peace and Culture, the sec-ond on Peace and Conflict and the third on Peace and Develop-ment. Each has a specific focus, while remaining multidisciplinary throughout. The fourth term offers the students two possibilities:

(1) A professional track in which students carry out intern-ships in International Organizations, NGOs and Institutions and present a memoir of these practices, assessing the relevance of the work they carried out and its connection to the MA.

(2) An academic track in which students can write and defend a Master of Arts thesis, opening up the possibility to pursue a PhD Program.

While these tracks speak to two different personalities in Peace Studies - either a more practical or a more theoretical - the focus of the program is that both are important. Theory and praxis are inseparable domains and this is reflected in both tracks.

In summary, during the first three semesters in Castellón we have courses that last one month each. These courses are struc-tured in three hours of classes per day, during three weeks in to-tal. After those three hours and after doing all the reading home-work, there still is plenty of time for other activities. When the three weeks of classes finish, students have one week to write their course paper which allows for a full immersion into their paper research.

Castellón also has a particular course that takes place every Wednesday afternoon during the entire semester: The Intercul-tural Seminars offer a space in which students from the English and Spanish tracks get together in one multilingual course to pro-pose dynamics, reflections and presentations on diverse topics ac-cording to their interest and relation to peace studies. Often, an external specialist facilitates these spaces. Activities such as Dance

EGIDIO DE BUSTAMANTE (ST‘11, Castellón‘13), from Brazil is a PhD candidate in Peace, Conflict and Development International Studies at Universitat Jaume I. There he holds the position of assistant-teacher in Introduction to Peace and Conflicts. Other than this, Egidio is a facilitator in the pilot of a Peace Studies Program in Florianópolis, Brazil and he is also involved in the DEEP Network in the San Francisco, California node. Lastly, he is part of the Many Peaces Academic Festival as head of theorists track and publications committee. Contact: [email protected]

for Peace, Theater, Yoga and Meditation are held as equal and rele-vant as presentations on banking and its relation to the industry of arms. In this space, educational tools and methods for peace and debates on specific conflicts have the same importance and the In-tercultural Seminars present a wide array of learning possibilities by the students and their networks for the students themselves.

Therefore, I found in this Master a great environment for high-er learning, because students bring to classroom their reflections on life and the experiences from their different backgrounds. Also, because they form a beautiful intercultural community within the city and the university, they put classroom reflection

to practice in the multiple envi-ronments in which they might find themselves. This generates a great sense of community within a community. Located on campus, the Peace Master is able to offer the students an incredible variety of extracurricular activities, from movie screenings to theater plays, from learning new languages to field excursions, and several other sports.

Being an average-sized town, it is funny to see locals smile when they ask how I ended up in here and I say: “I am in the peace master’s program”. Our fame precedes us here. In fact, I have felt so welcomed here I ended up staying longer. In Castellón I decided I wanted to become a peace scholar, and I was happy to be able to do so here. The Postgraduate Program offers not only an International Master of Arts in Peace, Conflict and Development but also a Doctorate (PhD) on the same area. I am happy to know that the program I am part of has been awarded the Mention of Excellence by the National Agency for Quality Evaluation and Ac-creditation and the Spanish Ministry.

Castellón is no doubt a leading Peace Studies Program, and it has formed a large part of Innsbruck’s core team of professors either on the MA or PhD level, like Josefina Echavarría, Nor-bert Koppensteiner, Jennifer Murphy, Fabian Mayr and others. The Postgraduate Program in Peace Studies in Castellón offers a unique opportunity for students to live by the Valencian Coast of the Mediterranean. This means that my initial negative impres-sions were bound to pass very soon, I was just hung-over from having left my Brazilian summer… to discover an incredible weather in which I can carry out outdoor activities all year round. Now I can go hiking in the mountains, swimming in rivers, visit-ing nearby small villages or simply enjoy the sun by the beach as if I were home …

Activities such as Dance for Peace, Theater, Yoga and Meditation

are held as equal and relevant as presentations on banking and its relation to the industry of arms.


and public relations along with reviewing teams for the submis-sions in the different tracks.

From the day we met for the first planning meeting, what caught my attention was the collaborative process involved to cre-ate the project. It was great to experience a group of adults come together with motivation and curiosity to discover and concre-tize a shared vision. As this vision is inseparably linked to a way of relating with one another, it is not surprising how the process proceeded in such a peaceful way. In this sense, I would say that we were and continuously are using an ‘elicitive’ framework and approach in how we share knowledge and ideas with each other.

Of course, right now we are not just busy with pulling ideas out of each other’s noses - which is a hard thing to do via email and skype. Our current work also entails organizational tasks such as fundraising, translations, creating flyers and reviewing proposals. Even though many of us are busy with one or more occupations at the same time, we have managed to dedicate extra hours to the festival preparations with enthusiasm and positive energy! Beside the efforts people are making on different levels, one thing that keeps the team together is the shared background of Peace Stud-ies in Innsbruck. The aims of this project also hold us together, even though neither the core team, nor the larger group who met in July has a definite consensus on that, but more of an overlap that gives us a common force of motivation. However, I would be

T H E ‘ W E ’ I S E X P A N D I N G

HOW A VISION CAN PRODUCE NETWORKS, STRUCTURESAND ALSO OPEN ITSELF UP

BY JULIA FELDER

In the first volume of the Many Peaces Magazine, Mayme Le-furgey reported on the meeting of alumni from all over the world in Innsbruck, in July of last year. She shared the story of the birth of the First Academic Festival of Many Peaces, which will take place in August 2015.

Since then, a collective vision has been created to facilitate the making of this project. This called for a cooperative, consen-sus-based decision-making team structure, as well as for a clear allocation of responsibilities. This structure is held together by the core planning team which includes Cándido Cabana, Egidio de Bustamante, Lina Eraso, Sophie Friedel, Adham Hamed, Rosalie Kubny, Mayme Lefurgey, Atefeh Sadeghi, Amy Strub and myself. This team has carried forth the ideas of the larger group of alumni who attended the first meeting in July 2014. The core planning team is currently subdivided in smaller teams: organizers, finance

Alumni Projects - 19

idealizing if I did not also point out that not everyone who was involved in the initial idea agrees with the path the First Academic Festival of Many Peaces has taken since the beginning: concerns have been raised in the integrative seminars, initially active alum-ni have taken a step back and we have also received criticism from an alumnus who is not in the core planning team.

It is hard to say whether online integrative seminars and email communications are a sufficient way of conflict transformation for this project. For me personally it is okay how it is, firstly, because I cannot dedicate more time to the festival planning than I already do. Secondly, I am comfortable within the team structure because I feel that decisions are actually taken on a consensus-based lev-el, if everyone is ready to invest the time that it demands. Being active with the team and in my field of responsibilities co-designs the path.

Now, after this team has formed and transformed, what hap-pens is a shift away from this team towards a larger network. The festival focus is shifting from the organizing team towards the wonderful submissions that we get from the people who thus fill the festival with life. We have announced a protected area for rare peaceful species and now the wild animals are starting to move in! A glimpse on the variety of creatures - with their own cultures, minds, embodiments and souls of peaces - is reflected below this article, sketching some stunning submissions for the different tracks. In all their diversity, they share something which is worded in the conference call, but cannot be reduced to words.

These ideas, visions, methods, studies, experiences and spaces by unique people will be shared mainly in afternoon sessions on the first festival days. In the mornings there will be contributions in the form of lectures by the faculty, namely by Wolfgang Di-etrich, Norbert Koppensteiner and Josefina Echavarría Alvarez. Definite schedule points are also a panel discussion on Tuesday evening, an integrative seminar on Wednesday evening and an open space for exchanging, sharing and networking in various ways on Thursday, which I am especially looking forward to. On this same day, alumni-run workshops are open for participants. On Friday, all participants are invited to be part of the workshop ‚Elicitive Motion‘ facilitated by Rosalie Kubny, as an invitation to move our bodies with all the experiences made in this more than five-day-long festival - to make it a dance. Of course, the event will be opened and closed by welcoming and concluding ceremo-nies with an open end for passionate dancers and celebrators. The highlights of these events will yet be announced.

As part of the organizers’ team I am glad and somehow proud of what is happening. My motivation is not to maintain a ritual or a concept, but to offer a space that is alive, a space where it is wel-comed to be wild. At the same time, it shall be a space that is held by care and by careful reflection, action and planning. I am happy, because the group of people who is appreciating and enhancing this space is growing - and this is only one of the transitions to-wards a further opening to come..

JULIA FELDER (ST’11, WT’12, ST’12) is living in Western Austria, where she works as a project coordi-nator in the open youth work. She is also employed as editor for the newsroom of an independent local radio, focusing on positive regional news and initiatives. Additionally, she holds workshops on Theater for Living and dream work and currently coordinates the PR-Team of the Academic Festival of Many Peaces.Contact: [email protected]

A glimpse of what Participants will be offering

Jenny I Jin Jang from South Korea will share her elaborations on post-colonial literature narratives in the Theorist Track. She will discuss how those narratives can be an opportunity of (re)living through marginalized subjectivities and thus a chance for preparing po-tential elicitive conflict transformation workers to experience en-ergetic and transrational interpretations of peaces. She will par-ticularly focus on the works of Hanif Kureishi’s, Toni Morrison and Park Wansuh, delighting us with her perspectives on these authors.

For the Practitioners Track, Alejandra Barrera Guzmán from Mexico will share her way of using painting and poetry as instruments and artistic expressions of Transrational Peaces. Alejandra has been working with this toolkit in order to support people in finding out some personal deep traces and deep words that emerge from themselves. She believes that on this way people can discover per-sonal aspects at the individual and collective level.

Jana Hornberger from Germany/Ecuador and Julia Metzger-Traber from the USA will offer a “living-metaphor-exercise in creative coexis-tence” within the Practitioner‘s Track. It is called: Living Room(s) - Imagining a shared home of multiplicity. It is based on a six-month-long project that will take place in Berlin and grapples with the questions of belonging, identity, borders, safety and citi-zenship in Europe.

Matthias Scharpenberg from Germany will enrich the festival with a ‘Talk-Shop‘ on empathic mindfulness in conflict transformation. Drawing on Buddhist practices as well as on humanistic psychol-ogy, Matthias outlines how beneficial a practice of insight medita-tion, connecting body, mind and psyche, can be for transforming the relations with ourselves and people around us. With many practical examples he will guide the auditory to possible insightful encounters on the four dimensions of the Theme-Centered Inter-action model: I, You/We, It and the Globe.

Paula Ditzel Facci faced the challenge of introducing the idea of many peaces, transrational peace and conflict transformation in very modern and moral surroundings, when she was invited to con-duct a training about culture of peace for a NGO. For this pur-pose she developed a training for educators and students, using an innovative combination of methods. She will hold a peace talk about these experiences, considering the different perceptions and opinions raised during the meetings and will thus help deepening the concepts of peace and conflict in the setting of schools.

web: http://manypeacesfestival.orgfacebook: Innsbruck Academic Festival of Many Peacesemail: [email protected]


In our increasingly complex, interconnected, and interdepen-dent world, it is crucial that we ask ourselves what role we play as peace workers. Particularly, how transformative experiences and insights at the interior level can translate into practical ac-tion for constructive change.

As alumni of the Innsbruck School of Peace Studies, we have all been travelling on our respective physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual paths. These paths, have propelled us in countless di-rections, and are a reflection of our unique journeys to becoming elicitive peace workers. As a result, there is an incredible potential within each of us and within the various projects and initiatives that many of us are creating and engaged with.

On January 10h, 2015, a group of 10 alumni, from across mul-tiple generations of Peace Studies and from many corners of the earth, gathered together at the International School of Life & Na-ture, Native Spirit, to participate in the first annual Alumni Sweat Lodge. The theme for this year’s sweat lodge was: “I to We”.

During the weekend we shared stories, exchanged ideas, and actively reflected on, and experienced, the meaning of I, We and the many things in between. We explored questions such as: ‘what does “I to We” mean for us?’; ‘Where have we witnessed shifts to and from I to We in our personal and collective journeys?’; ‘How have our own transformative experiences and insights translated

M O V I N G B E T W E E N “ I A N D W E ”

CONNECTION, REFLECTION AND REPLENISHING AT THE FIRST ALUMNI SWEATLODGE

BY JESSICA HAWKINS

Alumni Projects - 21

into practical action for constructive change?’ and ‘What are some obstacles or barriers we have faced along the way?’

Throughout the weekend we reflected on these questions ex-plicitly. We explored where our boundaries expanded and dis-solved through group workshops, guided meditation, mandala drawing, medicine wheel philosophy, and of course, the incredible transformative power of Native Spirit’s sweat lodge.

This year’s Alumni Sweat Lodge was a unique opportunity that provided each of us a chance to share stories of our individual and collective experiences and co-create a space of connection, reflection, and replenishing. In doing so, we openly expanded our supportive community under the umbrella of Transrational Peace Studies across multiple generations of alumni.

I would like to thank everyone who made the effort to join. Thank you for sharing, thank you for making that weekend an incredible, transformative two and a half days that I won’t soon forget! I would especially like to thank Peter, Hannah and Sananda for their incredibly warm hospitality and their gentle, yet power-ful, guidance. Due to the success of this first initiative, we have been invited to continue the tradition next year.

We hope to see you there!

information & registration: [email protected]

JESSICA HAWKINS (WT’12, ST’12, WT’13) is living in Canada where she works as a coach and facilitator using an elicitive method of strengths-based coaching to transform dialogue in individual and group settings. In tandem she works with the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) training Peacekeepers across Africa in conflict analysis and transformation in preparation for deployment into UN Missions. Contact: [email protected]


T H E A R T O F L I V I N G S I D E W A Y S

Sophie Friedel is an inspiring scholar of Peace and Conflict Studies. Recently she finished her first book, The Art of Living Sideways, in which she elaborates on the relation between skateboarding and tran-srational peaces. We talked to her about this unique piece of scholarship that out-lines a concrete practice of elicitive conflict transformation.

Sophie, you have just finished your first monograph, The Art of Living Sideways. Could you perhaps tell us a bit about your personal reasons for writing this book?

SOPHIE: Yes of course, with pleasure. Well, actually the initial start for this book was my MA thesis. However, my drive behind the thesis and then this book was twofold. On the one hand, it came from my love for skateboarding. On a practical level the movement of skateboarding gives me a sense of inner peace and with my text I wanted

A CONVERSATION WITH SOPHIE FRIEDEL ABOUT SKATEBOARDING AND PEACES

INTERVIEW BY ADHAM HAMED // PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOEL SAMES AND SKATEISTAN

SOPHIE FRIEDEL (WT’11, ST’11, WT’12) is a peace and conflict researcher who worked with Victoria Fon-tan as a research associate at the Peace and Conflict De-partment of the University for Peace in Costa Rica. She has travelled through Europe, Afghanistan and Costa Rica to teach skateboarding and is training to become a Psychotherapist. Sophie currently coordinates the Practitioners and PeaceTalk committees at the 1st Inns-bruck Academic Festival of Many Peaces and is looking forward to seeing old as well as new Peace Studies faces this summer. Contact: [email protected]

Many Peaces Interviews - 23

compete in time runs, ‘boarder cross’ or so called ‘slide jams’ but back then we all had very little money and competition was rath-er secondary. That’s why I would not call my past a career but rather a time of my life. In fact, in the book I explore the difference of seeing boardsports such as skateboarding as an art or as a sport. On the example of skateboarding I try to capture the expressive art of skateboarding movements. This is a fluid art that is constantly renewed and re-formed in the moment and provides a pos-sibility to express oneself. Understanding the act of skateboarding as an art becomes par-ticularly exciting when taking skateboarding further, especially in the direction of work-ing with conflict transformation. This book marks the beginning of seeing skateboarding movements as path for transformation and there is a lot of room for further research in this direction.

What is The Art of Living Sideways?

Again, this is to be understood with a double meaning. The most obvious connotation is rooted in the activity of skateboarding itself. In particular it refers to the action of riding and to the riders who identify with their ac-tivity to such an extent that it turns into a form of art. An art that expresses a certain moment and that expands to form one’s life and lifestyle. I further define The Art of Liv-ing Sideways as a metaphor that looks at life from the side and as a call to incorpo-rate the perceptions of mind, body and soul. As such, The Art of Living Sideways is to be understood as an embodied process of peace work or even a language that, by including the multiplicity of perceptions, helps us to unfold and transform. Inspired by Gabrielle Roth’s movement-based art, The Art of Liv-ing Sideways is a type of medicine that gives us the possibility to reconnect with the body, the mind and the soul.

You lived in Kabul for a considerable amount of time. The skateboarding proj-ect Skatistan seems to have inspired you in your work. What was it that inspired you in Afghanistan and how did that in-fluence this project?

Uff, that is a huge question! My experiences in Afghanistan spread over a period of three years and gave me a gigantic melting pot of inspiration. Especially the situations where I lost people I loved inspired me to keep on making the best out of living. This influ-enced my writing in a way that allowed me to share my personal experiences because

to understand how exactly this happens. On the other hand, my curiosity for the tran-srational peace philosophy made me dive into the magic of exploring my inner self through writing. Inspired by elicitive conflict transformation and the transrational turn-ing point in peace politics, which Wolfgang Dietrich outlines in his Many Peaces Tril-ogy, I see it as an important quality to be self-reflective when working in the realms of peace and conflict transformation. How-ever, the so-called self is a complex thing to understand. Since it is so difficult to grasp, yet so essential in order to become an elic-itive peace worker, I had the intuition that I needed to frame peace research in a way that helps potential elicitive conflict workers to get to know themselves better. Therefore, I abandoned the research question in a classi-cal sense and attempted to frame it one way to undertake transrational research, as I ex-plain in the methodology chapter.

In that sense, I understand a transration-al peace researcher to be one’s own research question as much as part of the research object. The purpose behind this method is practicing listening to one’s innermost intu-ition and awakening the healing capacities inherent to writing as much as conducting academic research. For the book I board a journey where I apply what I know about myself in my research quest to further un-derstand and make sense of underlying rela-tionships between skateboarding and peace. By doing so, I hope I can pass on new infor-mation concerning the relationship between skateboarding and peace, as well as inspire my reader to practice the work on the self.

As a former German mountainboard champion and sponsored rider you were amongst the best in Europe you can look back at a rather successful career. Can you tell us about your path into compet-itive sports and why you decided to be-come a skateboarder? I am not sure why one part of me decided to become a skateboarder. It is just something that makes living more joyful and happened gradually. I grew up close to the Bavarian Alps where skiing and snowboarding were a wonderful parts of my childhood, then mov-ing to Cornwall I missed the snow. Picking up skateboarding was a logical next step as the movements are similar to snowboarding I suppose.

Back when I was riding competitively, boardsports such as mountainboarding and downhill longboarding was more about the experience in the here and now. Yes we did

I see it as an important quality to

be self-reflective when working in the realms of peace and conflict

transformation.

Understanding the act of skateboarding as an art becomes par-ticularly exciting when taking skateboarding further, especially in

the direction of working with conflict

transformation.


I know that I too will die sooner or later. Then, coming to talk about Skateistan, the NGO that uses skateboarding as a means for youth empowerment, it inspired me on several layers. First and foremost, working for Skateistan moved me to take up peace studies. Skateistan was revolutionising aid delivery in Kabul and my former colleagues inspired me to improve the development aid strategy of “sport for peace initiatives.” The kids and wise women of Kabul inspired me to calm the battle I was fighting inside myself and the let us call them “socially-obliged-se-curity-restrictions” encouraged me to speak up. Altogether, the above-mentioned influ-enced this book project in a way that al-lowed me to communicate one perspective of the relationship between skateboarding and peace work.

Can you give us an example for social-ly-obliged security restrictions?

With that I am referring to the negotiation of controlling one’s behaviour on a day-to-day basis. It is kind of an inner battle of whether to accept, ignore or break socially accepted norms. Of course this happens everywhere in the world, but in Kabul this negotiation had the unpleasant side effect that ignoring socially accepted rules could result in death or bring people around me in serious diffi-culties. For example, for women not to look into male eyes, not to touch the opposite sex in public. Also pretending to be different in public and not being able to flow, due to the worry of being inappropriate, results in hid-ing and not standing one’s ground.

You are currently training to become a psychotherapist. The therapy sofa seems to be a rather different environment to the streets of Kabul. Is there a relation between your past and present work?

Yes, in a way it is totally different, yet I find my work very similar. In Kabul my work was based around facilitating spaces that support people to unfold their peace(s) with skateboarding. I now do the same with psychotherapy. They are both equally rewarding.

The Art of Living Sideways is to be understood as an embodied process of peace work or even a language that, by including the multiplicity

of perceptions, helps us to unfold and transform.

web: www.sophiefriedel.com

Many Peaces Interviews - 25

E D U C A T I O N A S T H E K E Y

A CONVERSATION WITH FRANZ JENEWEIN ABOUT THE ROLE OF EDUCATION FOR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT.

BY JOHANNA MIHEVC

FRANZ JENEWEIN is an Austrian historian and political scientist. Currently he serves as the Director of the Grillhof Seminar Center. Found-ed in 1961, the Grillhof is owned by the Federal State of the Tyrol and used as a conference venue for political education. For more than a decade, it has been home to the Innsbruck School of Peace Studies. Contact: [email protected]

Franz Jenewein is the Director and Head of Education at the Grillhof Seminar Cen-ter. He speaks to us about the history of the MA Program in Peace Studies, on the art of hosting, the importance of education and finding inner peace in the Tyrolean Mountains.

How did the cooperation with the Master in Peace Program start? What are your responsibilities at the Grillhof?

FRANZ: I have known Wolfgang Dietrich for almost fifteen years now. We worked in a group together that organized talks on peace and war, for example about the North Ty-rol-South Tyrol conflict - how everything be-gan, how the conflict was resolved and how to live in a peaceful coexistence. Some of the talks also took place here at Grillhof. Out of this, the MA Program for Peace Studies was created. Originally, the program was held at the Management Centre Innsbruck before Anton Pelinka, who was head of the De-


partment of Politics at Innsbruck University and who had been a dear professor of mine, asked me to host the program at the Grill-hof with its campus-like structure. The be-ginning was quite a challenge, because our house was used to a different target group than students; our guests were mainly pro-fessionals who work in the administration of the local government, the University, or private companies. Originally, our house was closed in summer, and we were also not accustomed to hosting a group for such a long period of time. The philosophy of the Peace Program fits perfectly with our focus on political education, and the cooperation is also economically very profitable for our house – all in all the program accounts for 1600 overnight stays per year!

Two years ago, the Grillhof was renovat-ed and now we have about twice as many events, which of course demands a lot from our 18 employees.

When we reach our limits in terms of ca-pacity as well as physically, it requires a lot of efficiency and sensitivity as the director, I must say.

What has your experience been so far? In retrospect, what has changed since the start of the program and what are your hopes for the next ten years of the pro-gram?

From the start, I was actively involved in the program development, the finances and the administration along with Norbert Koppen-steiner, who was still a student back then. Initially, the program only took place during the summer. The winter term has existed for ten years now. We used to have more stu-dents from the Global South - unfortunately the financial situation does not permit this to such an extent anymore.

During the Peace Program, we have a totally different dynamic in the house than usual: the Grillhof is much livelier when so many young international people live here. Especially in summer our house provides a beautiful environment for outdoor activities such as BBQ parties and sports, which are also an important part of the learning pro-cess.

Communication can sometimes become an issue, because not all of our employees speak English. Also, for our kitchen staff it can be a challenge to cater to all the needs of our students for example when it comes to dietary restrictions or eating preferences. We try our best to fulfill everyone’s needs. We also have a new chef who is very good.

Sometimes I get asked by our guests who

the hippies are, and I tell them they are peace students. When people say, “Peace studies?” I usually respond that it is important to in-vest in peace in times like these and every-one agrees. Our guests also enjoy looking at the Master theses in our library.

For the future, I would like to have more students from conflict zones to share their experiences. I hope the students will after-wards work in international Institutions and in the decision making process and con-tribute to conflict transformation. I would also like to see more themes such as religion and environment integrated into the pro-gram. I hope for continuity of the program. It is wonderful to see the activities organized by the Alumni Network.

Where do you find peace within your personal realm?

With my wife I enjoy hiking and skiing in the high alpine areas. We have two adult children. We live in a village called Hoch-gallzein near Schwaz. I love the Tyrol and nature. I like to experience my borders in the mountains. I am also very interested in oth-er countries and cultures. We had planned to go on a trip to Nepal next year – sadly the region just got hit very badly by an earth-quake.

What is the significance of learning and education for you?

I think that education is the key to person-al development and it brings us forward. It widens our horizon and enables more pos-sibilities - socially as well as professionally. Sadly education is not necessarily a guaran-tee that people treat others well.

I very much enjoy working with people. I have a very interesting and satisfying job in this house which creates space for people. It is beautiful to see how people develop their potential.

The beginning was quite a challenge,

because our house was used to a different target group than

students.

Research - 27

My thesis seeks to explore the identity and belonging of cross-cultural individuals living under Israeli occupation in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Je-rusalem. The idea stems from my personal interest in the topic of cross-cultural individuals who grew up between two worlds, addressing the experience of not fully belonging to the society, country or culture of their parents. Using the working definition of Pollock and Van Reken (2009), a cross-cultural kid (CCK) is understood as “a person who has lived in – or meaningfully inter-acted with – two or more cultural environments for a significant period of time during developmental years.” Specifically, in this research I work with cross-cultural individuals who have spent a considerable amount of time during their developmental years (from birth to the age of 18) living in and interacting with differ-ent cultures.

Having discovered under-explored territory in the literature and conversations around identity and home, I focus my topic on cross-culturalism that includes the immigrant, refugee, cross-ra-cial and cultural all under the same umbrella, rather than adding to the abundance of literature that already looks separately at these subcategories constituting cross-culturalism. In order to theoret-ically and practically explore the figure of the cross-cultural in-dividual, I engage in a broad literature review of the topic linked to the historical genealogy of Israeli occupation, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian refugee issue and analyze one-on-one semi-structured interviews. I am interested in how CCK’s person-ally experience identity and belonging in a cross-cultural setting, aggravated by military occupation.

To conclude, I would like to draw from an excerpt from my thesis that I believe captures my experience as a researcher: “Growing up, I have often considered my struggle with identity crisis as a constant attempt at finding balance between my Russian identity and my Palestinian identity. After this study, I realized that there is no such thing, that identity cannot be compartmentalized between Russian, Palestinian or any other element, but rather that identity is whole and that balance is a constant work-in-progress.”

PALESTINE: CROSS-CULTURAL IDENTITY UNDER OCCUPATIONThe case of persons from cross-cultural backgrounds living under Israeli occupation in the

Palestinian territories

LAYAL DORRA (ST’12, WT’13, ST’13) is a Palestin-ian-Russian humanitarian worker. After completing her Master’s at the University of Innsbruck, she now works as a delegate with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Sanaa, Yemen, where she will be based for the next year. Previously, Layal worked for three years in development and human rights in the MENA region. Layal’s thesis would not had been possible without her supervisors Dr. Norbert Koppensteiner and Dr. Jennifer Murphy to whom she is immensely grateful. Contact: [email protected].

***

N E W M A S T E R S O F P E A C E


My thesis reflects on transnational advocacy on the theme of global violence against women. I explore this topic through per-sonal narrative, case studies and draw from transrational peace philosophy, feminist theories, elicitive conflict transformation and decolonizing peace theory as the theoretical groundings for this work. My project is centered around the idea that several global campaigns exist that seek to raise awareness about the phenom-enon of violence against women but yet, despite efforts of inter-national organizations and good intentions of those involved, many campaigns have come under scrutiny. Feminist scholars and women’s rights organizers have been critical that such campaigns inadequately foster solidarity and instead represent the ‘other’ rather than create a genuine and equally accessible space for com-munity and connection.

As someone who has previously subscribed to and worked for similar campaigns, I have developed an interest in learning more about my own motivations for involvement. I am also interested as to how the personal level connects to the broader system of transnational organizing in which I am bound up in as a violence against women advocate, student and peaceworker in this field. My project ultimately aims to seek ways of understanding trans-national organizing beyond its surface layers in order to speak to limitations but also enriched possibilities. A transrational under-standing of transnational organizing offers unique insights into how people connect and organize across geographic and sociopo-litical boundaries.

The writing process was very intense and personally challenging on many levels. This project required a lot of personal reflection, looking not only to outside realities, campaigns and projects but deep within myself. I also went through many different topics and ideas before landing on this one and have learned more from this program about myself and my path as a peaceworker than I can ad-equately express. I am forever very grateful for the profound learn-ing processes of my presence term in Innsbruck, of this research process and of the life lessons in between. I am looking forward to continue being part of the alumni network and keep on my learn-ing of elicitive methods and transrational peace studies.

BEYOND GOOD INTENTIONS:Exploring Potentials in Transnational Feminist Theorizing and Praxis

MAYME LEFURGEY (UPEACE‘10-’11, ST‘12) is a recent graduate of the MA Program for Peace Studies at the University of Innsbruck. Her thesis was supervised by Daniela Ingruber. Currently, Mayme is a Ph.D. student at Western University in London, Canada. She is also an International Engagement Mentor with the international organization Omprakash and a Program Associate with Make Every Woman Count. Mayme has previously completed an MA in Gender and Peace-building at the University for Peace in Costa Rica. Contact: [email protected]

***

I have taken the writing of my master thesis at Innsbruck as an op-portunity to stretch the boundaries of what imagination can mean in an academic sense. Prompted among else by myself not being able to answer my own research question through the methodo-logical means I had set for asking others, I decided to dig deeper into what could be possible in such an academic work. I set out to define how far I could go while neither losing my creativity nor my academic standards. I wanted to represent the author while at the same time representing solid research of a kind.

The result as I consider it, is a mosaic quest layered between sto-rying and re-storying, a conversation between my readership, the page as conversation partner and my scientific and creative selves, taking its influences from baking sour dough bread as much as from academic journals. My thesis draws on music, literature, sci-entific research and relations, gradually discovering its own meth-odology – intuitive storytelling, the taking of stories as paths to discover and iterate the obvious and hidden – to discover what peace can mean for an individual.

I can full-heartedly say that I thoroughly enjoyed writing my the-sis. Not denying that I considered extensive changes to life, ap-pearance, acquaintances, career and substance use in general and on a regular basis during writings, I decided relatively early on that this was something I had become used to since being accepted into peace studies at Innsbruck (it’s a tough program). Hence, it would not hinder my genuine indulgence in the process. I am grateful for having been given the opportunity to stretch the boundaries of what I consider possible, realizing that the result may appear pro-vocative at times. “Eliminating the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”, as Conan Doyle writes in The Signs of Four (1890, 2003: 121), allowing Sherlock Holmes to give this advice to Dr. Watson on a regular basis. Even if one of these truths turns out to be a unicorn.

PUT THE KETTLE ON, LOVEThe scrumptiously marvellous tales of an armchair traveller’s voyage in mosaic peacesOr: Intuitive storytelling, peace and the strength of academic imagination

HANNAH KUSKE (WT’11, ST’11, WT’12) is a psy-chologist with research interests in cognitive clinical neuropsychology, particularly the neural bases of behaviour of dementia, memory systems, empathy and music. She has previously worked with children and young people with special needs and is working toward being qualified in trauma and emergency psychology. Norbert Koppensteiner supervised her master thesis at Innsbruck. Contact: [email protected]

***

Research - 29

How do we human beings grow into who we are supposed to be? How can we use intuitive, embodied methods of research to understand a process of individuation and transrationality? These were important questions in my research project. My ambition was to investigate the expansion of beingness as a process of be-coming in the frame of a Master thesis. I searched for methods of introspective research that would enable me to understand more of my unconscious and to heal psychological complexes. I conducted a field trip that included a stay in a Zen temple and a Vipassana center in South-Korea, as well as a two-month course in Butoh dance in Denmark. However, equally important was the actual writing process. Writing, and other forms of self-expres-sion, I realized, is an act that includes both being and becoming. Writing is an act of vulnerable self-revelation, but it also includes a state of mere beingness. This initial duality spurred my interest in dialectical relationships.

The core of my project became an exploration of the process of becoming and being through a re-reading of Carl Gustav Jung’s theory of individuation in light of Wolfgang Dietrich’s concept of transrationality. One of the similarities in these two theoretical strands is the emphasis on the integration of dualisms leading to individuation and to transrational thinking. Inspired by theories of alchemy, Taoism and tantra, I explored the notion of the dual-isms further by looking specifically at crossing polarities, similar to the four directions of the body. A vertical axis symbolizes the duality of this-worldly and other-worldly aspects of the human experience and a horizontal axis, the masculine-feminine aspects that both men and women consist of. I discuss whether these four directions could represent a new cartography for individuation processes.

I only recently finalized my thesis and still it is difficult to explain how this whole experience has affected me. I feel proud to have been able to write a text that feels true to me. This is my second Master thesis and I realize that each new academic writing project allows for a deeper and clearer voice. Maybe not surprisingly, I have also come to see that it is not merely I who author the text, but that I act as representative of others who want these questions to be posed.

ON BEING ABLE TO WRITEAn Exploration of Dualisms in Individuation and Transrationality

MARGRETE SLETTEBØ (ST’12, WT’13) has just fi-nalized her Master thesis at the University of Innsbruck. Her thesis supervisor was Norbert Koppensteiner. She already holds a Master of Arts in Advanced studies in Peace and Conflict Transformation (University of Basel, Switzerland) for which she wrote a thesis on unitive consciousness and conflict transformation. In the last two years she has started her practice of Butoh dance and started a dance initiative (Butoh-laboratory, Oslo) in Oslo where she currently lives. Contact: [email protected]

***

My thesis studies the ethos of belonging of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora living in Switzerland by mapping out relevant theories pertaining to belonging and by capturing, in the form of a pilot study, illustrative images that support, critique as well as challenge the relevant theories perused therein. It provides insight into the generational, spatial and transrational dimensions of belonging and explores concepts such as deep diversity, multicultural citi-zenship and ur (in Tamil) or home. Using a post-colonial as well as a transrational lens, it unpacks the ethos of belonging as well as non-belonging in terms of the migration context, as a string of constructed social processes with home and hostland dimensions affected by both internal fault-lines, such as the lack of horizontal linkages, as well as external fault-lines like insufficient focus on the migrant and the refugee with regards to theorisation processes.

Writing about belonging in relation to this thesis has been a very personal process. It challenged in pushing my own understand-ings of belonging and encouraged me to look at spectrums beyond what has been theorised. I also wrote this thesis at a moment when I was personally grappling with insecurities of inclusion and ex-clusion of diasporic living. So, in a sense, this thesis has enabled remembering and retrospection. Here particularly, the concept of ur or home was extremely relevant. It also created the opportuni-ty for me to share snapshots of an oral history project that I had conceptualised and implemented in Switzerland, titled PROJECT Belonging, and that looked at the lives of the Swiss Tamil diaspora vis-à-vis the ethos of belonging. As I state in my thesis, ‘discuss-ing belonging with the respondents was a cathartic process for me as a researcher. I felt drawn to my own personal experiences as I ploughed through different belongingscapes with them. It was a journey that was emotional yet strangely objective’.

SRI LANKAN TAMIL DIASPORA & THE ETHOS OF BELONGINGA Cartography of Relevant Theories

TANUJA THURAIRAJAH (WT’14) is a Sri Lankan living in Switzerland, with a background in interna-tional relations and 12 years of experience working on sustainable development and conflict issues, both in Sri Lanka and in Switzerland. Her research areas are dias-pora, migration and conflict. She also enjoys writing, sketching, traveling and photography. Her thesis was guided by the encouraging supervision of Wolfgang Dietrich. Contact: [email protected]

***


Wolfgang Dietrich

VARIATIONEN ÜBER DIE VIELEN FRIEDEN

Band 3: Elicitive Conflict Mapping

Der dritte Band der Variationen über die vielen Frieden von Wolfgang Diet-rich vervollständigt die Trilogie über den friedens- und konflikttheoretischen An-satz des Innsbrucker UNESCO Chairs for Peace Studies. Aufbauend auf den philosophischen Grundlagen des Band 1 und den methodisch-didaktischen Über-legungen des Band 2 präsentiert Band 3 Elicitive Conflict Mapping als praktisches Werkzeug angewandter Konfliktarbeit. Die Methode wird im ersten Teil hergeleitet, begründet und beschrieben, um ihre An-wendung vom intrapersonalen Konflikt, über persönliche zwischenmenschliche Konflikte bis zum großen politischen Feld in allen Zusammenhängen nachvollzieh-bar zu machen. Im zweiten Teil wird die Methode anhand konkreter Lernbeispiele getestet. Der Autor greift auf weithin be-kannte Film- und Literaturbeispiele zu-rück, an denen sich der Leser selbst mit der Methode versuchen kann. Anschließend wendet er die Methode auf seine persönli-chen Erfahrungen an.

Dietrich, Wolfgang, Josefina Echavarría Alvarez, Gustavo Esteva, Daniela Ingru-

ber, Norbert Koppensteiner (eds.)

THE PALGRAVE INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF PEACE STUDIES:

A Cultural Perspective

In this ground-breaking new volume, the social function of ‚peace‘ is explored through the prism of cultural pluralism. Prominent scholars and thinkers from more than 30 different cultures reflect on the notion of peace, and the diversity of their perspectives highlights the differ-ent cultural perceptions surrounding the meaning and scope of peace. What we un-derstand as ‚peace‘ is dependent on the con-text within which it is used. Some cultures have a multitude of notions that translate into English simply as peace, whereas an equivalent to peace in the European sense does not even exist in others. This volume shows that the concept of world peace can only be realised as a plural of ‚many peac-es‘; an understanding of peace cannot be reached without the explicit acceptance of the many different notions of peace.

Sophie Friedel

THE ART OF LIVING SIDEWAYSSkateboarding, Peace and Elicitive Con-

flict Transformation

Sophie Friedel explores the action of skateboarding in her book as a way to es-cape cycles of despair, not only in war torn environments and regions affected by pov-erty. The author critically reflects on her involvements of teaching skateboarding in Afghanistan within the context of youth empowerment and peace work. By way of personal experiences, Friedel illustrates how skateboarding can be understood as an elicitive approach to peace work and conflict transformation that unfolds the extraordinary human potential inherent to all of us.

Masters of Peace:

Volume 11

M A N Y P E A C E S P U B L I C A T I O N S

Elicitiva: Volume 1

Research - 31

M A N Y P E A C E S P U B L I C A T I O N S

Andreas Oberprantacher

ELIAS AUF KÉRKYRAoder: Vermögen Körper zu sprechen?

In consideration of the recurrent hun-ger strikes, unannounced street pro-tests, and occupations of landmarks per-formed by people that are commonly dismissed as »illegal aliens«, this article is dedicated to discussing the question, how dissent is taking place among sub-jects who are perceived as muted bodies and abandoned in de-politicized zones of contemporary knowledge economies.

Juan José Albert Gutiérrez

ZÄRTLICHKEIT UND AGGRESSIVITAT. Charakteranalyse, Gestalttherapie und

Enneagramm

Juan José Albert Gutiérrez Werk stellt eine Integration der Ideen Wilhelm Reichs, Fritz Perls und Claudio Naranjos dar. Der Autor erlaubt uns einen tiefen Einblick in seine langjährige Arbeitserfahrung mit Charakteranalyse, Gestalttherapie und Enneagramm. Der Charakter ist eine Fol-ge der wechselseitigen Abhängigkeit aller der menschlichen Natur innewohnenden Funktionen, die in einer unzertrennbaren Einheit in den Körper eingebaut werden. Da wir das Leben über den Filter unseres Charakters wahrnehmen, hängt es von dessen harmonischer Entwicklung ab, wie wir individuell in Erscheinung treten und inwieweit wir fähig sind, uns unseres eige-nen Lebens bewusst zu werden.

Andreas Oberprantacher

BREAKING WITH THE LAW OF HOSPITALITY?The emergence of illegal aliens in Eu-

rope vis-à-vis Derrida’s deconstruction of the conditions of welcome

In two seminars published under the ti-tle De l’hospitalité/Of Hospitality and in other writings too, Jacques Derrida invites his readers to consider some differences between ‘conditional hospitality’, that is ‘the right to or pact of hospitality’ on the one hand and ‘the absolute or uncondi-tional hospitality’ on the other. By empha-sizing the incommensurability between the two in antinomic terms, Derrida has indeed questioned established practices of welcoming foreigners while insisting on a sense of hospitality that is not bound by and to its immediate legalisation. This article will attempts to trace the limits of Derrida’s deconstruction of the conditions of welcome by arguing that for those es-timated millions of people who are com-monly dismissed as illegal aliens in liber-al democratic states, such as in Europe, to ‘break with hospitality in the ordinary sense’ is not just a hyperbolic ethical im-perative – it also feels like a bleak verdict. Otherwise said, what is the potential use value of Derrida’s thinking of a transgres-sive hospitality given the evidence that far too many are actually living in extremely inhospitable situations in European liber-al democratic states without being able to rely on a bare minimum of legal standards?


C A L L F O R P A R T I C I P A T I O N

Dear readers,

We hope that you enjoyed the contributions, stories and images from Volume 2. We would love to hear your constructive feedback and thoughts on this volume as well as any inputs you might have for Volume 3. Do you know an alumni with a unique story to feature? Do you have an idea you would like to share or an article you could imagine writing? Or perhaps a creative writing or art contribution to make? If so we want to hear from you!

We are always looking for new material and stories of how Innsbruck Peace Studies alumni, faculty and affiliate programs are engaging in creative means of peace building and conflict transformation work from around the world. If you are interested in contributing to the ideas and content of Volume 3, please contact us at: [email protected]. If you would like to submit an article of your own, please email us and we will send you the author’s guide-lines and requirements.

We are also looking for proofreaders for English grammar and writing style for Volume 3. Please get in touch with us if you think this is a way you would like to contribute to the maga-zine.

Thanks everyone and we look forward to presenting Volume 3 to all of you soon!

Thank you to our Volume 2 Proofreaders:

We would like to extend a warm thank you to Stephen Bradford, Julia Metzger-Traber, Shibani Pandya and Made-leine Whalen for their help in proofreading several of the articles for Volume 2.

STEPHEN BRADFORD was born and raised on an organic vegetable farm near Washington DC where he has worked in politics and produce. He has since ‘fled’ the US political system to travel the world and work for Peace Brigades International in Guatemala. He is cur-rently in his second term in the University of Innsbruck Peace MA.

JULIA METZGER-TRABER is from the USA but one day four years ago decided to leave her social work in prison abolition activism to try her luck in Berlin as a performing artist, thinking that art may be the vehicle for the social and personal transformation that she was seeking. She is currently in her third semester at Innsbruck, researching the meaning and experience of home from her thirteenth sublet apartment.

SHIBANI PANDYA was born and brought up in Mumbai, India and she is currently following her dream for gender equality by challenging the norms and stereotypes that encourage violence against women in Singapore and Asia through her work at UN Women.

MADELEINE WHALEN started her peace studies journey at the UJI, in Castellón, Spain and participated in the 2014 summer term in Innsbruck, where she con-tinued to be inspired by elicitive approaches to conflict transformation - Theatre for Living in particular!

- 33 Appendix - 33

PAUL LAUER (WT‘12, ST‘12, WT‘13, UPEACE‘13) is based in Vienna and works in Public Relations for different organizations. He is a lecturer at the Institute of Environmental System Science in Graz and facilitates seminars on team building and conflict transformation. His research interests are focused on intrapersonal conflicts linked to social ecology. Contact: [email protected]

ISABELLE GUIBERT (ST‘12, WT‘13, ST‘13) is a trav-eller and a university lecturer in Innsbruck. She teaches languages and social subjects related to peace(s) and elicitiveness. As a workshop facilitator, she uses several methods of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Her research fields: trauma, amnesia, memory and transformation in relation to Argentina’s last dictator-ship and France’s colonial past. She also holds an MA in English studies. Contact: [email protected]

MAYME LEFURGEY (UPEACE‘10-’11, ST‘12) is a recent graduate of the MA Program for Peace Studies at the University of Innsbruck. Her thesis was supervised by Daniela Ingruber. Currently, Mayme is a Ph.D. student at Western University in London, Canada. She is also an International Engagement Mentor with the international organization Omprakash and a Program Associate with Make Every Woman Count. Mayme has previously completed an MA in Gender and Peace-building at the University for Peace in Costa Rica. Contact: [email protected]

T H E E D I T O R I A L T E A M

ADHAM HAMED (WT‘12, ST‘12, UPEACE‘12, WT‘13) is a Peace and Conflict Researcher and a PhD student of Political Science at the University of Inns-bruck. In his dissertation research he focuses on socie-tal conflicts in relation to forced migration. He is also the Coordinator of the Innsbruck Academic Festival of Many Peaces. Contact: [email protected]; Blog: adhamhamed.wordpress.com

Impressum

PUBLISHER: AA Respect, Grillhofweg 100, 6080 Vill, Austria EDITORIAL TEAM: Isabelle Guibert, Adham Hamed, Paul Lauer and Mayme Lefurgey LAYOUT: Paul Lauer and Clifford Ray Deutschmann PICTURE EDITING: Paul Lauer COPY EDITING: Stephen Bradford, Julia Metzger-Traber, Shibani Pandya and Madeleine Whalen PICTURES: Joel Sames (Cover), Paul Lauer (p.4a, p.6, p.7, p.9), Egidio de Bustamente (p.4b, p.16), Many Peaces Festival (p.4c, p.18) Anita Fuchs (p.4d), Johannes Ludwig (p.10, p.11), Colectivo Tomate (p.13, p.15), Jessica Hawkins (p.20, p.21), Skateistan (p.24) and Karin Michalek (p.25) LOGO DESIGN: Paul Lauer (Cover) and Sophie Friedel (Innsbruck Academic Festival for Many Peaces, Alumni Sweatlodge).

With the kind support of:

TanzraumInnsbruck


Many Peaces Magazine - Volume 2 - 2015 - 07

Published by AA RESPECT Grillhofweg 100, 6080 Vill, Austria

Editorial: Isabelle Guibert, Adham Hamed, Paul Lauer, Mayme Lefurgey

VOLUME 22015 - 07

“IT IS AMAZING HOW DANCE AS A TOOL FOR CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION AND FOR A PEACEFUL SOCIAL COEXISTENCE

GETS MORE AND MORE ACKNOWLEDGED.”

Rosalie Kubny Page 8

“WHATEVER KIND OF PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUE WE DEAL WITH, THERE IS A CORRESPONDING BODILY EXPRESSION THAT SHOULD BE

TAKEN CARE OF OR, AT LEAST, BE RECOGNIZED.”

Johannes Ludwig Page 12

“WE HAVE FOUND THAT THE MURALISM MOVEMENT IS A PROFOUND WAY TO CONNECT PEOPLE WITH EACH OTHER.”

Tomás Darío Page 14

“ACTIVITIES SUCH AS DANCE FOR PEACE, THEATER, YOGA AND MEDITATION ARE HELD AS EQUAL AND RELEVANT AS PRESENTATIONS

ON BANKING AND ITS RELATION TO THE INDUSTRY OF ARMS.”

Egidio de Bustamante Page 17

“THE ART OF LIVING SIDEWAYS IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD AS AN EMBODIED PROCESS OF PEACE WORK [...] THAT, BY INCLUDING THE MULTIPLICITY

OF PERCEPTIONS, HELPS US TO UNFOLD AND TRANSFORM.”

Sophie Friedel Page 23

“THE BEGINNING WAS QUITE A CHALLENGE, BECAUSE OUR HOUSE WAS USED TO A DIFFERENT TARGET GROUP THAN STUDENTS.”

Franz Jenewein Page 26

Documents

Many Peaces Magazine #2