Making Contact: The Power of Contact in the Rehumanization Process
Professor Jasper Van Assche of the University of Ghent on Contact Theory and its power and limitations for building a more nonviolent world.
Photo by Gradikaa Aggi
Jasper Van Assche, a professor at the University of Gantt in Belgium, comes to Nonviolence Radio to talk to Michael and Stephanie about his research on the power of contact – direct and indirect – to decrease prejudice and cultivate tolerance and social cohesion within diverse and potentially antagonized groups. ‘Contact theory’ has been shown to lead to harmony and an enlarged sense of a common good, even when there are limited resources and competing interests. In short, genuine and meaningful contact with different kinds of people tends to humanize the dehumanized ‘other’. This kind of contact can be difficult to realize, especially where there is long entrenched prejudice and little or no institutional support to bring it about. However, contact itself is simple and readily available to all of us and Jasper's research will perhaps inspire us to start to build that support within our own communities:
If you're a policymaker, no matter what level, if it’s just for your local neighborhood or the country or the region where you live, I would try to help people to engage in contact. I think that’s the initial step. We know that there is a barrier. But once we cross that barrier, and we engage, and we have encounters with other people, it has such a strong effect, and it will change the way you look at them. It might change your worldview. It might actually, what we call, deprovincialize you and make you a different person. So, I would definitely advise people that are listening to go out there and help people to have contact experiences.
Transcript archived at Waging Nonviolence
