Beyond the Mandela decade: The ethic of reconciliation?

Abstract

The author claims that there is an emergent ethic of reconciliation which influences social and political action in the recent period. This ethic of reconciliation has four sources: neo-Gandhian dispositions in the global South that provide a critique of arms and of military solutions; post-racist and pro-peace and feminist discourses in the West that emerged through significant social movements of reflexive modernization; and post-Stalinist socialist ideas and practices that have renovated Marxism and the work of the arts, literature and performance. The article goes on to point to some serious sociological reasons why this ethic of reconciliation has consolidated its presence and how the experience of war, violence and instrumental reason have been and are seriously challenged.