Re-imagining Peace
A Trans-Disciplinary and Comparative Effort towards the Rebuilding of Functioning Societies after Mass Violence
This research-action program supplements and supports more familiar rebuilding projects that focus on economic and physical infrastructures, or on education and democracy building. Re-Imagining Peace seeks to develop a model for re-establishing functioning societies by focusing on and reversing the radical changes in the beliefs and codes of conduct that tend to accompany war and mass violence. Massacres and wars can destroy not only buildings and bodies but also trust, hope, identity, and family. It is difficult afterwards to rebuild the vitally important foundations of social life.
All cultures contain within them many means of healing and cultural repair. Suppressed during war, they can be "re-invented" in the aftermath. Cultures and communities, using story-telling, art, dance, music, dialog, scholarship, history, and community rituals, can counter the power of hate, vengeance, and insecurity that cause and follow massacres by re-creating what holds societies together. By re-inventing the shared images, stories, values, and dreams that connect people, communities can rebuild the cultural identities, hope, and mutual trust that make for functional societies. When mutual trust and connections are re-established, communities can more easily undertake other forms of rebuilding, from roads to schools, and city halls to corporations, but also more political institutions.
This website presents:
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- Our international network comprised of academics, practitioners and activists from different disciplines, many originating from post-war countries and others, who have participated in different related activities developed over the last few years. |
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- The main activities organized so far and some of their results (including publications). |
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- Country experiences (four country teams are presenting their analysis and experience: Guatemala, East Congo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia; the research on Art & Conflict Transformation also presents projects all over the world. |
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- A series of theoretical and methodological resources developed through our different research-action activities; they are organized around key issues and suggest innovative, trans-disciplinary approaches; some of them focus more specifically on the use of artistic and cultural modes of expression. |
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