Adam CurleCritiques

Book is about the personality factors that cause people to avoid or advocate change.

Adam Curle shares his experience of his life's work in mediation, development, and education and suggests avenues for constructive change.

The end of the Cold War has not brought peace to the planet as was briefly hoped. Instead, horrifying and often seemingly pointless violence is all too common. Curle argues that much contemporary violence stems from alienation. Political processes alone cannot end such violence. Lasting peace requires "widespread changes of heart."[p. 5] Based largely on his experiences in the former Yugoslavia, Curle argues that such changes are possible, and offers a model approach to peacemaking in an era of alienation.urle reviews forms and sources of violent conflict from early history to current times. While human nature has remained the same, contexts have changed drastically, and so then has the nature of violence. He discusses the violence of states and the role that global militarization plays in increasing violence. The speed of social and technological change has also played a role in producing modern forms of violence. Curle argues that these factors have left many people alienated from society and their common humanity. Alienated people have a damaged sense of relatedness to others, and so are particularly prone to unpeaceful relations and violence.

Many of us do not know how to transform our capacity as human beings to hurt each other, into a potential to heal. Whether we are soldiers in uniform mandated to keep the peace, or diplomats involved in delicate negotiations or advisers counselling the abused, or couples struggling to save a relationship---what we are short of is a set of principles to guide us through the maze of feelings that violence produces---feelings that have evolved through eons of development as Homo Sapiens. What Adam Curle sets out in this book are the foundations of such a set of principles. Most fundamentally he shows us through the example of his work in Croatia that change takes place not because of Treaties, or inventions, or rationally devised solutions, but through the transformation of the individual.
Adam Curle has held chairs in psychology, education, development studies and peace studies in the Universities of Exeter, Ghana, Harvard and Bradford. He has worked as a mediator and peace activist in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ireland, Sri Lanka and most recently in the former Yugoslavia

In a preface to his 1981 Swarthmore Lecture, Adam Curle observes that if we recognise there is in each of us a holy potential, our behaviour towards others must surely be deeply biased towards healing relationships fractured by anger, fear and incomprehension: making use of the universal capacity for peacemaking that flows from ‘that of God’ To do so effectively involves understanding the nature of unpeaceful relations and recognising that there are different types depending on the power balance of the protagonists.

Adam Curle began his professional career as a staff member of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. Subsequently he was a university lecturer in social psychology at Oxford and later held professorships in psychology, education and peace studies at several other Universities including Exeter, Ghana, Harvard and Bradford. Since 1966 he has been concerned with the study of conflict. The fruits of his insights are embedded here in this lecture.

pamphlet

Adam Curle was a Quaker mediator for thirty years, a job that paid no salary, though his no-frills travel expenses were customarily covered by the parties requesting the mediation. Tools for Transformation is memoir only to the extent that his experiences serve as examples for his message: how to live a peaceful life—as an individual, a community, a nation. In his retirement, Curle has taken up the study of Buddhism, which he has usefully employed in his outline of constructive change that can transform our world into a less violent landscape. As the back cover states, he "blends the influences of contemporary depth psychology, modern physics, Buddhism and Quaker practice." This is a fine volume for nudging along personal growth, as well as an inspiring text for group discussion.

Reprinted 1987.

Christian organization, social work, worship > Church > Church and Social Issues > Religion

Christian organization, social work, worship > Church > Church and Social Issues > Religion

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