Culture of Peace
The term culture of peace was originally introduced in 1986 by Peruvian educator Felipe MacGregor, who advocated an educational initiative to help promote cultural values of nonviolence (de Rivera, 2009).
In the same year, a group of scientists from around the world developed and adopted the Seville Statement on Violence (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 1986), which stated that war is not a human tendency or instinct but rather a social invention, and therefore, “the same species that invented war is capable of inventing peace.” Influenced by both MacGregor’s proposal and the Seville Statement, the 1989 UNESCO International Congress recommended that UNESCO “help construct a new vision of peace by developing a peace culture based on the universal values of respect for life, liberty, justice, solidarity, tolerance, human rights, and equality between men and women” (UNESCO, 1989).UNESCO’s recommendation became the basis for United Nations (UN) resolution A/ RES/52/13, which defines a culture of peace as one that consists of
values, attitudes and behaviours that reflect and inspire social interaction and sharing based on the principles of freedom, justice and democracy, all human rights, tolerance and solidarity, that reject violence and endeavour to prevent conflicts by tackling their root causes to solve problems through dialogue and negotiation and that guarantee the full exercise of all rights and the means to participate fully in the development process of their society. (UN, 1997)
Following this resolution, the UN gradually extended its traditional focus on peacekeeping to include peacebuilding and conflict prevention, allowing more concern with building a culture of peace that would remove the conditions leading to war.
Although it is important to recognize that conflict is an unavoidable part of the highly complex and diverse world in which we live today (Cromwell & Vogele, 2009), peace is quite different from its semantic opposite, war, which is all too real.
Tuzin (1996) sees peace as a set of ideas that act in the sense of Karl Popper’s “regulative” principles (Keuth, 2004), meaning they function as ideals or values that are unattainable in the material form but which have consequences for behavior. Even though some may not believe that peaceful societies are feasible, anthropologists have documented the existence of several small communities characterized by egalitarian social structures that emphasize cooperation, decision making through group consensus, and nonviolent methods of conflict resolution. Examples include the Paliyan population of Southern India, Buid in the highlands of Mindoro Island in the Philippines, and La Paz Zapotec in the state of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico (Fry, Bonta, & Baszarkiewicz, 2009).Sponsel (1996) provides an anthropological review of the evidence for an optimistic and positive view of human potential for peaceful relations. He points out that there are civilizations that have experienced centuries or even millennia of relative peace, and he notes that there is relatively little systematic evidence of organized violence in human prehistory. He shows that war is most frequent and intense at the state level of sociopolitical organization, which is a relatively recent and short phase of cultural evolution. Similarly, Eisler (1987), in her feminist interpretation of cultural evolution, believes that our current emphasis on aggression and violence is somewhat an anomaly in human history. She proposes two general models of society: the p artnership model, which characterizes egalitarian societies where differences are not evaluated hierarchically, and the dominator model, which characterizes societies structured around various hierarchies backed by authoritarian threat and force. She argues that the partnership model, which generates an affiliative, cooperative, and nurturing society and a relatively nonviolent and peaceful social life, was characteristic of human cultures until about 7,000 years ago, when external threats led to the adoption of the dominator model, primarily in Europe.
Joseph de Rivera (2009), in his recent Handbook on Building Cultures of Peace, argues that we are gradually developing the norms and institutions that will make it possible to build cultures of peace.
As evidence, he points to social movements, such as those for women’s rights, human rights, and economic justice that have been mostly nonviolent in nature and have led to significant changes in how society responds to basic human needs. He also notes the existence of numerous peace research institutes and academic journals, as well as the large number of peace education programs in universities throughout the world. In addition, there are occupationally based peace groups, national peace groups, unarmed peace teams working in areas of civil strife, regional peace organizations, and many nongovernmental organizations working on various global social issues that are important for building cultures of peace. Even in the business world, there are increasing numbers of executives who are working to introduce corporate practices that promote both peaceful individual behaviors and greater corporate responsibility for social peace.2 Of course, in comparison to the forces that promote violent responses to conflict, the overall numbers of individuals and organizations working to build peace are still small. Nevertheless, they can help create an “emotional climate of hope” (de Rivera, 2009, p. 8) that could make it possible to develop the norms and institutions that will make possible a culture of peace.A crucial component of UNESCO’s Culture of Peace project (UNESCO, 2000), and a common theme among those who write about culture of peace, is an emphasis on building relationships based on tolerance and solidarity between peoples distanced by cultural differences. Echoing this theme, Boulding (2001) urges the creation of a society that reflects “peaceable diversity” (p. 56). She believes that the key to creating and sustaining a culture of peace is what she calls “ceaseless culture-creating activity” (Boulding, 2000, p. 1) at every level of society. This entails acts of tolerance and kindness by individuals in their interactions with others, healthy patterns of communication within families, supportive work teams in organizations, programs that bring communities together for enhancing their living space, and governments, at every level, providing services that support the needs of their citizens.
Interaction between the various levels means that the overall societal capacity for aggression or peacebuilding will depend on patterns that develop at each level, and it also implies that changes at one level can positively affect other levels. It is thus possible to build a culture of peace when individual, interpersonal, group, and societal behaviors promote mutual caring and well-being, and when these are supported by institutional arrangements reflecting corresponding norms, values, and behaviors (de Rivera, 2009).As noted previously, peace is not something that simply happens in the absence of violence. Rather, it must be consciously constructed, and how long it will last often depends on how well it is made (Vasquez, 1996). As Galtung (2005) and others have argued, peace requires taking steps to create relationships in which individuals and groups can disagree about issues while maintaining strong connections with one another. Just as individuals, groups, and nations must be well prepared to be successful in war, they also must actively prepare for peace and not hope that it will happen on its own. To build and maintain peace, we must learn productive ways to handle disagreements, and we must develop norms, mechanisms, and institutions that will guide us toward resolving divisive issues without violence. A central means through which such actions can unfold is dialogue. The following sections examine this crucial form of human interaction and suggest ways in which dialogue can contribute to a culture of peace.