It was not the local or national political power, exigencies, the fears of a broader war, nor the influence and pressure from the international community that created the shift. It was not a particular religious tradition: the stories in fact cut across religions. It was not political, economic, or military power in any of the cases. What then, created a moment, a turning point, of such significance that it shifted whole aspects of a violent, protracted setting of conflict? I believe it was the serendipitous appearance of the moral imagination in human affairs.
--The Moral Imagination by Lederach (2005)
I have been thinking endlessly during thePeace Lab course what peace means to me. I first thought of peace as having the privilege to not be in the constant mode of survival that conflict forces on people. Yet, this conception seems rather limited. Far from being a personal understanding of peace, it is paradoxically contextualized in conflict. Similar to participants in our project when asked “How do you personally imagine peace?”, I have had trouble dichotomizing personal and political understandings of peace. Though at first against the purpose of the aforementioned question, my inability to describe my own imagination of peace has given me food for thought.
Wright Mills in 1959 wrote that structural history and personal biography are inherently connected. While our project was taking form I realized that in Kosovo, you cannot draw a clear line between personal and political understandings of peace. The symbolism of daily life in Kosovo reflects violence and conflict. Something as simple as crossing a bridge, travelling, having a coffee at a café can put you at risk of violence. Imagine that… I can’t. But that’s not important because the essence of peacebuilding is imagining peace. This is where moral imagination comes in. It refers to the capacity to imagine peace and develop creative and constructive initiatives. That is, create responses to directly address the daily manifestations of violence which with time, will ultimately break the patterns of conflict.
During the meetings with organizations in Kosovo, I kept asking myself, why after 20 years of initiatives, Kosovo was still not at peace. Philosopher Bruno Bettelheim said that “violence is the behaviour of someone incapable of imagining other solutions to the problem at hand”. Thereby, peace can only come by a shift in perception, a turning point, a momentum. Could this be the U.S. peace deal? I don’t know. I believe that peacebuilding is a creative process and that Kosovo needs new and creative solutions.
Since Peace Lab ended, I have been in contact with some students from the University of Pristina. They want to take on a larger project and ask students in the Faculty of Social Sciences to describe, draw and represent their imaginations of peace. I don’t know if this project will go through but their enthusiasm only confirmed the conclusion of our project. Young people are trying to create a momentum for peace on the ground and who better to come up with creative and innovative solutions for Kosovo than the youth?
As a final thought, I’d like to say that by far Kosovars are the most hopeful people in the world. This art piece reminded me of that.
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