ABSTRACT
Conflict, whether or not it involves physical violence, may be assumed to be innately destructive; the opposite of “peace”, which is assumed to be constructive. Defining “peace” in such a way is not, however, convincing if people consider conflict also to be constructive. Anthropologists have tended to adopt the position taken by the sociologist Georg Simmel and the commentary on his work by the sociologist Lewis A. Coser. Coser’s proposition that conflict is a means by which a group’s values are reaffirmed is supported by the work of anthropologist Neil Whitehead, who argues that violent acts “are creative and constitutive of social relations and identities”. A prominent definition of “reconciliation” within anthropology is that proposed by John Borneman who, writing in the context of ethnic conflict, notes that “to reconcile” means “to render no longer opposed” and defines “reconciliation” as a “project of departure from violence” in the present.
