This work began as a translation of the text “Systems of Conflict”, originally published in December 2023 in the Virtual Encyclopedia, a project linked to the Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict Studies network. This many-handed translation is the result of the interest of the community of researchers formed around the Global South Unit for Mediation (GSUM, BRICS Policy Center – IRI/PUC-Rio) in advancing debates that seek to rethink Peace and Conflict Studies from post-colonial and decolonial perspectives, especially in the light of Brazilian contexts.
At the events held to commemorate the Unit’s tenth anniversary, professors, researchers and students gathered at PUC-Rio’s Institute of International Relations, both in person and remotely, with the aim of widening the network and the possible space for a conversation about violence that concerns us. These dialogues took place in the context of the brutalities and brutalizations that mark the daily life of a city at permanent war like Rio de Janeiro, from where the inability of the hegemonic canon, made in the mirror of the self-styled great powers, to produce coherent readings and open up viable paths of incidence becomes evident.