Cultures of Peace

Journal on Cultures of Peace (1^st chosen topic) – October 27^th, 2011

Thesis:

Every society basically has the profound energy to evolve culture of peace based on their local wisdom as social capital to reinforce peacebuilding.

Conflict actually is an integral part of societal life. Society in essence is driven by intra- and intergroup conflicts. On the one hand, sociologically conflict stimulates society more dynamic and progressive in order to reach its common ideal purposes. At the same time, on the other hand, conflict can drag society into violent acts as the result of uncontrolled conflict within the society. Conflict, violence, and peace are interdependent concepts and practices in every society which contains intertwined multi-facets. Nevertheless, every society has their self-reconciling mechanism as well for maintaining social order.

Knowing that in reality people always involve within inevitably conflicting situation, even violence and war, Elise Boulding believes that the cultures of everyday life are largely peaceful. The power to evolve culture of peace relies on people’s social capacity for negotiating differences either internally or externally. Further, she affirms that each people have its own traditions of peaceful conflict resolution which I prefer to call it as “local wisdom”. Local wisdom is often overlooked with primitive irrational ways doing by traditional societies. Instead, it contains many cultural strategies by the people to manage differences primarily in their daily life. This is an important key to manage conflict and reinforcing peacebuilding at conflict time.

Any attempts to reinforce peacebuilding should consider two aspects, i.e. soft aspects and hard aspects. According to Katrien Hertog, “soft aspects of peacebuilding are understood in this study as the emotional, psychological, socio-psychological, and existential-spiritual issues involved in peacebuilding, such as attitudes, perceptions, cognitive thinking patterns, values, expectations, desires, emotions, traumas and wounds, assumptions, motivations, relationships, frustrations, intentions, concerns, taboos, principles, norms, beliefs, identities, loyalties, worldviews, and memories.” In this perspective, peacebuilding initially is related to an individual matters which must be handled step-by-step as well as interconnectedness of social dimensions. However, peacebuilding has also another one, namely, hard aspects as the formal side such as the development of structures and institutions.

It is interesting that Hertog mentions about “peacebuilding architecture” (as developed by Luc Reychler) for understanding the process of peacebuilding as interdependent praxis. She then described them as five peacebuilding blocks: [1] an effective communication, consultation, and negotiation system; [2] peace-enhancing structures, systems, and institutions; [3] a critical mass of peacebuilding leadership; [4] a supportive regional and international environment; [5] an “integrative climate”: a favorable social-psychological and political-psychological environment. The building blocks are seen as interdependent and mutually reinforcing to build “house” of peace.

This all is dynamic elements within the society which becomes potential source of positive energy and social capital for managing conflict, overcoming violence, and reinforcing sustainable peacebuilding. These efforts therefore must begin from recognizing social characteristics and potential resources of the society, including religions. Peacebuilding is reinforced not merely as way to mute conflict and coping with violence in certain space and time but further to empower society for doing sustainable peacebuilding in the context of differences in everyday societal life. [steve gaspersz - ICRS]