Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Sustainable Livelihoods and the Intellectual Property System: A Peace Action Perspective

Abstract

It has been stated that to work for peace is to work against violence. This involves analysing its forms and causes, predicting in order to prevent it, and then acting preventively and curatively. To work for peace is to build liberation, wellness in a world of peace with nature, peace between genders, generations and races, where the excluded are included but not by force, and where classes, nations and states serveneither direct nor structural violence.Peace theorist Johan Galtung has specifically urged people working for peace to make the effort to identify theABC triangle of deep attitudes, deep behaviour and deep contradictions that lies at the base of every conflict and situation of violence. He has also elucidated thethree levels of violence — direct, structural and cultural. He emphasised that of these three types of violence, structural and cultural violence are most obtuse and most often escape deep scrutiny when all eyes are fixed on surface forms of violence(Galtung 1996:2).