Visualizing Peace – The State of the Art

Abstract

While the importance of visualization of war, conflict, and violence has gathered great momentum in disciplines such as International Relations (IR), far less has been said about the visualization of peace in IR, history, and even in Peace and Conflict Studies. 1 As Maria Elena D ıez Jorge and Francisco Muñoz Muñoz point out, "[v]iolence has received the attention, while peace and its entire semantic sphere have been left out of the spotlight". 2 It is this relative blind spot that this special issue wants to address as it aims to reflect on the politics, policy, and pedagogy of visualizing peace. Among other questions, it will reflect on how peace is visualized in cultural artifacts and what these representations of peace (and their absence) do politically. In other words, what is presented in the picture of peace and what is left out? What consequences can this have for the construction of politics? In addition, the special issue considers how visual artifacts can contribute to real-world peace after violent conflict. How can visualization in film, photography, or documentaries help build peace and contribute to conflict resolution, reconciliation, transitional justice, and peace pedagogy? If we accept the argument of the cultural turn and believe in the co-constitution of culture and politics and in the idea that cultural artifacts such as movies take part in the construction of a dichotomous understanding of self and other, thereby contributing to the legitimation of violence and conflict, then this may also work the other way around: Cultural artifacts like movies can play an important role in peace processes.When considering the visualization of peace, one must start with the conceptualization of "peace" itself. The concept and its meaning

Addressing psychosocial trauma in post-conflict peacebuilding: Emotions in narrative and arts-based approaches

“…Among those who advocate the more explicit integration of efforts to address individual trauma and mental health in peacebuilding, the potential for the arts to play a significant role is also acknowledged (Tankink et al, 2017: 14). Within this literature, the arts are attributed with contributing to ‘the healing of trauma on an individual level’, aiding the ‘reconstruction of society through providing a medium of reconciliation’, facilitating cooperation between former adversaries and transforming ‘the way people think and act’ (Engelkamp et al, 2020; Shank and Schirich, 2008: 218). More broadly, they are credited with generating empathy between survivors and other members of societies, between adversaries and between societies (Huss, 2016).…”