Revista de Paz y Conflictos

Why educate in a culture of peace? Transdisciplinary perspectives applied to contemporary challenges

Luis Encina Rendos — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Health, environment and inequalities

Fernando Pintos — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The book Health, Environment, and Inequalities critically addresses the dynamics of the agroindustrial model in Argentina, analyzing its impacts on public health, social inequality, and socio-environmental conflicts. From interdisciplinary perspectives, the authors highlight how public policies, technology, gender, and extractivist practices create tensions and disputes over essential resources such as water and land, providing conceptual frameworks and practical alternatives to mitigate these conflicts.

Eating is a revolutionary act

Pablo Corral Broto — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Book review

Trade flows and conflicts: the trajectory of commerce and Indian sandalwood’s management (XVI-XX C.)

Miguel Pinto Sanz — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The rarity and cultural prominence of sandalwood (Santalum sp.) in different parts of the world, has made this species one of the most important commodities in the Asian market, leading a myriad of groups to develop a large number of cultural expressions based on a wood that does not grow in their territories, as has been the case in China. Through its particular ecology and distribution, we have identified a series of historical centers of sandalwood production, making India one of them. This way, extensive exchange networks and efforts to control these places and their production have been established. This phenomenon intensified with the arrival of Western agents in Asia in the 16th century who, in pursuit of the benefits of trade with China, until well into the 20th century, attempted to establish regimes of control and monopoly wherever sandalwood grew. In this article, starting from the nature and importance of sandalwood, we will focus on the Indian experience through the lens of environmental history, explaining the reorientation of sandalwood production towards China and identifying the succession of different management and trade regimes to which the tree was subjected, and contextualizing its importance in different historical processes.

Plebiscite in Colombia. Approach to perceptions about Peace in the Department of Tolima

Esther Gutierrez Mora, Magda Rocío Martínez Montoya — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The long history of violence and armed conflict in Colombia has led to the social legitimization of the violent solution to social conflicts. This article analyzes some of the speeches that circulated in the campaign for the Plebiscite held in 2016, which sought to endorse the peace agreements between the Government of then Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC - EP. To this end, the content analysis of press releases published in the newspaper El Olfato of the Department of Tolima was carried out. Analysis that bet on the review of the meanings of the peace category and its relationship with justice, fear and polarization. It is concluded that the Plebiscite campaigns put us in front of a much more complex reality in the country: the need to recognize ourselves in the multiple experiences, places lived and in the different ways of elaborating the pains left by a war of more than 50 years. Likewise, while everyday spaces are endowed with a great transformative capacity of conflict, the emotionality that makes them much more complex the deconstruction of dualistic positions of reality. This does not mean ignoring the centrality of emotions, because it has been clear that they play a central role in any political society. Rather, we propose to reflect on them and their impacts on the understanding of violence and war in the country.

Liquid solidarity, solid conflicts. Evolution of Global Water Conflicts

Victoria Aragón García — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The water crisis is one of the main concerns of all the crises caused by the current economic model. Water scarcity, caused by global warming, pollution and demand for different economic uses, affects the whole planet and has interlinked consequences, damaging health, affecting migration and giving rise to different conflicts, not only to obtain the precious resource, but also as a tool of war to subdue the enemy. This work focuses on showing the dangers and analysing the conflicts that threaten water resources. The amount and the violence with which the struggle for its control is being waged are increasing, as shown by the analysis carried out by exploiting a secondary source, the Pacific Institute's database. The data provided by this source shows the evolution of conflicts, the types of conflicts and the most vulnerable areas. The results paint a disturbing picture. The results point to a steady increase in all types of conflicts analysed.

Interweaves of violence: A critical review of contemporary theories of violence in the social sciences

Francisca Toledo Candia, Ignacio Leyton Leyton — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Violence has become a widespread social phenomenon of great interest for the Social Sciences, as a transversal and constant problem of our social reality. However, it seems to be a concept with many different manifestations, generating a conceptual an epistemological obstacle: we do not know clearly what we are referring to and what we are talking about. It is therefore essential to ask ourselves about its meaning and scope. In this article, we investigate the conceptual reflection of the phenomenon of violence, discussing and problematizing different conceptions of violence present mainly in the literature of the Social Sciences. We delve into the notion of violence, proposed and developed by Johan Galtung (1969, 1990, 1998, 2003) because it seems to us a conceptualization that by incorporating historical and sociocultural factors allows a broad approach to the phenomenon. We believe it is necessary to analyze this concept and to account for how this notion has been understood in recent decades as the most visible part of violence, which takes the form of overt violent behavior (physical and psychological violence), leaving aside the structural character that is generated and reproduced in the economic and sociocultural system (Galtung, 1990, 2003).

¿Guerra o paz? Las posibilidades de un conflicto armado en la rivalidad entre EE.UU. y China

Habib Badawi — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Este estudio examina críticamente las posibilidades de conflicto armado derivadas de la rivalidad entre Estados Unidos y China, abordando la cuestión central: ¿La actual competición entre grandes potencias desembocará en una guerra, o podrá mantenerse la paz? Mediante el análisis de tres posibles escenarios de conflicto -escaramuzas por territorios en disputa, una invasión china de Taiwán y un bloqueo chino de Taiwán-, la investigación evalúa la probabilidad de una confrontación armada, los factores que podrían precipitar o impedir el conflicto y las posibles consecuencias de un enfrentamiento militar. Mediante la integración de las teorías de las relaciones internacionales con las evaluaciones estratégicas contemporáneas, el estudio proporciona información sobre el delicado equilibrio entre la guerra y la paz en esta relación bilateral crucial. La investigación concluye con una evaluación de las condiciones en las que podría preservarse la paz y ofrece recomendaciones políticas encaminadas a la prevención de conflictos y la estabilidad estratégica.

The making of ‘peace’ from the point of view of peasant women in Eastern Antioquia, Colombia

Estefanía Madrid Restrepo — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article presents “pazes”, not only as a grammatical insubordination, but also as an important concept within the critical and pazological approaches of Latin America. “Pazes” is a verb that translates into action and becomes more than just an idea. It gains its meaning from community decolonial feminisms and the economic practice of peasant women in the Páramo area of Colombia's Eastern Antioquia. This practice, from cosmogonic suspicion, care and good living, raises questions which subvert the hegemony established by multiple violence in the body-territory of peasant women. At the same time, it highlights their resistance, their plural knowledge that is woven into everyday life, and their contribution to sustaining the Network of Life.

Life stories of armed conflict: Modalities of violence according to GMH. ENOUGH NOW! Colombia (2013).

Liliana Muñoz — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article tries to show the importance of collective memory processes from a qualitative approach, based on life stories from a reflection of the psychosocial effects on the participants and in the contexts of the armed conflict; as well as the essential characteristics of it in Colombia. This writing will give an account of the different experiences of young people from Boyacá, based on 14 life stories of 540 students from an undergraduate program at a private university in the department of Boyacá, who claimed to be direct and indirect victims, in order to show the testimony and manage to analyze the typology of violence in the context from the general report of the historical memory group. It can be concluded that these stories show the different circumstances that young university students from the department of Boyacá, Colombia have lived and assumed, showing the different situations of the internal armed conflict that took place at the end of the 20th century in the country.

The causes of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: a geopolitical approach from neoclassical realism

Esteban Vidal Pérez — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article addresses the causes of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Neoclassical realism is the theoretical framework for this task, and geopolitics is the analytical instrument. The research focuses on the perceptions of the Russian ruling elite and, more specifically, on their geographic mental map to examine how they interpreted the Ukrainian approach to the West. In this way, it intends to analyze the reasons that led Russian rulers to invade Ukraine. To do so, it explains the evolution of Ukrainian foreign policy in the last decades. Moreover, it addresses Russia’s great power status ambitions and how this goal takes shape in a specific geographic mental map, constituting the framework that Russian leaders use to process international events. In order to clarify the mental map of the Russian elite, the article draws on sources in Russian, addressing public statements of members of the Russian government, government advisers’ analyses, and Russian foreign policy. It helps understand how Russian foreign policymakers perceived Ukrainian foreign policy and its western orientation.

Peace in times of consumption: reflections on responsibility and globalization

Joan Jiménez Gómez — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

responsibility, and globalization—factors that shape identity construction as well as conflict and peace processes in contemporary society. Based on a critical literature review, case study analysis, and the comparison of various theoretical approaches, the paper explores the transformation of consumption, the distribution of ethical obligations in global production chains, and the inherent contradictions of global interconnectivity. The study argues that achieving sustainable peace requires articulating a shared commitment among individuals, institutions, and the state, which translates into new governance strategies and public policies aimed at social justice.

AI, counter-terrorism and global governance: state of the art

Alice Martini — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article illustrates how AI uses in counter-terrorism is currently dealt with by the emerging global AI governance. It shows that counter-terrorism represents a problematic exception in many of the legal regulations of AI that are emerging. At the same time, while it is somehow addressed in counter-terrorism reports and best practices, a legal conversation about AI within the global counter-terrorism architecture is also problematically lacking. The article ends by putting forward an urgent call to international institutions to do more to regulate the use of AI in counter-terrorism as this technology may imply important risks in terms of human rights abuses by powerful actors.

La metodología transracional: Perspectiva de inclusión del misticismo de Rumi en la ética del cuidado y la transformación de conflictos

Luisa Verenisse Donayre Guerrero — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

La problemática que he identificado es que a la luz del abordaje que he realizado sobre la metodología transracional, es que el misticismo, ha sido tratado con hostilidad, desde la investigación académica occidental. Al respecto, cabe señalar que el espíritu (componente transpersonal) es una fuente válida de conocimiento en distintas culturas del mundo. Por ende, este componente no se puede excluir epistemológicamente de la investigación para la paz porque si no se incurriría en un empobrecimiento de nuestro entendimiento de los temas que tratamos en los estudios internacionales para la paz. Asimismo, los temas de la ética del cuidado y la transformación de conflictos han sido abordados sólo desde la academia occidental, por ende, con un enfoque metodológico cualitativo. La manera en que yo busco contribuir a la solución de esta problemática es con el uso de la metodología denominada transracional. Esta implica el uso de fuentes de conocimiento académicas occidentales mencionadas, y así también, se incorpora el uso de fuentes místicas de conocimiento, es decir, la literatura del poeta y místico Rumi. Además, la investigadora es considerada también fuente de conocimiento, puesto que es una característica también de esta metodología. En esta línea, la Cátedra Unesco de Filosofía para la Paz de la Universitat Jaume I, de modo particular, promueve la incorporación epistemologías y saberes ignorados desde hace mucho, por intereses de poder de occidente, lo que fue y sigue siendo fuente de control y su subvaloración de otras culturas distintas a las que tienen su origen en Europa, y sus respectivos saberes. Por tanto, esta metodología contribuye con la sociedad pues se puede incorporar los hallazgos a la academia (humanidades, ciencias sociales) y a la Cátedra UNESCO de Filosofía para la Paz con el fin de que ésta contemple esta metodología en la investigación para la Paz, y en el campo académico se busca contribuir con la descolonización epistemológica.