Description:
"Co-authored by CPCS Academic Director Noah Taylor, this conceptual paper explores the diversity of perspectives on peace moving beyond the idea of peace in relation to the absence of conflict and the presence of security. In this framework peace is explored as impure, diverse and conflictive, advocating for an understanding of peace that embraces diversity, and engages with conflict rather than suppresses it.".....Abstract: "While the central question of diversity has often been how to live in peace with difference, we approach the
question —what happens when diversity also involves conflicting approaches to peace? This paper contains the authors?
reflections on the colloquium with the same title held in the On Diversity Conference 2012 in Vancouver, where the
authors and participants explored peace itself as an expression of diversity. We argue that an attempt to answer this
question requires a change in focus; if there is no longer a unifying peace, how can
we
engage with diversity in a
plurality of conflicting peaces? Mainstream peace and conflict studies literature understands conflict as opposite to
peace. Supported in contemporary critical research, we argue that the concept of peace rather than being perfect,
absolute and pure is in fact impure, diverse, and conflictive. Hence, an understanding of peace that attempts to embrace
diversity will necessarily be relational, include conflict and
engage
with it, in contrast to silencing it or suppressing it.
We argue that instead of being its opposite, conflict is in fact
an
essential component of peace. To elaborate on
the
argument, we deal with two of the possible interpretations of peace in history and culture: peace linked to security,
understood as the eradication of threats from others and therefore recurring to ideals of perfection and homogeneity; and
peace as an
experience of harmony, highlighting mystical or musical harmony, which, far from being pure, emerges
also
out of conflicting tones. We conclude that both in traditions of mysticism and in security politics, diversities
in friction lie
at the core of experiencing
and conceptualizing
peace."
Source/publisher:
The International Journal of Community Diversity, Illinois USA via Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS)
Date of Publication:
2013-00-00
Date of entry:
2016-02-23
Grouping:
- Individual Documents
Category:
Language:
English
Local URL:
Format:
pdf
Size:
340.08 KB