Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Engaging Paradox, Paradigm, & Potential (original) (raw)

During war and conflict, violence often becomes a frequent and thereby normal individual and group experience. To survive, individuals subjectively engage with the violently normal through appraisal processes and (re) conceptualizations of the self, others, and contextual determinations (Das et al. 2000). On the other hand, subjectivity also plays a role in the initial path to war and violence. For example, war generally results from political, economic, and institutional power enacted over individuals and groups by powerful individuals in leadership positions, followed by individuals and groups reacting in response. Whether individuals living through war and violence fall into the by-stander, elite, or opposition categories, the injuries, deprivations, and inequities caused by policy and social action can link personal, political, and societal problems. This interpersonal sharing of negative, often violent, experience moves suffering from an individual to a social experience . The idea of social suffering blurs the boundaries between the individual and the group and opens the door to the consideration of political, economic, institutional, and socio-cultural factors as dimensions of the suffering, as well as the healing, dynamic.