2014/3, стр. 324 - 336

RETHINKING POLITICS AND CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

Резюме: The legacy of women on Caregiving practices can help us to resignify the way we understand power and the way that conflicts can be transformed. The ethic of care has been approached by peace researchers, who have analyzed its potential not only in the private sphere, but also its implications for the public sphere and for peace-building. In recent years we have witnessed the emergence of new concepts such as caring citizenship or politicization of care, which shows the potential of care ethics to transform and enrich politics with new insights. This article will discuss the different contributions of the ethics of care to peaceful conflict transformation.

Ключови думи: gender, citizenship, ethics of care, peace, conflicts

Introduction

In many places in the world with different situations of violence, amid armed conflicts or in societies destroyed by war, we can analyse women’s experience based on different, complex realities, which we can summarize in three broad areas: as victims of violence, as perpetrators or collaborators in the perpetration of violence, and as peace builders.

It is important to recognize the complexity of these situations and not to fall into the trap of a reductionist analysis, considering women only as victims of conflicts and violence. Although it is true that it is important to make the violence, increasingly suffered by women in war and conflict situations, visible and to analyse and denounce it, to restrict our research and our claims to this point would constitute a partial analysis. There are also women who participate in conflicts as perpetrators or as accomplices of violence, which demonstrates that pacifism – generally something associated with women – is not a result of their intrinsic nature, but rather a cultural construct in which we may or may not be socialized. However, above all, it is necessary to make visible and to analyse the role many women play as peace builders in conflict or post-conflict situations. I am going to focus my analysis on this last point and, more specifically, on the contributions of the ethic of care to the practices and dynamics involved in peace processes.

Peace research is increasingly highlighting the importance of extending the incorporation of the gender perspective in its various analyses of conflicts, peace and development in the world. 1 This analysis of the experience of women combines two different perspectives: 1) Acritical perspective stemming from the need to make an analysis/diagnosis of the position of women; of the oppression to which they have historically been subjected. This is an essential role, to denounce and criticize the subordination of women and the denial of their rights. It must be said that this critical, deconstructive analysis is a fundamental one, as, very often, the domination and subordination suffered by women is concealed within culture itself, forming part of what we know as cultural violence. 2 2) And a constructive perspective, which stems from the conviction that women’s experience in history is an essential legacy, feeding values which are considered to be feminine but which in fact belong to both men and women (Magallón Portolés, 1999: 92), values such as care and tenderness, aimed at sustaining life.

Historically, women have played an important role in pacifist movements. There have been many women peace activists: Women in Black and Jerusalem Link in Israel-Palestine; the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina; the Chipko Movement denouncing environmental violence, and others (Magallón Portolés, 2006: 69 – 141). From this perspective, proposals can be put forward: conceptual contributions to designing new ways of relating with one another and with nature in the future (Benhabib, 1986: 405). The proposal for the ethic of care forms part of this option, as it provides us with new ways of approaching and transforming conflicts between human beings and satisfactory ways of meeting their needs based on the experience and legacy of women.

The analysis of women’s position in war or conflict and post-conflict situations should therefore combine these two perspectives:

1. Critical Perspective:

Denouncing any situation involving the subordination of women, both at the peak of conflict or war (because of the direct violence they suffer, remembering the use of rape as a weapon of war, female victims, etc.), and in post-conflict situations (because of the structural violence they suffer, denouncing the feminization of poverty and women’s exclusion from peace processes).

2. Constructive Perspective:

Analysing and making visible women’s input and contributions to peace. This is a legacy that is largely due to commitment to sustaining and caring for life. We might say that women have historically developed skills and experiences for caring for life and rebuilding peace.

The two perspectives feed off one another and are mutually involved with one another. 1) Making women’s contributions to peace-building visible is fundamental in order to champion their participation in peace processes as active, positive agents (linked to the first perspective). 2) It is also necessary to learn to share these skills and to reconstruct them as human values, not a mere gender role. It is important that men also participate in the value of caring for and bringing up children to learn, through this practice, about the importance and uniqueness of each life that is worth being sustained. 3

If we did not take the two variables into account in our analysis and reduced it only to the critical perspective, we would fall into a fallacy and achieve little for women. This is firstly because, in considering women only as victims, we would not be being faithful to the complexity of reality and, secondly, because this “victimization” contributes to an interpretation of the role of women as passive subjects who are not empowered and who need help. A reductionist view of critical analysis does not consider the women’s potential as active subjects but rather analyses them as “patient” subjects.

When it comes to analysing women’s contributions to peace-building, it is easy to fall into reflections on whether women are more peaceful than men. Various studies have shown that men support the use of force, wars or an increase in military spending to a greater extent than women do (Fisas, 1998). For example the majority of violent acts –direct violence– are committed by males (Magallón Portolés, 1998: 93) and men are also more sensitive than women to those environmental factors which has influence on antisocial behaviour (Fisas, 1998: 8). Meanwhile, there is a close link between women and peace movements (Magallón Portolés, 2006). Are men intrinsically violent? Are women, by nature, more peaceful? The answer is a firm “no”. Three main types of argument have been given to explain this difference in attitude between women and men towards war and violence: biological differences, the exclusion of women from power and armies, and socialization in the ethic of care. The first position has been widely criticized and superseded by real, historical examples of women’s direct and indirect participation in armed organizations and violent acts. In addition, men who are committed to peace and nonviolence can be found everywhere. The second position is more meaningful. Due to the historical construction of gender, women have been excluded from power and from armies. This historical exclusion from governments and armed forces has made it possible for them to accumulate and cultivate different, less violent experiences and social skills, forming a very useful alternative that allows them to play the role of mediators and drivers of negotiations.

However, from my point of view, I believe the reason that best explains women’s greater predisposition to being peace builders, making them essential agents in peace processes, is the ethic of care in which they have historically been socialized. The caring role in which women has been socialized4 (caring for the home, children, other members of the family) and their practice of care has developed in them a crucible of values and knowledge closely related to peace: responsibility, empathy, solidarity, commitment, patience, tenderness and perseverance, as well as non-violence and the peaceful transformation of conflicts. 5

Contributions of the ethic of care to the transformation of conflicts and to peace processes

The ethic of care was first analysed in 1982 by Carol Gilligan in her book In a Different Voice. In this book, Gilligan challenged the traditional conception of the theory of moral development in the light of women’s voices and experiences, which until then had been excluded from analyses of development and moral capacity. Her work has been a challenge to the current theory of moral development, which we owe to Lawrence Kohlberg (who, curiously, was Gilligan’s teacher and mentor at Harvard) represented at three levels: preconventional/conventional/postconventional. Gilligan found a gap in Kohlberg’s analysis, which was that his theory was based exclusively on the study of male subjects, 6Gilligan carried out the same study of moral development in women, expecting to confirm the same results. However, she found what she called in the title of her work: a Different Voice. While men, when faced with conflicts or dilemmas, were governed in their moral decisions by universal, abstract principles of justice, women’s priorities were to maintain interpersonal links and to avoid harm to the subjects involved. Carol Gilligan makes clear that this different moral response from women is not due to biological aspects, but rather to the activities they carry out as carers.

The ethic of care has been picked up by various philosophers and peace researchers, who have analysed its potential not only in the private sphere, but also its implications for the public sphere and for peace-building. Authors like Joan Tronto, Fiona Robinson or Nel Noddings therefore speak of the politicization of care, going beyond the public/private dichotomy. In the crucible of peace values that caring practices help to develop, it is worth mentioning three fundamental ones to be taken into consideration regarding the issue that concerns us: peace processes and negotiations (Comins Mingol, 2009: 76 – 81): 1. Attention to multiplicity, considering all possible aspects; 2. The fact that there are no winners or losers, 3. Priority given to attending to needs rather than applying punishments.

a) Attention to multiplicity, considering all possible aspects

Concerning attention to multiplicity, the ethic of care provides us with a very valuable skill for the peaceful transformation of conflicts and negotiations in peace processes. When faced with situations of conflict, we usually show Manichean tendencies, considering matters in terms of dichotomy: good guy and bad guy, victim and torturer, good and evil. Fortunately, reality is not that simple – it is much more complex than this.

In his book Facing the Extreme (1996) Tzvetan Todorov distinguishes between heroic virtues and everyday virtues. We identify heroic virtues with those which – the repetition is deliberate – are possessed by heroes: bravery, solitary life without family responsibilities, no fear of death, capacity to risk one’s life for an ideal, for a flag... Everyday virtues, on the other hand, although they are not so venerated in literature, belong not to heroes but to ordinary people (who are neither heroes nor saints). Commitment, care, family responsibilities, concern not for an abstract idea but for other specific individuals – these are characteristics show by the majority of humanity. History shows us that heroic virtues lead us to wars, death and desolation. Perhaps the time has come to recognize the everyday virtues that perpetuate ordinary life and make it more pleasant. The world of heroes – and here, perhaps, is where its weakness lies – is a one-dimensional world that provides only two opposing terms: us and them, friend and foe, bravery and cowardice, hero and traitor, black and white (Todorov, 1996). “Speaking of micromilitancy meant contrasting militant heroism with small, unnoticed everyday actions,” (Magallón Portolés, 2006: 16).

From this perspective, in a situation of conflict or peace negotiations, the ethic of care is opposed to the heroic view. Moral behaviour according to Carol Gilliganconsists of dedicating time and energy in order to consider everything (1996). Deciding carelessly or hurriedly based on one or two factors when we know there are other things that are important and will be affected is immoral. The moral way of making decisions is to consider everything possible, everything that is known. We must also take into account other points of view and, in this way, take other voices into consideration through dialogue:

Sensitivity to the needs of others and the assumption of responsibility for taking care lead women to attend to voices other than their own and to include in their judgment other points of view. Women’s moral weakness, manifest in an apparent diffusion and confusion of judgment, is thus inseparable from women’s moral strength, an overriding concern with relationships and responsibilities (Gilligan, 1996: 16 – 17).

This shows how important having a proper perception of the situation is in order to act correctly in moral terms (Salles, 1999). Situations are generally complex with multiple causes; not taking all aspects and as many voices as possible into consideration can lead to very inappropriate actions. Various authors, including Martha Nussbaum, argue that the appropriate language for moral philosophy is precisely that based on attention (Salles, 1999: 218). An appropriate moral view can only be the result of greater effort; of an intense scrutiny of reality. Attention is this type of scrutiny, leading to the careful observation of our own and others’ beliefs, feelings and circumstances in order to see the richness and complexity of this reality (Salles, 1999: 217).

Todorov also criticizes the Manichean view of heroic action. This system of references is useful in a situation orientated towards death, but not one orientated towards life. Warsaw, in 1944, was not a situation in which only the forces of good and evil confronted one another. There were the Russians and the Germans, the Home Army and the Popular Army, the government in exile and the civil population. In such a complex situation, the best solution – but one which, at the time, is, sadly, merely the least bad solution – comes through careful attention to what everyone has to say rather than through indestructible loyalty to one’s own ideal. The values of life, in this sense, are not absolutes: life is diverse and all situations are heterogeneous; the choices one makes are therefore the result, not of concessions or cowardly compromises, but of taking this multiplicity into consideration (Todorov, 1996: 12).

Following the same principles in different circumstances can be an injustice. When we tie ourselves to principles without considering the context, we are not taking complexity into account. Being sensitive to a wide range of moral considerations can often be more important than sticking rigidly to principles (Held, 1995: 162). When faced with situations of conflict, it may be more peaceful to establish a dialogue between the different parties than to restrict oneself to universal principles without considering the context.

In theory, being impartial means, having the capacity to see everything above particular viewpoints or interests. For many philosophers, to call the ideal of impartiality into question implies questioning the very possibility of moral theory. However, according to feminist moral theory, impartiality can be oppressive (Young, 1990). The impartial point of view is related to an interest in adopting universal principles. But this type of reasoning eliminates otherness in two ways: the irreducible specificity of situations and the difference between moral subjects (Young, 1990: 100 – 101). The impartial subject does not need to recognize other subjects whose point of view should be taken into account and with whom there can be some kind of discussion. This is why attempts at impartiality usually result in authoritarianism. When one says that one is impartial, one resorts to authority to decide an issue, instead of looking to those with clear interests and desires. From this impartial point of view, no one needs to be consulted, because the impartial point of view already takes any possible perspective into account (Young, 1990).

Impartial reason also generates a dichotomy between reason and feeling (Young, 1990: 103). Impartiality requires reason to divest itself of all feeling, of all emotion. Impartiality “requires abstracting from the particularity of bodily being, its needs and inclinations, and from the feelings that attach to the experienced particularity of things and events” (Young, 1990: 100). However, in peace studies we recognize the importance of adopting the point of view not of an observer but of a participant, taking on a commitment to values and recognising the interdependence between reason and emotion. 7

Based on socialization in care, women develop this different way of approaching situations of conflict: based on multiplicity, as participants, taking into account all possible factors, the different voices and agents, and devoting the required time to the task. 8

b) There are no winners or losers

Another contribution of the ethic of care which is useful for peace processes is the priority given to avoiding harm to anyone. Instead, the aim is that everyone should, in some way, be satisfied; that is, there is no exclusive dualism between winners and losers.

We are used to the fact that, in any conflict or negotiation, one of the parties must lose or, in the best of cases, one of the opponents must gain more than the other. However, there is no solid reason for opposing the hypothesis that all parties can emerge equally satisfied (Vinyamata Camp, 1999: 28). This statement by Vinyamata is backed up by Carol Gilligan and the ethic of care theory. Carol Gilligan discovered a difference voice between men and women when it came to looking at moral problems (which, as we have indicated, is a social one): different forms of moral understanding, different ways of thinking about conflict and choice (Gilligan, 1996). This is clearly expressed in the different ways that a boy and a girl resolve Heinz’s Dilemma.

In this dilemma, a man called Heinz reflects on whether or not he should steal medicine, which he cannot buy, in order to save his wife’s life. The question is: “Should Heinz steal the medicine?” The answer given by the boy in Gilligan’s interview was clear: “Heinz must steal the medicine.” The boy has interpreted the dilemma as a conflict between the values of property and life, clearly deducing that life takes priority over property. However, the girl’s answer appeared indecisive. She did not see the dilemma as a conflict of values to which a predetermined scale could be applied, but rather as “a narrative of relationships that extends over time”, (Gilligan, 1996: 28). She tried to achieve a solution in which everyone was satisfied to some degree and in which the connection between the three individuals – the wife, the husband and the chemist – was not broken. From the perspective of the ethic of care there is no reason why there always has to be a loser. “The common thread is the wish not to hurt others and the hope that in morality lies a way of solving conflicts so that no one will be hurt” (Gilligan, 1996: 65) characterizes moral reasoning based on care. In addition, the boy’s response partly stems from an image affected by violence, seeing a world of dangerous confrontation and an explosion of competition, while the girl sees a world of attention and protection; a life lived with others.

Common solutions reached with a winner and a loser (with all the psychological and political damage this implies) could be replaced by those in which both parties are winners (Spanish Red Cross, 1989: 130). History has shown us and continues to show us that when losers and guilty parties appear in the resolution of a conflict this leads to new conflicts. It is, among other things, the seed of revenge, resentment and hatred. As Martha Burguet states, the conflict management culture we maintain, based on dualisms (winner-loser), brings new, future conflicts, while effective prevention comes through good management of current conflicts, abandoning dualisms and seeking intermediate positions (1999: 23).

c) Priority of attending to needs rather than applying punishments

Finally, another contribution of the ethic of care in peace processes and negotiations is that, when faced with a conflict, the main interest or focus of attention in the ethic of care is in meeting the need (this is why it is called the ethic of care). By contrast, with the ethic of justice – although theorists do take into account the meeting of needs and its important role – the focus of attention is aimed at punishing and regulating aggression. The ethic of care contains a priority for meeting needs rather than punishing aggression.

It is a mistake to limit morality to resolving conflicts or, in other words, to constructing abstract principles of good; the important thing about the ethic of care is its orientation towards conflict prevention. To prevent conflict, crime and injustice, we need the ethic of care and its recognition of the importance of human connections in avoiding injustice.

In the ethic of justice, punishment can lead us to create more violence; the ethic of care attempts to suppress violence and believes it is more important to meet needs than to punish guilt or sacrifice human life for any precept. Summum jus, summa injuria goes the Latin phrase attributed to Cicero, which warns of the unfairness that can be committed by applying the law too rigorously.

In this respect, the simile used by Gilligan, when she compares Abraham’s attitude to that of the woman who presented herself before Solomon, is a very useful one. Abraham did not refuse to sacrifice his son’s life in order to demonstrate the integrity and supremacy of his faith. By contrast, the woman who comes before Solomon verifies her motherhood by relinquishing truth in order to save the life of her child (Gilligan, 1986: 104). The blind willingness to sacrifice people to truth has always been the danger of an ethics separated from life (Gilligan, 1996: 104).

The ethic of care and the theory of nonviolence9

The ethic of care has many points in common with the theory of non-violence and both share the same initial premise: peaceful conflict resolution. While the ethic of justice proceeds from the premise of equality – that everyone must be treated equally – the ethic of care is based on the premise of nonviolence – that no-one must be hurt (Gilligan, 1996: 164 – 165).

The theory of non-violence has two basic characteristics: 1. Although for many people it has had clear, large-scale social results (Gandhi, Martin Luther King, etc.), for the majority of mortals nonviolence has the capacity to transform what is closest to us. This does not make it less important or reduce its social influence, and we must be aware of this in order not to feel frustrated at not appearing to achieve very much. This would only lead us to give up too soon. Non-violence begins with an interest in what is closest to us, in everyday actions, in our attitude at work, in our families, with friends, with our partners, with our neighbours...The ecologists’ motto “Think globally, act locally” is useful to us here. 2. Another key point of non-violence is perseverance, as it needs to be a way of life, not a series of sporadic acts.

Starting from these two characteristics of nonviolent action, the main thrust defining the theory of nonviolence – and also the ethic of care – is the strength of love. Love has been condemned to ostracism by almost all scientific disciplines, even those calling themselves human and social sciences. Only in certain areas of psychology and ethics – almost nowhere else – is there even a superficial approach to it. It is therefore a challenge to human beings to reconstruct this value, learn it and cultivate it. Nonviolence has not only been a way of fighting to transform conflicts, denounce existing levels of violence or approach representative changes in societies. It is also attempting to renew other disciplines of knowledge, such as: history, political theory, sociology, anthropology, religion, ethical philosophy (with the ethic of care), economics, feminism (particularly reinforcing differential feminism) and also the socalled experimental sciences (López Martínez, 2001: 232).

As Mayor Zaragoza rightly notes: “Why do we not dare to take the risk that all important religions and philosophies assure us that we must take: the risk of loving and being loved?” (Mayor Zaragoza, 1994: 37).

A possible source from which to reconstruct this value is the anonymous experience of thousands of women in the world. Love and other moral feelings have often been relegated to the private, domestic, feminine sphere. This is why women have much to teach about this value: the value of care and tenderness. Gandhi maintained that he had learned the techniques of non-violence and civil disobedience from women, largely the British suffragettes (Magallón Portolés, 1993: 70). Values that have traditionally been relegated to the domestic sphere and that have served as an element for subordinating women are now being reformulated and reconstructed as social practices for peaceful conflict regulation for both men and women. These values formed part of the oppressive networks of the sex-gender system; it is now a matter not of rejecting them but of recovering them for all human beings.

So, we should delve into all the traditions and contributions that can help us to reconstruct the value of love – here we have chosen the legacy of women’s experience. According to Sara Ruddick, the maternal experience is a source of learning for skills in non-violent conflict resolution. Beyond maternal practice appears distinctive thought which is incompatible with military strategy but which is in accordance with peaceful commitment to non-violence (Ruddick, 1992: 299).

Both in the home and outside it, women normally experience themselves as weak and powerless. They are normally socially poor, subject to rather than agents of wars, economic plans and political regimes. Like other powerless combatants, women often resort to non-violent strategies because they do not have weapons with which to hurt others – no rifles, no legal effectiveness and no economic power. This is how women enlist themselves in non-violent techniques, such as prayer, persuasion, pacification, self-sacrifice, negotiation and a whole variety of emotional skills. According to Ruddick, each of these techniques has a place in non-violent public coercion (Ruddick, 1992: 301).

When we talk about the strength of love, we are referring to the love felt for other men and women in which we see the essence of human beings. This essential humanity consists of loving life in other men and women; of the value of the human being; of others being my equals while at the same time enriching me with their differences; of forming part of a whole. This kind of love must also be given to nature: the sun, the stars, the wind or fireflies. This is love for things that exist, for things that have given us life and for things that make it worth living. This broad concept of love includes love for nature, for others and for us. 10) It must begin with ourselves, because, in the first place, one must love oneself and accept oneself in order to love others better. If violence creates a vicious circle, love creates a virtuous circle, resulting in more love. Because of this, we can consider love as a method of constructing peace culture. Non-violence says that we can break the spiral of violence by committing ourselves to the strength of love and interconnection.

This love is also closely linked to the need for recognition, a need of all human beings. If we show love and recognition to a child (if we care for it), it grows up with a healthy concept of itself and feels sure of itself, capable of putting forward alternatives and solutions in life. Self-esteem and having a good concept of oneself is very important in order to put forward alternatives in conflicts. Such self-esteem can be developed only through love. When we love people, with the love they receive they also learn to love themselves. This makes it easier for them to love others better, which is why we talk about the virtuous circle of love.

This idea of love as recognition also leads us to the idea that capacity for nonviolence lies in finding the good part of the other person and trying to make the most of it. Of course, none of us are complete angels, but neither are we devils: even the roughest, cruellest person has positive aspects. The most important task of a non-violent person is to find these aspects and to know how to make the most of them and value them. More progress is made by making the most of good values than by criticizing negative aspects. For all these reasons, we advocate the concept of ahimsa to define non-violence. In the West, we speak of non-violence as the negation of violence; however, ahimsa, is not merely non-violence, it is also the strength of love, care and tenderness (Martínez Guzmán, 2001: 121).

Conclusions

When we speak of the contributions women can make in the field of transforming conflicts and peace processes, we must be clear what we are talking about. It is not a matter of women themselves being more peaceful because of their sex and of learning from them. In fact, women’s contribution stems from certain behavioural features that society expects from them. As Carol Gilligan points out, as morality is strongly linked to the problem of aggression – an area where gender differences are incontestable – it may be particularly interesting for both sexes to explore the way in which women’s experiences illuminate the psychology of non-violent strategies for transforming conflicts (Gilligan, 1993: 214).

As we all know, and as feminist research has analysed and condemned, the gender role imposed on women through socialization has served to anchor them in the private sphere, in the area of the family, caring for children, old people and the sick. It is a gender role that has kept women out of the public sphere, politics, culture and even history. Although this situation is deplorable, and we must do everything in our hands to change it, we must not reject caring tasks per se, or the values and feelings that surround them, as being cursed. The solution to the problem does not lie here. We must adopt this value, reconstruct it and educate everyone – both men and women – in it. We must degenderise it.

The United Nations Security Council itself has recognized the important role women have developed in the peaceful transformation of conflicts. This is why, on 31 October 2000, it approved Resolution 1325 calling for an increase in women’s participation in peace processes and decision-making. Based on the philosophy of care, decisions are made from a particular perspective. One of the big challenges in the sphere of gender and the spaces we occupy is the incorporation of women into public areas, into positions of authority and responsibility. Because women can transform the way power is understood and the way that conflicts are transformed. This is why parity of participation in peace processes is of great interest, not merely to meet quotas or to be politically correct, but also, and particularly, because of women’s capacity to find different meanings in these spaces. Taking gender into all areas and ensuring equal participation in peace negotiations are not merely fair measures, they are also beneficial ones.

NOTES

1. Peace research appeared as a discipline in the inter-war period, in 1930, but it is only since 1980 that it has incorporated the category of gender in its analyses. Nowadays, increasing numbers of peace researchers stress the importance of gender in education for peace, the environment, development or the peaceful transformation of conflicts.

2. Johan Galtung (1996) proposed the classification of violence into three categories: direct, structural and cultural. Although cultural violence is the least visible of the three, we might say that it is the most dangerous, as it consists of discourses that legitimize and justify direct and structural violence.

3. Along these lines, proposals for coeducational schooling are of great interest. It should be mentioned that some studies explicitly dealing with coeducation in caring values are appearing (Noddings, 1986; García Rudder and Calvo Salvador, 2008; Comins Mingol, 2009).

4. It is important to emphasize that this caring role is not due to biological elements, but to a social construction that has often served to keep women anchored in the private sphere.

5. As Sara Ruddick (1989) tells us, in the practice of bringing up children, women are faced with many conflicts: with their own children, their children’s friends, other family members, etc., and they learn to develop skills to transform these conflicts peacefully.

6. Specifically, a study of 84 male children over a period of more than 20 years.

7. Vicent Martínez Guzmán, director of the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace at the Universitat Jaume I in Castellón, describes this commitment to emotion, values and the participant’s point of view in his analysis of the epistemological change in peace studies (Martínez Guzmán, 2005: 64).

8. Beginning with a long-term view of time is fundamental for the peaceful transformation of conflicts and peace processes. Dialogue, critical reflection, social participation and moral capacity require a notion of time less marked by stress than the one that predominates in capitalist societies.

9. Concerning the relationship between nonviolence and maternal practice, Sara Ruddick’s book Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace, (Ruddick, 1989) is interesting.

10. This concept of ahimsa (nonviolence understood not only as the absence of violence, but also as love) is closely linked to the concept of transpersonal peace put forward by Alfonso Fernández Herrería (2001) of the University of Granada. Beyond intrapersonal and interpersonal peace, transpersonal peace includes oneself, others and nature.

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