2010 has been a year of commemoration for some Latin American countries, recalling the two hundred years since the beginning of their identities as independent nations with regard to Spain. Before 1810, there were several factors that led to these...

Order, planning, familiar, expected, habitual and routine things and following pre-prepared plans are all intrinsic to human beings, as is dreaming. So too are a little enjoyment now and then, adventure, surprise, spontaneity, not having any plans,...

Anyone who has experienced war first hand will remember how much they desired peace. It would therefore seem that war and peace are opposites, and that peace could constitute an end to war and at the same time a dignified objective in its own right:...

Whilst I write these words I am looking at images in the media showing violence and vandalism in the streets of Geneva. The motive, the WTO meeting (World Trade Organisation) that is being held in this capital city right now in November and the liberalization...

From utopian realism to desperate reality

Introduction

In February 1986, when the long Duvalier dictatorship (ruled by father and son) fell, the people of Haiti proclaimed independence for the second time....

Generally speaking the pursuit of new research angles is beneficial to most subjects. The application of unusual criteria can lead to unsuspected advances in knowledge. It therefore seems appropriate, in our research into democracy, to look at what...

We are so caught up in this recession, a stream of stories about rising unemployment, families facing hardship and the closure of businesses flow ceaselessly from the headlines. We have been witness to a huge number of social, political and economic...

Point VIII of the Letter of Peace expresses the need for institutions to publically state their regrets for damages that have been committed throughout history by institutions...

Current social science research is focusing deeply on digital culture, in all its technological, psychological, cognitive and emotional dimensions and its effect on individuals, the family and societies. It is hard to keep up with the fast pace of...

The way in which society and people are organized has always posed a complex debate given the great amount of diversity and plurality of experience represented within any group. Whilst official bodies always attempt to respond to this plurality, we...

All national identities are a permanent process of influences and transformations that respond to the historical avatars and geopolitical experiences to which they are subjected. An identity is more likely to be objectified as a result of authoritarian...

Within historiography peace has often been treated as an “occurrence”. This has pigeonholed it, comparing it, for example, to the signing of a peace treaty, which defines the distribution of power, parameters for coexistence and timelines...

In order to live a rewarding life we must overcome absurd resentments, because resentments poison the spirit and open cracks between people and countries.

Where there are resentments life becomes difficult and troublesome and the world...

The introduction to the Letter of Peace addressed to the UN refers to the great desire human beings hold for peace as well as the difficulties they face in achieving it due to the many obstacles that stand in the way. One of these obstacles, and a...

Throughout 2009, the first Wednesday of every month was spent talking about historical memory at the Mapocho discussion group in Santiago de Chile. Month after month these debates provided the perfect context to understand that if something is not...

Point VII of the Letter of Peace addressed to the UN expresses the anthropological vision underpinning the entire document in tight synthesis: “Human beings are free, intelligent and capable of love”. This is a very dense affirmation that...

Point V of the Letter of Peace articulates one of the text’s core themes and establishes a necessary base for an authentic culture of peace. I am referring to the notion of basing brotherhood on our very existence. Existence is such a solid argument...

When the Berlin Wall came down all those years ago, a lot of writers thought that this event would bring an end to the communist system, but they also thought it would mean the end of the capitalist system. Just like a house of cards: when one thing...

The past is still present
Events that took place in the past and people that lived before us are still present in many ways, perhaps the most alive way is through the people that exist today. As point IV of the Letter of Peace addressed...

Point three of the Letter of Peace addressed to the UN is written as a question. It introduces the idea of building a world with more solidarity, but it seems to indicate that in order to build such a world we must eliminate...

Resentments really do pose a fundamental threat to living and working in positive peace in the contemporary Chinese society we live in.

Bad habits from past decades have lead to there...

Lots of children learn how to eat from the hand of an adult; but then many children are fed by brothers and sisters who are barely older than they are, and so they learn in a different way. Some infants learn to walk by holding onto an adult’s...

Water is humanity’s most precious resource. Without it life cannot exist, which is why it is so important for all people all over the world.

For years experts on armed conflict have been predicting...

Each individual’s existence comes with no advance guarantee, it is the product of multiple past events that have allowed our parents to meet each other and create us, we are, therefore, “history’s children”....

From a sociological perspective it is easier and more comfortable to focus peoples attention on criticizing and gossiping about misdeeds of the past than to look at present day misdeeds, understand them and put all our energy...

Whichever way we look at it, we are historical: the beginning of our very existence depended on history. As Rubio, co-author of the Letter of Peace, points out, “if anything had got in the way of what did happen, we...

Events that took place in the past and people that lived before us are still present in many ways, perhaps the most alive way being through the people that exist today. As point IV of the Letter of Peace addressed to the...

Rebuilding a society that has been destroyed and decimated by conflict is clearly a difficult task. Along with the essential job of sweeping up before rebuilding, this stage is useful on a personal, social and group level....

We often find that the most elemental things in life, those that are the most obvious and evident, are the hardest ones for us to see and accept. Rene Descartes defined evidence as that which is captured clearly and distinctly...

Right now we are in crisis. On TV and radio and in the papers they all talk nonstop about what is considered to be the worst economic crisis since the 1929 downturn. What they say is surely true, but it would also be nice...

The damage that has been caused by hunger has been going on for too long now, people are desperate and the situation is getting worse. The United Nations World Food Programme estimates that around 100 million more people...

Complex societies such as ours have an equally complex social framework. The existence of majorities is as evident as that of minorities. However, the reality is that the possibility of fulfilling individual life projects...

In China this year can no longer be thought of as the year of the Olympics. In the future this year will be remembered for two things. On the one hand a celebration: the Olympics. On the other hand: a great natural disaster....

Some studies say that following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the onset of globalization, social development cannot be conceived without some kind of joint action from the following trilogy: State, market and civil society...

A very serious problem, and now far more visible than a few decades ago, is so-called “gender” violence and domestic violence, which seems to be intensifying. 272 women died at the hands of their partners between 2004 and 2007 just in Spain,...

In November the prestigious advertising company JWT [1] published its well known Ten Trends for 2008. One of these trends caught my eye particularly: “Blue is the new green”.

The analysts in this...

History has always been a polemic issue. Although we were not around in the past to be sure of the things that happened, we can get close to them by looking at documents (books, photos, diaries, etc.) or through oral transmission. And yet, all the...

The Maria Corral Association for Research and Dissemination of Human Values has dedicated its most recent edition of Interdisciplinary Seminars to the theme of “Adolescence: Breaking through incommunication”....