Cultura de paz e o protagonismo da universidade: uma análise da percepção e avaliação da comunidade acadêmica da UNEMAT

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes how the academic community of the Cáceres Campus – Jane Vanini, of the State University of Mato Grosso (UNEMAT), perceives, experiences, and evaluates the Culture of Peace in everyday institutional life, considering its meanings, limits, and possibilities of consolidation in the university context. The study is based on the understanding that the university, as a space for civic education and democratic coexistence, plays a strategic role in promoting practices grounded in dialogue, listening, recognition, and nonviolent conflict resolution. The research adopts a qualitative approach, combining a literature review, historicaldocumentary analysis, and fieldwork through semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The theoretical framework draws on the contributions of Johan Galtung, Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, and Niklas Luhmann, enabling a critical reading of institutional dynamics, power relations, and communicational processes that shape academic life. The findings reveal plural and, at times, ambivalent perceptions of peace, often associated with harmony and individual well-being, while violence appears in subtle and normalized forms, especially through silencing practices, symbolic exclusion, and hierarchical relations. Institutional belonging proves to be unstable, shaped by affective ties but also by symbolic barriers and structural inequalities. The study concludes that the Culture of Peace at UNEMAT should not be understood as a set of isolated initiatives, but as a continuous politicalpedagogical project, requiring institutionalization, the strengthening of permanent spaces for dialogue, training in conflict mediation, and its transversal integration into curricula and pedagogical practices.