ABSTRACT
The role of the peace movement, and even multidisciplinary peace research itself, has centered on the analysis of international rearmament and militarization processes. Traditionally, the concept of culture has been related to that of satisfying human needs. Peace research carried out after the sixties has reflected the functionalist approach to basic needs. Peace culture would feature the assumption that conflicts need not inevitably be solved by military force. Alternative defense projects attempt to combine a legitimate desire for defense with the principle of non-provocation and of non-threatening behavior. A culture for peace must accept the risk of encouraging the learning of disobedience to taboos, out-of-date rules, and orders that are unjustifiable to the individual’s conscience. The colonization of culture operates in the more industrialized countries, as well as in the Third World. Only the regeneration of an internationalism based on the imperatives of human ecological survival can provide the necessary force to confront the ideological imperatives.
