Conflict, Culture and Communication: Our Conceptual Imagination

Comments on the Intercultural Seminar given by

In this Intercultural Seminar we were presented to the different conceptions of culture and conflict and the way they can be related to intercultural dialogue. The seminar, which was given from an extremely theoretical perspective, assumed the fact that understanding the origin of these conflicts can be the key in order to apply them.

In this way, the presentation developed a prospection into the etymology and history of these concepts and the way they were used nowadays. It is a fact, however, that it was not easy to link such extremely theoretical investigations with the reality of Interculturality. In this way, questions that might have come to my mind related to the topic were not even mentioned and are part of important knowledge gaps I might expect to build in an intercultural seminar related to Interculturality.

In this way, understanding the necessities of our current globalized world and the challenges we face as future peace-builders against a very specific discourse claiming the end of Interculturality (like the German Prime Minister Angela Merkel affirmed) or the preponderating discourse in certain spheres that affirms the necessity to acknowledge a Clash of Civilizations and react against it are two key topics I would have liked to talk about.

On the other hand, the eternal discussion between Cultural Relativism, Communitarianism, Cosmopolitanism, etc... that have a direct relationship with the work of peacebuilders, peace educators and also peace researchers is also an unresolved one, but an interesting to have, in order to give grounds in order to orientate our work towards a certain structural change, and lead our future work with confidence and the acquisition of a specific goal towards which to continue in the thick of things.