Communication in Peace / Conflict in Communication

Peace and Conflict are commonly understood as polar opposites. In a polarised opposition there is no place for conflict in peace, and peace, the privileged term of the binary opposition, needs to be pure and homogeneous, cleansed of any unlicensed differences and contradictions. Yet, a radically plural and demo-cratic politic must harbour conflicting and antagonistic views of things; opposition is internal to it; and its view of freedom says that "freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently". In contrast, the ideal of a homogeneous, self--same, indivisibly unified society is totalitarian and repressive of the very differenc-es that make a society, any society, possible. The ocgaErtizers of the 2nd International Conference on Communication and Media Studies at Eastern Mediterranean. University, 2-4 May 2007, thought that a deconstructive and feminist framework that destabilises the entrenched certain-ties of polar oppositions and an ethical response to the irreducible otherness of the other, as well as to one's own alterity, would be very appropriate and relevant in our times for rethinking these issues, and relied on that framework in formulat-ing the theme of the conference as "Communication in Peace/Conflict in Communication" to emphasise the interrelationship of the two parts separated by the slash, as well as the formulation of the subtopics that were listed in the call for papers. This volume includes work from around the world that responded to that call.