What is Conflict Transformer

The complex relationship between art, culture, conflict, and peacebuilding in contemporary time has opened a gap in knowledge too difficult to grasp. This is because culture is implicated in nearly every conflict in the world. This is corollary to the fact that the biggest challenge confronting societies today is not about how conflicts occur, but how conflicts can be completely resolved whenever they occur. Nonetheless, despite the prevalence of such conflicts and the fact that culture has been identified as a driver and a major transformer, scholarly investigation into the intentional use of arts and culture especially within the realms of rituals and symbol for conflict resolution and peace-building has regrettably been modest, disproportionate, and largely unexplored. This study, therefore, is an attempt to respond to this thesis that the deployment of rituals and symbol as an instrument to symbolically communicate commitment toward peace is a viable alternative for peacebuilding.