Ra Ximhai (Jan 2014)
A SUBALTERN LOOK FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE CULTURE OF PEACE
Abstract
Since their inception as a discipline, Peace and Conflict Studies have been developed by the global North. For the global South, this has led not only to a colonization of thought but also one of peace building practice, expressed from top to bottom. The hegemonic powers that impose peace from above have managed to permeate their discourse within fields of thought, for instance in academia, and also on the ground, within communities. Given this trend, one can ask what occurs within communities from below. In the colonizing practice of the global North, the voices, contexts and idiosyncrasies from below become invisible, omitting that there can be a type of peace that emerges from the local. From this perspective, peace from below can take many forms: it can confront, dialogue, or become resistant to peace from above. In the current theoretical debates within peace studies, the peace that comes from above is referred to as liberal peace: the ‘peace’ whereby the international imposes itself to the local within cultural and political processes oblivious to reality. From this perspective emerges a peace from below: a subaltern peace as a fundamental alternative to promote a culture of peace within sustainability.
