Concepciones académicas dentro del dominio cultural Los estudios sobre creatividad en Portugal.

In discussing the linkage between culture and violence Wood defines culture as “historically accumulated collections of beliefs and practices which are socially produced and aimed at meeting psychological needs” (Wood 2007b:3). This implies that human behavior is guided by

93 the socio-cultural and the environmental context within which the human is situated. Culture prescribes rules of engagement with other members of society within certain geographical locations (2007b: 4). Culture may also define how people of different cultural orientations treat each other as neighbours, strangers or competitors. Culture therefore is crucial in determining and shaping human relations especially their identity and meanings of their identities in relation to their socio-spatial spaces. Galtung (1990:291) defined cultural violence as those aspects of cultures that are used to normalize or legitimize violent action among groups. In other words cultural violence are norms, mores and other forms of human socializations that accepts violence as a means to some ends within specific spaces. Similarly, Wood argues that violence incidences are interpreted through the prism of culture (2007b:4). Thus culture is a medium for legitimizing violent action among groups.

Wood views violence as inevitable consequence of socio-spatial relationships in society. He attributes the existence of violence in human relations as critical to sustenance, status and security needs of different groups (2007b:7). Violence is therefore a means through which territories can be gained or protected as well as a means through which group sustenance can be guaranteed. Culture thus prescribes the nature of ‘accepted’ violence, its rules, its location and the intended purposes. Cultures further shape the means, meanings, location and purposes of violence. Wood (2007b:7-8) argues that culture designates what types of violence is acceptable and which ones are prohibited. He further states that when a culture legitimizes violent action as normal, it assigns particular actors to carry out the said violent action under certain circumstances within specific spaces. Cultures of violence are therefore historically developed, socialized into the potential actors and later passed on from one generation to another (Wood 2007b:7). Cultures of violence are dynamic and change depending on the times, technology and violence potential in every generation. In legitimating elements of violent behaviors in society, cultures of violence are enhanced and celebrated as a good thing. Cultures therefore not only legitimize violent actions buts they also project these action into the larger society.

Wood (2007b:10-11) further linked the legitimization of violence within some cultures as an avenue through which male community members compete, preserve or gain power in society.

94 Violence is therefore a known means of acquiring or preserving power. The power to be acquired or competed for must be something culturally sanctioned like the need to get a wife or household sustenance. The cultural need to get a wife goes hand in hand with the need to raid livestock to meet that goal. Through cattle raids therefore violence is used to gain livestock to meet a critical socio-cultural threshold. Similarly, with the increase in the proliferation of arms and the commercialisation of raids, shrewd businessmen hire warriors who are culturally mandated to conduct cattle raids to do so not for socio-cultural reasons but for commercial gains. Culture in this case is therefore used to gain economic power. Vengeance as a legitimate means of correcting injustice among many cultures is also used by pastoralists’ communities to correct past wrongs or to restore the status quo (Wood 2007b:10). Revenge raids are therefore seen as normal and expected occurrences among pastoralists groups. The normality of revenge further entrenches violence in cattle raids as a means of correcting wrongs, acquiring socio-economic power and prestige in inter-communal relationships.

Among communities that legitimize violence as part of their socio-cultural practices, the physical pain inflicted upon initiates through circumcision or scarification and the place of the violent action are argued to have symbolic meaning to the specific cultural groups. Such spaces of cultural violence are not open to every member of the community but only to those that are “ritually authorized and empowered by the social collective” to perform the violence that transforms a member of society from one age-group to another, to transition a member to a higher social class, or even to admit one back into the fold of the social collective (Broch-Due 2005:19). Socio-cultural transformations of relationships are therefore legitimized through violence within specific spaces. Acts of violence within socio-cultural spaces therefore not only help in building group identity among initiates but also in creating a bond between initiates and the place of initiation, thus enhancing its own identity with the transformation of the lives of its initiates. Violence in this sense is used to create and sustain the bond between humans as social beings and their environments. In expounding on violence over social spaces, the next section analyses grazing lands as landscapes of certain uncertainty to emphasise on the need for inhabitants to negotiate constant risks posed by the built environment and also by the strategies’ deployed by actors to negotiate their relationships in a harsh environment.

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