ABSTRACT
The conditions for a peace culture are the conditions for social learning, says Armengol, continuing the discussion by Boulding. Ranjit Chaudhuri’s account of grassroots conflicts in India reveals a society where the old complementarities of caste relations are gone, and with them the capacity of the village panchayat system to carry out traditional functions of village decision making. The social conflicts described by de Almeida in rural Brazil are, if anything, even bloodier than the Indian conflicts. The inheritors of the colonial latifundia use violence and terror to retain their dominance and prevent land redistribution. As with the Indians, the new consciousness draws on traditional problem-solving resources, and new strategies are slowly emerging from the long and bitter straggle. The warrior ethos becomes subtly intertwined with the basic social, economic and political institutions and practices of a society, and would seem to be very durable indeed.
