In her influential book Cultures of Peace:

The Hidden Side of History, Elise Boulding (2000) suggests that humans have an inher­ent capacity for “peaceableness.” She points out that our daily lives are possible because we are able to cooperate with one another and deal with day-to-day conflict without resorting to violence.

Seemingly at odds with Boulding’s asser­tion is the nearly constant stream of news we receive reporting wars and violent conflicts. Harbom and Wallensteen (2010) report in their Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) that a total of 244 armed conflicts, in 151 locations worldwide, have taken place since the end of World War II.¹ For 2009, there were 36 ongoing armed conflicts. While this figure is lower than the totals from the early 1990s, the figure has risen by 24% since the early 2000s. Although in a number of these conflicts one or both of the warring par­ties received support in the form of troops from an external state, all were classified as intrastate conflicts, occurring in places such as Afghanistan, Angola, Burma/Myanmar, Burundi, Central African Republic, the Congo, India (Bodoland), Indonesia, Israel/Palestine, Kashmir, Liberia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Rwanda, Sudan, and Uganda. For many other conflicts where violence may have subsided, it often remains a latent possibility.

Most of these conflicts belong to a special class known as protracted (Azar, 1990) or intractable (Kriesberg, 1998) social conflicts. They are often embedded in a context of long­standing differences and inequalities stemming from colonialism, ethnocentrism, and human rights abuses. They are exceptionally complex, usually involving issues of identity, mean­ing, justice, and power, often resisting even the most determined attempts at resolution (Coleman, 2003).

The frequency of wars and their conse­quences can easily deflate the hopes of those seeking to build a more peaceful world, and they call into question the capacity of humans to refrain from violence and destruction. Boulding (2000), however, argues that a soci­ety tends to be war prone only when it is built around separateness. Power struggles, domi­nation of the strong over the weak and of men over women, physical violence, and constant competition usually lead to war, but if we can create the appropriate conditions, a peaceful society can prevail. Creating the conditions for a peace culture is no simple task, however, requiring political leadership that advocates peace, a strong economic safety net, education curricula that instill peaceful attitudes from an early age, laws that protect human rights and help prevent discrimination, and commu­nity, religious, and corporate institutions that actively promote cooperative practices.

Integral to realizing many of these elements for creating a culture of peace is dialogue, one of the key human activities for dealing meaningfully with differences and minimizing separateness. Broadly viewed as a communi­cation process in which participants are able to exchange ideas in a constructive manner, dialogue is characterized by nonpolarized discourse in which individuals and groups trapped in conflict have an opportunity for enhanced understanding and healthier rela­tionships. Dialogue offers the possibility for changing some of the damaging communica­tion patterns that perpetuate conflict and lead to violence, while at the same time develop­ing norms and structures for more effective responses to conflict. Significantly, dialogue allows the possibility of approaching prob­lems without resorting to violence, helping conflicting groups deal peacefully with issues that divide them.

This chapter focuses on ways in which dia­logue can promote a culture of peace in situ­ations of protracted conflict. The next section elaborates further on the notion of a culture of peace, a concept that has received attention from numerous scholars in recent years. This is followed by a brief overview of dialogue as a communication process, with a look at some of the dialogic approaches that have emerged in response to the challenge of building peace in protracted intergroup conflict situations. Subsequently, the potential contributions of dialogue toward building a culture of peace are described. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the many challenges and limita­tions to using dialogic processes in protracted and intractable conflicts.