Discourse as a Strategy for the Construction of Peace Cultures
Résumé
Colombia has one of the longest armed conflicts in history due to socioeconomic, socio-political, socio-environmental, cultural and psychosocial variables. From a psychosocial perspective, violent cultural practices have perpetuated the Colombian conflict and have been legitimised by different actors through the construction of discourses that justify the use of violence as a means of achieving political goals. In this context, this chapter reviews the violence legitimising discourse in three levels of analysis: (1) semantic networks of interpretation built by actors in order to define their identities—groups, (2) beliefs produced and communicated by groups through different means—mass media and (3) the history of interaction amongst actors, citizens and the socioeconomic and political context in which their dynamics operate—society. The chapter also states the possibility of using these three levels to analyse and build strategies to de-legitimise violence and to create discourses contributing to the construction of a peace culture.