Description
The research aims to explore the ways in which Western myths of war and peace are sustained, reproduced, stabilized and contested within societal actors. I explore the work that these myths perform within the practices of governance of disarmament and arms control. Myths are meta-narratives that influence our political behavior by guiding action, allowing the construction of identities, constituting experience, and assisting in making sense of events. Through a post-structural approach, myths are not reduced to lies or misconceptions. Instead, myths are understood as cultural truths providing access to collective memories and realities. However, myths do not appear naturally. The Western perspective has spread through institutions and ideas that have become the framework for the current international society. Thus, the West is a system of production of ideas and consequently myths. For this purpose, I carry out an empirical, explorative and multi-method qualitative-interpretative research design. Data is collected through interviews and focus groups with experts in the field of disarmament and arms control. Data is analyzed through Grounded Theory. Intertextual analysis complements the study of the phenomenon allowing for a genealogical study of myth to reconstruct the archemyth and observe the embeddedness of Western myths in practices of disarmament and arms control.
Key words: Interpretivism, International Relations, narratives, disarmament and arms control, Political Science, Post-structuralism, global governance
