The construction of peace
Introduction
The idea of the triangle of violence raised by Johan Galtung, as we know, implies the existence of three types of violence: structural, cultural and direct. While direct violence refers to the immediate deprivation of life and structural violence to the slow deprivation of life, cultural violence refers to the speeches that justify and legitimize the other two types of violence. Direct violence emphasizes actors, structural violence emphasizes victims and cultural violence, meanwhile, emphasizes civil society and is the most dangerous, since it changes the moral color of acts and determines what whatIt is normal or abnormal in our society.
Developing
Faced with this particular violence, the need arises to find an alternative that, instead of justifying and legitimizing violence, justifying and legitimizing peace (understanding peace as an unfinished process, always in development, which indicates the north: the imperfect peacewhich Francisco Muñoz refers to the idea of utopian peace). To do this, it is essential to build and encourage speeches that promote positive peace, that which seeks not only the absence of direct violence, but also advocates bringing justice and equality to our society. A culture that actively promotes and feeds such speeches is a culture of peace. It is there where we must direct our forces, because a culture of these characteristics is erected as the main alternative to cultural or symbolic violence barely mentioned.
The construction of peace has to do with collectively building this culture of peace that takes us, as a society, to relate in a better way. In Lederach’s words, it is necessary to understand the construction of peace as a global concept that covers, produces and sustains the entire series of processes, approaches and stages necessary to transform conflicts into more peaceful and sustainable relationships. Although until it
A few years the concept was addressed as something that had more to do with it after conflicts, it is clear that peace construction is not a monolithic concept, but, on the contrary, it is quite broad and still generates more questions than answers. This is something that happens before, during and after the various phases of conflicts, which are transformed, but never disappear: a concept in continuous development. However, to understand the role of civil society in this process, it is necessary, in the first place, to recognize that in the center of peace construction is the breaking thought schemes, which is the only tool we have to move fromA culture of violence to a culture of peace. We are talking about a cultural change and the subject that has the greatest agency in that change, because it lies the culture of any organized social life, it is civil society. The path of peace implies, then, transforming the structures we have put into the head;It implies a dispute against cultural hegemony. In research for peace, for example, there is talk of the importance of moving from
the violent perspective to the peace. Although it is important that both exist, we must investigate the alternative ways of relating and promoting them. In this order of ideas, I consider that civil society is the central agent of the construction of peace in all types of contexts, but, above all, in the contexts of socio -political crisis and armed conflict, because through introduction and maintenanceOf new values such as openness, care and inclusion, it has the power to sustain peace. We have agency as a civil society in the process of transforming cultures of violence to cultures of peace and we have tools such as dialogue and creativity to carry it out.
Then I intend to contribute my perspective of the matter, addressing in greater detail some debates that I consider to represent a contribution to the approach barely exposed. Remember that the human being is done within a culture, the filter that establishes the way of seeing, thinking and feeling the world around us. It should not be forgotten, therefore, that all knowledge is the social construction of a reality and that in that sense, there are as many perspectives of reality as individuals in the world. However, the paradigm that governs our society considers that there is only one truth and that this is present only in Western civilization.
It is a positivist paradigm that believes in the unilineal progress of the capitalist society carried out by the rational being that is man and that, as expected, denies and rejects all thought that is contrary to their interests. As Arun Agrawal states, other forms of knowledge, such as indigenous knowledge, are only valid for the West as they are useful for the unit development projects proposed by civilization, and even so, they will not be respected or recognized knowledge.
In view of the fact that the truths promoted by this civilization have led to the humanitarian crisis in which we are currently, in which a culture of violence is predominated and imposed, it is necessary to destroy and transform the myths that feed the modern western culture. It is imperative to break myths such as progress and the individual, which are the roots of the tree of our culture and that give rise to racist and macho imaginary without complexes, since we have been socialized in that way. As Lola López states, we are structurally racist and hetero patriarchal. Our culture leads us to distinguish between us and others;between black and white;man and woman;right and left;truth and lies;modernity and primitivism;development and underdevelopment.
This binary thought denies the complexity of the human being and leads us, in turn, to Manichaeism and polarization. We take as a universal truth the fact that there is only one correct way to think and live, as if everything diverse, everything else, was a pathology, a sign of abnormality. In other words, the thought that governs the world is limited by duality. The historical processes of the West, always linked to the knowledge-power relationship, made that once a local knowledge was disseminated globally, establishing the authority of the white throughout the planet;It is an attitude towards the world that demands that it be considered as something external to the observer, then being able to be apprehended as such, known and manipulated.
Western dichotomy, that which seeks to cover everything, take over the world, that which believes to have the truth, consists in separating society and nature, in establishing good and bad judgments, in moving the man from the world. That thought is, in the eyes of non -westernized populations, an absurdity, because these peoples see the human being as part of nature and cosmos, they always see it in relation to other beings. In the midst of dualism, of so many divisions and separations, the West has been unbalanced. According to them, our society has forgotten that everything that exists is perfect and is in harmony with the universe, has lost its being and has forgotten how to relate to the world.
Indeed, avidity by power only evidences the deep ignorance of Western society, which is gradually threatening life in all parts of the planet. West does not act with love, and it is known that the more love the beings grow. Precisely, the field of study of peace builders is what we do to each other. As Irene Comins affirms;There is no dichotomy between facts and values. The priority is knowing how to live, which is synonymous with knowing how to live. Leaving the paralysis of Western hegemonic thinking and starting to move becomes imperative. Move and move, that is, move with others. To do this, it is necessary to overcome the unilateralization of reason to start talking about feelings, emotions, affection and tenderness.
conclusion
We are not obliged to perpetuate the ideas and behaviors that shape our culture. In fact, the opposite could be affirmed: since our modern western culture seems to encourage values contrary to the maintenance of life and good coexistence, we are obliged to transform it. Understanding that the social reality that surrounds us and that we consider unique and true is only an imposition implies recognizing that there are as many perspectives of the real as points of view in space-time, as moments in time and places in space. Other men, in other cultures, and ourselves in ours, we have the ability of López, Lola. Racism and Islamophobia.
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