An interview with PEDRO IBARRA

 

Pedro Ibarra

[Q] Could you talk us a little about the aims of Betiko Fundazioa and how did it get involved in this Summer School?

[PI] Well, this is a little foundation indeed. Our aim is to support research and academic activities such as publications, meetings and so on, related to the issue of social movements. That is our most important field of work: we have just edited a book on social movements in Spain, and supported some others as well. The first and maybe the main reason for this meeting is that Juan Urrutia and me are old friends. We began to joke about common issues and thought that we can join our efforts, to make different perspectives about society and politics converge. My own Foundation is concerned about social movements and values such as equality or solidarity, as I have said, and the Urrutia Elejalde Foundation is also interested in the link between economics and all these things, how economics can be related in changing the world into a most equal world. So coming from different backgrounds we thought it was possible to join efforts. That was the beginning.

[Q] Why did you choose Polarization and Conflict to be topic of this Summer School? Given that its academic seat is San Sebastian, is it somehow related to the Basque situation?

[PI] In the beginning we tried to organise a different meeting. The idea was to discuss more philosophical issues like communitarism vs. liberalism, and how to introduce some philosophic strategies in policies. Now I think that was too ambitious, the problem was that we tried to connect some people and failed. Afterwards, we met Joan Maria who was working on polarization and conflict and had his own research project. So the three of us (Joan Maria, Juan and me) met and thought that we may shift our initial intention to a more specific topic, such as polarization and conflict, because Joan Maria already knew a number of people concerned with this topic who could be brought together. We simply introduced new names in the meeting. That was the idea. Of course, it is also an issue connected with the Basque situation, but it was not our initial intention to discuss it. In fact, with the only exception of the talk given by Alberto Abadie, no other one has made an explicit connection with the Basque case, even if the ideas presented could be applied to it. It was not our intention either.

[Q] Speaking very generally, two different approaches to polarization and conflict have been discussed in this Summer School. A very formal one, mainly due to economists, and a more qualitative perspective, so to say, mostly presented by sociologists and political science, your own field. Did you aim at mixing these two views on organizing the conference?

[PI] I am a political scientists without a mathematical formation, and for me, as for some other people who come from more unformal, philosophical domains, there has been a gap to bridge. And I think it is a pity, because when you are introduced to this quantitative approach, you see that these kind of frameworks, models, the way the discussion is organised, is also of much interest for us. It is difficult to make these two perspectives converge, but we should continue in this direction, to bring people with mathematical and non-mathematical formation together. It is a good idea.

[Q] So we can expect the cooperation between the two foundations to continue next year.

[PI] Yes, I promise to introduce more qualitative researchers then [laughter].

 

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