The Power of Appreciative Inquiry
Appreciative Inquiry is an innovative approach to creating deep connections and building bridges with others. While the Artificial Intelligence process feels quite intuitive, it is rarely applied systematically in practice. We will explore The Simultaneity Principle which says that inquiry and change are not truly separate moments but are simultaneous. The moment we ask a question, we begin to create a change.
Pacifism Post 9/11
Amardo Rodriguez discusses the charge, raised in many mainstream media sources in the United States, that pacifism cannot be defended in the post 9/11 world. A new framework for communication is suggested – an ecology of communication – so as to broaden the scope of possibility amd allow for a deeper understanding of violent conflict.
John Lennon’s Political Lyrics in Popular Culture: From Resistance and Activism To Incorporation and Commodification
Aside from music being used a tool for personal expression, it also has the potential to influence social and political cultures. John Lennon, musician and social activist, has proven this to be true. Over the decades, Lennon’s songs have resembled reception and empowerment of human rights, and resistance and protest against war and hate. However, Lennon’s songs have also fallen victim to incorporation within the world of consumerism, being resurfaced and reused as symbols of commerciality, via industry and production. This essay will explore the subtexts of John Lennon’s songs, the ways in which they influence generations as tools of activism and how they have been used to generate mass profit in modern day culture.
ICT Governance vs. Community Empowerment: Grassroots Evidence from Bangladesh
Mizanur Rahman analyzes the assertion that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is the catalyst to enhance community empowerment, reporting on research study, “Community Empowerment through ICTs: Evidence from the Grassroots in Bangladesh and India”. His analysis of evidence from Bangladesh shows that ICT penetration alone is not proportionately related to community empowerment; but rather that ICT penetration combined with the precise application of ICT governance strengthen community empowerment. The evidence also shows that if ICT penetration is high but ICT governance is low, ICT does not remain a high catalytic factor for community empowerment.
A Tale of Nationalism and Dissidence
Cultural disconnect is at the heart of Cameroon’s political incongruity. Split in two, the government falls in the hands of the Francophones, natural resources in the hands of the Anglophones.
Notes On A Controversy
Notes On A Controversy Author: Amardo Rodriguez Originally Published at Peace and Conflict Monitor on: 12/04/2017 Another week brings yet national controversy where no person was robbed, raped, molested, abused, maimed, or killed. Instead, the controversy involves a prominent person or academic who has been accused of using language that is assumed to be […]
Common Things: Communication, Community, Communal Peacebuilding
“I do not have thin fingers, as a farmer, my hands become part of the land and its fruits… I need this thick tombs for nurture the vegetables.” Maria Emma Prada is a “countryside lady” in her own words. A woman which has stood up for the rural women in Colombia.
She is one of the most important leaders in Colombia of ANMUCIC (National association of indigenous, afro -descendent and peasant women of Colombia) a main organization of women of the country.
Maria Emma is a refugee in Costa Rica since 2000. Her life and her family were threatened, on the one hand, by paramilitary groups, fuelled by the false news that emerged about her as part of the guerrilla in the national media. On the other, given her efforts to gain access for her organization to the peasant production and infrastructure government projects, the guerrillas believed that she was a collaborator and informant to the Colombian army. She had no choice but to leave the country.
There is an abysm between the facts and the human rights discourse in Colombia. Despite that the National Constitution consecrates Human Rights as a part of the fundamental rights of Colombian people, reality is way too far of the written laws.
Media is part of this huge gap, owe that, instead of promoting the citizen participation in accordance with an attempt of a negotiation of the armed conflict through peaceful means, it has contributed to the re -victimization of people in the countryside and people of social movements, as well that it has facilitated to all sides – guerrillas, paramilitaries and the government – to legitimate the atrocities of war by focused in heroes and villains actions.
It is necessary that media and journalism help to rethink the country that we are and the country we want to be from a human right´s perspective in the new Colombian post – conflict scenario.
Keywords: Colombian conflict, media propaganda, evil, grassroots media, women organizations, victims, communication.
Peace Journalism: A Needed, Desirable and Practicable Reform
The idea of peace journalism has attracted its share of critiques and controversies, but as Vanessa Bassil argues, it still offers a much needed and practical, peace-oriented perspective from which media can be analysed and produced.