Introduction: Making Sense of the Cultural Dimension in Conflict-Affected Societies

This paper introduces the special issue on “Conflict and Peace: The Cultural Dimension.” It explains the rationale for this collection, underscoring the global reach, interdisciplinarity, and variety of methodological approaches in this volume. The paper also outlines three collective contributions of the papers: First, it underscores that it is important to take symbols seriously when exploring and explaining conflict and peace. Second, it highlights that cultural expressions and institutions can feed directly into the military strategy and political economy of conflict and violence. Third, the paper shows that practices that help reinterpret cultural expressions may erode mutually exclusive visions of national and ethnic membership in conflict-affected settings. However, transition toward a culture of peace is often constrained by the hardening of identities during conflict, the persistence of forms of structural violence beyond the signing of a peace accord, and the need to acknowledge and accommodate the distinctive expressions of conflict-affected groups without reifying and essentializing mutually exclusive identities. The paper concludes by mapping a promising research agenda on culture and heritage in conflict-affected settings.