Culture,ViolencePeacebuilding

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course focuses on culture and conflict resolution by exploring the role culture plays in conflict and how it impacts its resolution. Especially since the collapse of the Cold War in 1990’s there has been a rise in identity conflicts, where culture and religion are used to separate communities and justify hatred and violence towards the other. In many of these conflicts cultural and religious traditions play a negative role by being a source of conflict or to justify violence. However these same traditions can also play a constructive role in resolving conflicts by helping to establish sustainable relationships within and among communities. Therefore, resolving conflicts, where culture is a significant component, renders the study of culture and its role in conflict resolution critical. This course treats culture and religion as aspects of individual and group identity, which influence the causes, dynamics, outcomes of conflicts, and intervention methods. It identifies core “etic” (culture general) and “emic” (culture specific) patterns of cultural differences in such areas as values and beliefs, patterns of thought, interpretive frames, and behavior in peace-building and conflict resolution efforts; explores concepts such as high context/low context cultures, intercultural communication approaches, stereotyping, prejudices, and analyzes role of culture in peace-building processes such as mediation, negotiation, and facilitation. Cutting edge issues in theory development, research and practice in integrating cultural insights into the international peace and conflict resolution domain will also be discussed during the course. The course also focuses on specific skills, concepts, and stories relating to effective ways to handle cultural differences in conflict and peace building training. It introduces skills and approaches to deal with issues of prejudice, stereotyping, and ethnocentrism in conflict settings as well as interactive exercises, role-plays, and real life case studies to learn constructive ways of addressing intercultural encounters. This course includes lecture presentations, personal development, in-depth group discussions, role-plays, films and guest speakers. Experiential learning methods are extensively used in the course. More specifically this course aims to: Highlight the role of culture in conflict resolution, peacebuilding training and intervention methods. Identify main concepts and methodologies to understand the role of culture in conflict and its resolution. Explore the potential for conflict resolution and peacebuilding found within different religious and cultural traditions. Introduce skills that will promote conflict resolution and peacebuilding in multicultural settings.