It's not the What But the How: a critical approach to peace and violence

Abstract

Peace studies are currently at a crossroad, being criticized for their overwhelming research agenda, for their uncritical stance towards terminology and for their disconnection between research and action. This paper proposes a consolidation of the theoretical and conceptual peace studies core, by recovering the value of peace and framing research and action in cultures of peace. This sets out from a critique of the conventional conflict narrative terminology, which has evolved after Boutros-Ghali An Agenda for Peace to reflect a peace narrative terminology. This change has been more formal than operational. Even if a new political peace agenda was adopted, practical results have not reflected this transformation. We argue that peace and violence are not excludable, by adopting the concept of a continuum of peaces and violences and proposing a peace web to overcome the shortcomings revealed essentially at the level of policy implementation.