Comments on the seminar given by Professor Peter Lawler.
In this Intercultural Seminar, Professor Peter Lawler introduced us to his criticism of Peace Studies and the usual way of approaching Peace most peace scholars have.
Peaces Studies were started by Johan Galtung who, probably based on his scientific background, tried to set the notions of peace and violence in a strict way. Thanks to his research in the field we now use terms like Structural Violence, Direct Violence, Negative Peace or Positive Peace... Peace Studies have taken especially the notion of Positive Peace as their main interest, developing several instances of literature in which theory related to it is given.
However, it is a fact that Peace Studies have distanced themselves to the study of national and international structures, the ones that might be causing the structural violence, in order to define their incompatibility with the concept of Peace. Peace has become an ethereal term used by everyone without the necessary reflection in order to determine what it is and, above all, what it is not. Therefore, contradictions in the possible realization of Positive Peace are present all the time.
Some peace students and scholars might, for example, consider peace as the coexistence of different kinds of people, as stated in their religious beliefs. However, they might not consider necessary to include in this coexistence, the elements not included in their religious precepts, like homosexuals, transsexuals, or even women. This originates a set of big contradictions that put forward the necessity for a previous internal prospection which is not usually done in Peace Studies.
Taken from a post-structuralist point of view we might assert that Peace Studies must question themselves all the time. We know of the notion of Imperfect Peace, we know Peace is a process and not a final stage. Therefore, we must keep moving and changing. And change does not occur if we set absolute truths.
It is therefore necessary for Peace Students and Scholars to question the status quo of everything they consider as true, even their own religious beliefs, in order to foster the necessary evolution of Peace Studies towards a real eradication of structural violence. All what's left, further elucubrations about a "union in diversity" that no one can materialize or make concrete, is pure literature.
