Description
Peace is something usually praised by everyone. However, under further scrutiny one can notice that such tributes are usually superficial. The truth is that peace commonly has a bad reputation. The widespread belief in the efficacy of violence, both collective and individual, confirms the point in a double sense. On the one hand it is widely assumed that violence produces strong individual and collective identities. The most popular kinds of conversations, games, stories, and programs emerge from some kind of staging of hostilities. On the other hand, we usually tend to think that the only effective way to resolve large public conflicts--those that really matter--is violence. These are two roots of the "Bad Reputation of Peace." The research begins with an historical approach as a preliminary step towards a more systematic treatment of the issues. The first stage of the argument connects the bad reputation of peace with the bad reputation of argumentation and the bad reputation of politics (where "politics" is understood as "democratic politics," an equation which must be argued for). The second stage contends that the cause of these associations of bad reputations and violence consists in various forms of exclusion, among with poverty is a very important one.
