2014 AfP Annual Conference Exploring New Frontiers in Peacebuilding Managing Complexity and Designing for Peace May 22, 2014 Speakers: Ann Pendleton-Jullian, Former Director, Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University; Distinguished Visiting Professor, President’s Office, Georgetown University Richard P. O’Neill, Founder and President, The Highlands Group (Discussant)

Executive Summary: Ann Pendleton-Jullian described the unprecedented societal dynamics which peacebuilders must now operate within. She gave the audience a new framework for understanding these dynamics and engaging with accompanying complex problems: ecology theory. Discussant Richard P. O’Neill made comments about the effect of language on action and the importance of interoperability. The audience also discussed the state of peacebuilding as an established profession and asked questions about dealing with differences of interpretation regarding a system, understanding power in ecological thinking, and putting local partners at the center of dealing with complexity.

Panelist Presentations: Melanie Greenberg framed Ann Pendleton-Jullian’s talk by explaining AfP’s concept of Peacebuilding 3.0. The world is changing ways that require new, dynamic systems approaches to peacebuilding. Many institutions seem to be recognizing a void in dealing with challenge, interconnected “wicked problem” not amenable to linear solutions. Peacebuilding can provide the interoperability between different actors and institutions in dynamic complex systems. Peacebuilding 3.0 is about understanding how complex and dynamic context work and then shaping them toward better outcomes. It creates environments in which all actors in a conflict zone and in the international community “listen to the system” and recognize the role they play in ameliorating or exacerbating conflict. People already understand the need for integrated intervention. Peacebuilding 3.0 addresses the challenges of actually building interoperability. Following her opening remarks, Melanie Greenberg introduced Ann Pendleton-Jullian, a practicing architect and academic. Ann is using the mechanism of design as a lens for looking at problems and understanding them. Ann Pendleton-Jullian began her talk with a metaphor comparing types of aquatic vehicles with methods of engaging with their environment over the past century. At the beginning of the century people behaved like steamships, barreling forward driven by industrialism. Several decades ago people started behaving more like sailboats, adjusting their “sails” or behaviors based on the direction of the wind or conditions of

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their environments. Now the way people deal with the world can be equated to white water kayaking; they adjust their movements and tactics as they face different bumps in the water. This requires greatly increasing skill capacity and integration with the world around them. Ann then explained that there are three major new forces in the world: 1. The World Wide Web has created and unprecedented volume of information, big data, and unprecedented connectivity, which is giving people access to big data and each other. 2. Digital technologies are allowing people to operative differently and participate in everything differently. Emerging visualizations are helping people see and understand the world in new ways. A new 21st century ontology is emerging. 3. Because of this interconnectivity on a global scale, we are now forced to engage in a set of conflicts without any clear solutions or end states. This requires crossing the traditional boundaries of what we do and who we do it with. One way to think about what is going on is to look at the work of David Ronfeldt, who has developed a framework for the evolution of societies. According to David Ronfeldt there are four cardinal forms of society: 1. Tribes – denoted by the structure of extended families, clans and other lineage system. This form’s mode of interconnectivity and communication is oral storytelling. 2. Institutions – hierarchical in nature, as exemplified by the army, the Catholic Church and the bureaucratic state. This form’s mode of interconnectivity and communication is written and printed books, records and commands. 3. Markets – symbolized by merchants and traders, responding to forces of supply and demand. This form’s mode of interconnectivity and communication is mobility provided by infrastructure. 4. Networks – as found in today’s web-like ties throughout the world. Networks provide greater and denser interconnectivity. These forms emerge under distinct conditions defined by geographical factors, density factors, wealth and technology. As each emerges it exists alongside and aggregates with the other form, modifying those that came before it. The newest form often solves problems that the old could not solve or sometimes created. With the emergence of networks, we are now moving into a quadriformist society, which is a completely unprecedented evolutionary shift because networks are not associated with entities and can scale exponentially. They are agile, can reform in a moment and are available to everyone in any place in society. Old operating systems have become very insufficient for dealing with modern problems. Given the new shift brought about by networks, we need a new way of look at the world. Over the past 400 years, we have operated with a Newtonian framework in which we observe laws and can determine causality. People have begun to shift to a Darwinian framework where there are contingent processes instead of absolute things. This however is insufficient as it does not explain random change and the speed at which our society has evolved. Instead we should look at the world through ecology theory, which involves looking at ecosystems, resilience and complex emergent systems. Ecology theory features autocatalytic mutualism – everything exists in a mutual state of interdependency with other things. Systems sustain themselves from the inside and grow. Everything is about exchanges and relationships, and each piece is connected to another piece somewhere down the line.

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The ecological window has three interdependent registers: -

Social ecology: relationship between people and between peoples in their context. Ecology of matter: relationships involving people and/or the environment. Mental ecology: interrelationships of ideas in an individual and in a group of people. This includes culture and identity.

Using ecology theory, we can begin to find new ways of working in and on problems with complex emergent systems. People tend to see two things when engaging with problems: order and chaos. Order can be simple or complicated, but it always has causality. Complexity is the area between chaos and order in which the system still constrains the agents, but there is not causality. There are, however, propensities for things to act in consistent ways. People need to first identify what type of problem they are working on. If it falls in the range of complexity, they are working in a complex emergent system where there are no solutions and every action or intervention will change the system. In complex emergent systems the problem is not definitive, but rather is an evolving set of interlocking issues and constraints. In complex context, there are three things people can do to work on problems and move them closer to the complicated order where they can begin to make partial solutions: 1. Work on the boundary conditions of the system 2. Utilize probes to aid in listening to the system. 3. Utilize modulators to shift the system and observe the effects. In thinking about the concept of Peacebuilding 3.0, Ann Pendleton-Jullian predicted that it is probably going to consist of new tools, new capacities and new practices, all integrated together. This could include social data mining, transmedia, new stories and storytelling practices. The peacebuilding field will need new theories of change and to engage in new conversations. For example, how does the peacebuilding community take on cyber issues? Who will orchestrate that conversation? She noted that the system with create its own change and peacebuilders need to be designing for emergence not engineering solution paths. Data needs to be approached from a design perspective not an engineering perspective. Ann mentioned Jose Antonio Abreyo’s work as an example of reading a system at all levels and catalyzing the shaping of change. Ann ended her talk a question which she thought deserved further consideration: why are peacebuilders are not seen as professionals and why is the work at the heart of peacebuilding not considered professional? With respect to this, she noted that skills matter just as much as intention. Question and Answer Portion: On the effect of language on action: Discussant Richard O’Neill started the question and answer portion of the session with several interesting comments. He explained that language is essential and throughout the first two days of the Annual Conference he heard people ask for a taxonomy. In his work with the Highlands Group, he made several discoveries about the way language constrains or opens up opportunities for action. In the Defense Department, everything is discussed in terms of adversary or enemy. The economy, by contrast, uses the term counterpart, which opens up the playing space. In his work, they found that using the terminology

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“cooperation, confrontation and conflict,” put them on a completely different spectrum of strategy and action than “peace, crisis, and war.” Melanie Greenberg commented that peacebuilders know there is not really such thing as a conflict spectrum—everything is happening concurrently. A lot of problems related to this are institutional. The United Nations for example defines peacebuilding as happening after conflict. This has a very tangible effect on dispersal of resources. Ann Pendleton-Jullian noted that many problems stem from looking only at relationships between actors and ignoring the environment. People need to be looking more broadly than just the social. She noted that the reason stories are so powerful is that they bring in mental ecologies rather than just looking at social ecology and the ecology of matter. In this sense the language used in telling stories about problems could help people interpret their environment and the potential for action in new, more productive ways. On the importance of interoperability: Richard O’Neill argued that peacebuilders need to be interconnected and interoperate. What he is seeing now in the field is more of a “1,000 flowers blooming” approach. There needs to be some way of getting to interoperability, including with those who do not think of themselves as peacebuilders. Melanie Greenberg thought that getting to interoperability was a design question. Peacebuilding experts do not yet know how to move on to another order of thinking. The idea of utilizing ecology theory is quite new to the field. Part of what inhibits this type of learning is the chaos that practitioners face in the field because of distance, funding and a lack of understanding about their work. Even in the United Nations, which has coordination units, cannot bring everyone together. On the state of peacebuilding as an established profession: Ann Pendleton-Jullian asked what makes peacebuilding a profession. She noted that peacebuilders need to have technical expertise and also understanding of culture and meaning. In a way this is similar to architects, who get licensed if they have enough technical, policy, law and history expertise with design as the integrator. Design is about sustainability and integrating new materials with those that do not exist yet. As an architect, one is more an orchestrator of systems and needs to have skills in many other processes. In a world that has changed so drastically, are peacebuilders then the integrators of other practices? Can that be a recognized profession and can one accredit around this? Is there an existing vocabulary around this? How do established peacebuilders then keep up with the practice? One participant argued that there are errors in mental construct that hold peacebuilders back. One is hubris, the belief that they can enter in a system and affect it and an overblown sense of the power they have as outsiders coming into other people’s context when they have taken the time to fix their own system. This is the American and Western notion that they have the answer and are there to help. Another is that in systems a small amount of energy can create a huge effect, so peacebuilders also have a dimension of power that they do not realize. Peacebuilders have to remember that they are in the system not external to the system, even if they are not acculturated and native to it. Another participant noted that the thing that allowed peacebuilders to change Ireland was being arrogant enough to do it.

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Ann Pendleton-Jullian stressed the importance of believing that one can change a system if they provide opportunities to do so. She also acknowledged a paradoxical quality is necessary in peacebuilding: practitioners need to have hubris and understand their limitations. On dealing with differences of interpretation regarding a system: One participant asked how to deal with people that have different ideas about the design of and how to fix a system. Ann responded with the example of Jack Adair, who started Cash for Clunkers. He was able to pull together funding in Ohio by going to five different entities that hated each other by asking what each one needed and figuring out how to provide it. The point is to focus on the motivations of each entity and how to bring them together rather than the conflicts. On understanding power in ecological thinking: Another participant asked how to factor power and the influence of power into ecological thinking. Ann responded by saying that knowledge is more about looking at the meta-level. Big power centers like Saddam Hussein are still part of the system and now the bottom has more power than ever before. How do you understand the needs and the purpose of the top and how it motivates action? How do you find a resonance between the meta-need and the micro-need? Peacebuilders need to think about how to create a series of mechanisms that begin to pull the top and bottom together in terms of motivations. Rob Ricigliano added that power figures are still system components and their behavior is often times a product of the system’s dynamics. This has been show time and again when dictators are removed from power and whoever replaces them act similarly. He then gave an example of finding leverage points to create a more power-balanced society. In mapping he did with clients they found that strengthening political opposition entrenched the party in power, having a net negative effect on democracy. Working with economic leverage points ended up facilitating collaboration and having a much more positive net effect. The important thing is understanding how what people are doing is fundamentally affecting system dynamics. On putting local partners at the center of ecological frameworks: Peacebuilding is lacking an inclusion that is not hierarchical. Peacebuilders themselves are not modeling what they are aspiring too. They need to think about internal complexity and bring local voices into the process even in the design. Regarding professionalism, maybe someone in the contexts within peacebuilders work should define it. Comments and questions about specific points of Ann’s presentation: One participant acknowledged the large transformative role of the advent of the World Wide Web but noted that many communities in which peacebuilders work have very little internet connectivity and enormous disparity in access and education. Ann responded that many people believe that the gap will begin to decrease and that technology will become even more ubiquitous. Regarding frameworks, another participant felt that eventually peacebuilding will start bringing ecology theory and Darwinism back together, particularly in dealing with identity. Identity is an evolutionary concept because it is the unit on which adaptation is built. Emergence is also an evolutionary process. Eventually designing for a more dynamic reality will get into more intelligent design than Darwinism.

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