ABSTRACT
Reconciliation is related to conflict. It is borne of conflict situations.1 At a time when conflicts are motivated by utopian visions of life and society, the wider context in which they occur is particularly important as they have such bearing on global events. If social change could be conceived, organized and conducted in a nonconflictual way, we would all be happier. Yet despite the abundance of managerial, institutionalized approaches to avoiding conflict, we have not yet learned to eliminate it. Thus, in a broad sense we have not yet invented a successful non-conflict-based mechanism for changing and improving peoples’ lives. Were conflict to retain its historical function of aiming towards a better future, reconciliation would be an interim process of conflict mediation, negotiation and resolution. Yet it is harder than ever to identify any emacipatory potential in our most destructive contemporary conflicts, which makes the need to resolve them even more pressing.
