Nancy Billias

The Healing Qualities of Silence (Uganda)

World musician and humanitarian Samite Mulondo sees silence as an essential feature of communication. Whether he is working in refugee camps, in schools for former child soldiers, or in nursing homes for people with dementia, he often finds that silence expresses a lack of hope. In his work, he carefully manages silence in order to enhance communication and promote healing and peace. He sees his work of healing as a methodology of silence, specifically of attentive listening. For Samite, silence is integrally linked with both hope and hopelessness. In a noisy and violent world, it is often hard to hear hope. One way to deal with hopelessness is to use silence to help open a channel to healing, by giving people hope.

How Many Layers of Silence Can One Context Hold? (Micronesia)

The topic here concerns silence in relation to time, in four ways. Firstly, silence expresses influences of the past on the present: tension between modernity and tradition, and between traditional and changing gender roles. Next, two kinds of “present” silence were noted: (a) between an NGO and the values and expectations of the indigenous people they serve, and then (b) silence with regard to how certain individuals conducted themselves with others within the group. Lastly, silence looks toward the future, to climate change and uncertainty about sustainable practices. Moreover, in this case silence is encountered from the inside out, as the context within which an individual begins and within which she must establish herself.

Whose Silence? Hearing Echoes of Disembodied Trauma (Argentina)

The military junta in Argentina conducted a political firestorm during the 1970s which has come to be known as “Argentina’s dirty war.” During this time, more than 30,000 Argentinian citizens died, including many women and children. Most simply “disappeared,” taken away by night and never heard of again. Forty years later, several places involved in the “dirty war” are being opened to the public as memorials of this violent time. A sociologist from Brock University in Canada spoke with us about the many layers of silence that continue to envelop these sites. Her investigation is further enriched by several linguistic strata that she experienced personally, as a political refugee from Angola. This chapter explores the ways in which every experience may be infused with silence.

Individual, Collective, and Strategic Silences (USA)

The history of African Americans over the last century is full of silences. Wherever silence appears, its meaning is conditioned by a number of factors: an event; the interpretation made of that event, both by the individual and by the groups with which the individual identifies; and the impact the event has on the interaction of the individual in both the groups to which he belongs and the groups to which he wishes belong. One should also consider the importance of what happens over time: how does the event change the individual? How does interpretation of the event change over time? Lastly, what does silence mean to the individual in his social context? Reflection on all of these facets contributes to one’s understanding of silence.

On Becoming a Campus of Compassion

Over the past four years, three universities in the state of Connecticut (USA) have become partner institutions in the global Charter for Compassion movement. Different governance structures, mission statements and demographics have resulted in very different experiences at each institution. The author explores the history of this initiative at each institution and enquires into the nature of the project as part of a liberal arts education. What does it mean to be a Campus of Compassion? What led each university to become involved? How is the intention lived out at each institution? What has been learned along the way? Why should any university seek to become a Campus of Compassion?

Silence Looking Out and Looking In (Southeast Asia)

One cannot explore the relationship between self and other without exploring self-identity through sexuality. Thus, we decided to look at one particular manifestation of sexual and gender identity: in the transgender “ladyboy” communities of Cambodia and Thailand. This interview brought another facet of our research question to light: the interplay between etic and emic approaches. “Emic” expressions are thoughts and actions that refer primarily to an actor’s (culturally bound) self-understanding. “Etic” models, by contrast, describe phenomena in constructs that apply across cultures. Traditionally, researchers have opted to use either one perspective or the other, employing different principles and methodologies. In an increasingly globalized world, where no person or action operates within a cultural vacuum, a more integrative approach may lead to greater understanding.

Who May Speak? Who Must Be Silent? (Australia)

Government initiatives face a steep learning curve when it comes to working with indigenous populations. A small enterprise specialist outlined for us some of the silences encountered working with Aboriginal people in the Northwest Territory. A project to commercialize cultivation of a native fruit was intended as a means to help indigenous people move from dependence on the government toward self-determination, control over land, and eventually, economic self-sufficiency. However, this endeavor was hampered by cultural misunderstandings and a lack of trust. Since silence is co-created by all the participants of an interaction, in order to bring about social change, trust must first be established, and, if broken, healed. Our contention is that this transformation is possible when the process of conscious reflection is communicated.

Working with Silence

Five steps are essential to the process of paying attention to, recognizing, and interpreting silence in an effort to increase the ethical quality of decision-making. In this chapter, these five steps are explored and illustrated. Seven modalities of silence were selected: empty rhetoric, insolent silence, the silence of hopelessness, the silence of the oppressed, the silence of fear, the silence of attentive listening, and the silence which makes space for dialogue. Our inquiry is focused on four elements of each modality: definition, effect, implications, and the changes that are needed in order to promote social transformation. The chapter concludes with an explanation of the criteria used for selecting cases, the methodology applied to the analysis of each case, and the interdisciplinary structure of this approach.

The Silence of the Unknown and the Unknowable (Guyana)

Caring for children with special needs is especially difficult in areas of economic impoverishment. Cultural norms, combined with a significant lack of resources, often push families and individuals with special needs to the margins, where it is hard for them to be seen or heard. This chapter describes the work of a developmental psychologist who travels twice yearly to jungle communities in Guyana. Her specialty is working with people in their home environments, assessing their needs and offering suggestions on how to cope not only with the disability of the child in their family, but with the multiple stressors on the family system that often accompany the diagnosis of a disability, including poverty, scarce resources, and social isolation.

Visible Silence (Poland/Germany)

A visual and intermedia artist from Poland reflected on the role of silence in the process of artistic creation. For Ela Wysakowka Walters, silence is a tool whose use must be learned as carefully as the use of a brush or a chisel, and each artist’s silence is as unique as a brush stroke. The silence of attentive listening is part of the continuous process of creativity. Within the transitional phases of the process, there is interconnectivity between invisible and visible forms of silence. One begins by cultivating an active interior silence, making space inside oneself for the work to develop. This chapter provides valuable insights about how silence can be understood as a means of improving ethical interactions and a tool for social transformation.