545 José María Santé Abal How to prevent social conflicts from becoming armed conflicts Analysis of war and violence requires transdisciplinary approaches that lead us away from specialised academic papers that are divorced from the reality of a multidimensional problem. The term transdisciplinary denotes the combination of the individual merits pertaining to each discipline, with a view to studying a discipline from a different angle. It is a concept that differs from interdisciplinarity, which relates to the grouping together of study of the same issue from different scientific perspectives.7 It is only by means of transdisciplinarity that we may move beyond the point at which the work of the different social sciences reached the bounds of their own field of research.8 The fact that no one sole cause of violence exists renders the problem of studying the origins of armed conflicts so complex that it requires a transdisciplinary approximation9 whilst avoiding that elements essential to analysis get left out along the way. There exist opinions in academia that cast aside the possibility of predicting armed conflict depending on its root causes. A widely-held view amongst sociologists is that violence is innate to society. This does not mean that we should allow ourselves to be swept towards the fatalistic conclusion that it is impossible to strengthen the mechanisms that aim to prevent armed conflict. What sets the human race apart from other creatures is its tendency to destroy those of its own species, as illustrated by the well-known Hobbesian literary aphorism “Homo homini lupus”, first seen in the works of writer and playwright Plautus.10 This is why we must not desist in our fight against violence. The presence of violence, as it permanently lies in wait for us, must spur us on to never let our guard down and to continue to carry out research that prevents, or at least minimises, its effects. The suffering generated by any armed conflict is so great that it alone should afford us sufficient motivation in a permanent quest for ways in which to minimise violence. International law encompasses provisions applicable to the prevention of armed conflict, the most prominent being the United Nations Charter,11 or the Helsinki 7 SENGHAAS, Dieter, “The Specific contribution of peace research to the analysis of the causes of social violence: transdisciplinarity” in JOXE A. (coord.), La Violence et ses Causes, Paris, Unesco, 1981 p 113-114. 8 Ibid. p 113-16. 9 KLINEBERG, Otto. “The causes of violence: a social-psychological approach” in JOXE A. (coord.), La Violence et ses Causes, Paris, Unesco, 1981 p 136. 10 PLAUTUS, T. Maccius. Asinaria Madrid, Gredos, 1992 ISBN 84-249-1496-1 p16. 11 UNITED NATIONS. United Nations Charter online United Nations New York 26 June 1945 accessed 3 February 2015 Available at: http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/ http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
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