Incorporating Restorative Practices into Religious, Geopolitical, and Culture Conflicts

• In Event: Applying Restorative Approaches to Addressing Religious, Culture, and Geopolitical Conflict: From Israel/Palestine to India

Abstract

This paper provides overviews of how restorative practices can be incorporated into conflicts related to the conflicts in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world when religion and culture are a central theme. Restorative justice is an approach that shifts from emphasizing managerial, punitive structures towards a focus on a philosophy of community building and the repair of relationships (Hopkins, 2004). Research on the incorporation of the tools and philosophy of restorative justice practices into educational cultures and institutions suggests that restorative justice has the potential to enable the integration of alternate epistemologies and community-based methodologies and to help institutions better respond to and manage incidences of harm while considering essential questions of social justice and equity in education (Gavrielides, 2014; Schiff, 2018). These issues are critical to advancing democratic ideals of education and ensuring the creation of a more equitable system that better serves all members of society and can effectively respond to harm and trauma (Chomsky, 2014; Benson et al., 2007). Restorative approaches and tools such as listening and harm-response circles, participatory decision-making processes, and narrative storytelling can productively help students, faculty, and staff manage and mutualize harm and negative shared affective experiences.

Authors

• J. Cody Nielsen, Western Michigan University

• Kaleigh Mrowka, International Institute for Restorative Practices