Building Culture of Peace.
A Peruvian educator Felipe Macgregor introduced the term culture of peace in 1986. A cultural organization (UNESCO) stated: “war is not a human tendency or instinct, but rather a social invention.” The two general models of society: the partnership model, which characterizes egalitarian societies where differences are evaluated hierarchically, and the dominator model, which characterizes societies structured around various hierarchies backed by authoritarian threat and force.
Partnership model: generates an affiliative, cooperative, and nurturing social and a relatively nonviolent and peaceful social life (characterized by human culture 7,000 years ago.) To build and maintain peace, we must learn productive ways of handling disagreements by developing norms, mechanisms, institutions that will guide us toward resolving divisive issues without violence. A central means in which such action can unfold is dialogue. It’s a vital aspect of social peace. To build and maintain order, we must learn productive ways of handling disagreements by developing norms, mechanisms, institutions that will guide us toward resolving divisive issues without violence.
A central means in which such action can unfold is through dialogue. It’s a vital aspect of social peace. According to the UN resolution, a conflict could be prevented when we target the causes to prevent problems through dialogue and consultations among individuals, organizations, and nations. For peace and nonviolence to preponderate, we must begin improving the educational curricula to promote qualitative values, and beliefs; including nonviolent conflict resolution, dialogue, consensus-building through an act of an active non-violence means.
The word dialogue comes from Greek, composed of the prefix dia (“through” or “across”) and logos (“words” or “reason”). Dialogue is rooted in the process of creating meaning through a reasonable discursive approach. In the concept of exchange, “meaning” arises through the process of interactions. “Interactions” is not something that exists, but waiting to be discovered.
It is a form of discourse that emphasizes listening and inquiry, to foster mutual respect and understanding. The approaches to Intergroup Dialogue can be broadly grouped into three general categories: (1) rational/problem-solving strategies, (2) psychodynamic approaches, and (3) dialogue-based transformative approaches. These intergroup dialogue sessions were used in the cold war to establish peace between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It brings together the personal representatives of a group from a conflict zone with a third-party panel which includes scholars, usually from distinct discipline in academic institutions.
The hope of dialogue is that it can affect the climate of opinion, in which policymakers operate and in which policies are made. It can also have a profound effect on the outcome of the conflict. The psychodynamic approach to intergroup dialogue is typically less structured, often consisting of more informal efforts to ease tensions and improve relations in international conflicts. Taking a psychodynamic approach help participants learned about each other by developing communication across the divide and establishing working relationship conflicts. It tends to humanize the dispute, develop confidence and overcome hatred.
Human has a deep-rooted psychological tendency, at both individual and group levels, to dichotomize by creating “enemies” and “allies.” According to the enemy system theory (Mack, 1990; Montville, 1990; Volkan, 1990), primitive and unconscious impulses often results in a former neighbor harming and killing each other simply because they belong to different national/ethnic groups. Intergroup dialogue provides participants the experience of sitting in the same room with the enemy. By making the members of the group come to understand each other culture, interests, history, and life experiences. In deeply divided societies, when conflict arises, listening to what other has to say, and allowing for its authenticity, respect can slowly emerge, with a mutual appreciation of each other’s humanity and legitimacy.
Through dialogue, rivals learn to mend their differences. In cooperation, a narrative framework places peace at its center core and serve as the basis for both interpreting events and making choices about the future. According to Cromwell and Vogele (2009), the emergence of mutually beneficial cooperation is based on strategic reciprocity. Morton Deutsch (19730 asserts that the constructive processes of the resolution of conflict are similar to the cooperative process of solving a mutual problem, whereas a destructive process is an aggressive strain to conquer the dispute. Dialogue is not also a miraculous cure for the pathology of a violence-based approach to conflict; however, it is an essential part of the culture-building means that is needed for societies to promote productive methods to deal with conflicts and disagreements.
The challenges to dialogue are that dialogue may not always be possible. Unequal social, economic, and symbolic give rise to inequalities which alter the dynamics of the conversation. They can prevent people from finding common grounds and can make it tough for the opposing sides to move past their preconceptions. Dialogue is also a cyclic process, and when one is caught in the vicious cycle of conflict and are not open to a discursive approach, dialogue becomes impossible. War and brutality can be demoralizing; conflict is inescapable, and it is an even significant part of all societies. Diversity is a component of all life forms, how we deal with these differences determines the peacefulness of our society. Hatred and divisive derived from war, allow one to see the possibility of peace. It helps create a culture that’ll help prevent its reoccurrence.
