Impacts of Culture and Cultural Differences on Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding in Multicultural Societies

Abstract

Multicultural societies have become sites of violent conflicts following predictions at the end of the Cold War that culture would be a causative of future conflict. However, conflicts have not necessarily been caused by the presence of the different cultures that inhabit these communities, but cultural differences in these societies is observed to become embedded in conflict dynamics inducing escalation, aiding the easy mobilisation and motivation of conflict parties to utilise violence, eventually inducing intractability. Cultural differences impact conflict prevention and peacebuilding in multicultural settings by constituting a barrier and a times instigating failures of these processes. At the same time, it is a culture resource that can be harnessed for conflict prevention and peacebuilding if it is well understood, but its impacts seems less well understood. Successful conflict prevention and peacebuilding in multicultural societies is tied to in-depth understanding of cultural differences.