Nothing happens in isolation and there is always history and spatiality that mediate the present state of affairs. Social conflicts are historical and geographical in nature, and in order to explore them and transform them, it is necessary to have a method. This chapter offers such a method. Drawing from ethnographic approaches from anthropology, and from practical methods such as Theory U and dynamical systems theory (DST), this chapter offers a dedicated study of a conflict area (Medellin, Colombia), and of how peace knowledge emerges from it. By peace knowledge the authors refer to contextual knowledge of specific peacebuilding and peacekeeping strategies that are rooted and specific to particular cultures and societies. This chapter discusses the method that they have developed to engage with social contexts to both identify the ways communities respond peacefully to conflicts, and to elicit culturally sensitive practices that have the potential to transform violent conflicts.
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In this chapter we look at the role of context, which is the third part in the triumvirate of self, other and context. Context includes many factors that influence how we understand situations and how to intervene, how we live and act in them, including having local knowledge. We look at the historical implications in the context of community from colonial influences to today, and in this review we discuss the different types of violence and resistance over the years. There is an exploration of the experience of the social labs where the representation of the contextual system is all in the room to share perspectives and develop a shared understanding toward collective and collaborative intervention.
Context is not only a physical space, but also the interrelated conditions in which something exists. It includes the conceptual scheme, the non-physical space, from which “things” and the concepts that made them possible are drawn, created, recreated, understood, and communicated. In other words, context is indeed a place, such as a geographical place like New York City, but also the set of behaviors, ideas, languages, values, etc., that regulate the way people interact and understand their worlds.
Thus, being able to read the context also allows us to grasp the worldview of a particular group of people, and this is essential for doing fieldwork especially if it is done for the sake of transformation. We invite you to think of contexts as systems where things take place, are created, recreated, and transformed, through interactions with the physical environment, the inhabitants, and the socially acceptable ways they deal with the imposed cultural norms and worldview. Contexts are imbued with logical forces that govern how things should be (Pearce, 2007). Contexts then are the result of people, both individually and collectively, making sense of their experiences in the world.
This last point is important to highlight, given that without the recognition that people have the ability to transform their contexts through transforming their worldviews, there would be no point in engaging in this kind of fieldwork. People have agency, and the ability to use it in spite of the harshest circumstances, saves our work from being futile.