The Sociology of Compromise after Conflict by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319787442
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Religion and the Sociology of Compromise

The sociology of compromise recognizes the importance of several mediators that can either promote or inhibit the social practice of compromise in the public sphere, one of which is forgiveness. Furthermore, it recognizes that the practice of forgiveness is itself affected by the religious resources available to victims and on which those with faith commitment can draw to give meaning to their understanding of forgiveness and its practice. Forgiveness does not have to be embedded in religion and be restricted to those with faith, especially in post-conflict societies undergoing secularization or where religion was itself directly wrapped up in the conflict. Sri Lanka, however, is a deeply religious society, the home of many world religions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, and its conflict was ethnic rather than religious; it is a country where religion does not entirely overlap with ethnic boundaries.

This offers the prospect of victims with religious faith being able to draw on a wealth of religious resources in the social practice of compromise, and for victims of varied religious backgrounds to employ different faith-based understandings of forgiveness in order to end up with a fairly widespread and common practice of forgiveness. This suggests that Sri Lankan victims’ practice of compromise could be enhanced and facilitated by an easy acceptance of the idea of forgiveness if not otherwise undercut by the more negative effects of other compromise mediators.

These are the issues that motivate this chapter. It draws on the wealth of data from the Sri Lankan research in the Compromise after Conflict programme to explore first-generation victims’ capacity for forgiveness. In total, 75 interviews were conducted for this research programme in 2011–12. The chapter also examines the religious resources available to Sri Lankans based on the precepts of the world faiths that are present in contemporary Sri Lanka, and explores how victims’ practice of forgiveness is mediated and infused by these religious resources. These world faiths place considerable emphasis on peace religiosity, by which is meant the practice and observance in religious canon, worship and ritual of the doctrinal precepts of peace, love, justice and reconciliation. This chapter, therefore, explores how this peace religiosity is practised by first-generation victims of conflict in Sri Lanka with regard to forgiveness. Victims might be thought of as the ones least inclined to mercy, yet the precept of forgiveness is central to all the world faiths that compete for adherents in Sri Lanka. How this tension is resolved by first-generation victims forms the rationale for this chapter.

The chapter proceeds in four stages. First, it explores the religious dynamics of Sri Lanka and its conflict. Second, it explores the peace religiosity embedded in the world faiths that dominate the religious landscape in Sri Lanka. Third, it explores how this peace religiosity impacts on victims’ capacity for forgiveness as part of the social practice of compromise. Finally, we conclude this chapter by arguing that the interviews witness to the strength of the peace religiosity of victims, yet at the same time they exhibit limitations in victims’ perceptions.

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