Peace and conflict studies

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Peace and conflict studies is an "academic field which identifies and analyzes the violent and nonviolent behaviors as well as the structural mechanisms attending social conflicts with a view towards understanding those processes which lead to a more desirable human condition."[1]

Peace Studies (sometimes called Irenology) is an inter-disciplinary effort aiming at the prevention, deescalation, and solution of conflicts, in contrast to War Studies (sometimes called Polemology) which has as its aim the efficient attainment of victory in conflicts. Disciplines involved may include Political Sciences, Economics, Sociology, International Relations, Psychology, History, Anthropology, Religious Studies, and Women's Studies, as well as a variety of others.

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[edit] Historical background

Peace studies is both a pedagogical activity, in which teachers transmit knowledge to students, and a research activity, in which researchers create new knowledge about the sources of conflict.

[edit] Peace studies as pedagogical activity

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Student interest in what we today think of as peace studies first appeared in the form of campus clubs at U.S. colleges in the years immediately following the U.S. Civil War. A similar movement appeared in Sweden in the last years of the 19th century. However, these were student-originated discussion groups, not formal courses included in college curricula. The first academic program in peace studies was not to develop until 1948, and then only at Manchester College in Indiana, a small liberal arts college affiliated with the Church of the Brethren. It was not until the late 1960s that student concern about the Vietnam War forced ever more universities to offer courses about peace, whether in a designated peace studies course or as a course within a traditional major. Growth in the number of peace studies programs was to accelerate during the 1980s, as students became more concerned about the prospects of nuclear war. As the Cold War ended, peace studies courses began to spend less time on international conflict and more time on general issues of violence.[2]

By the mid-1990s peace studies curricula had shifted "...from research and teaching about negative peace, the cessation of violence, to positive peace, the conditions that eliminate the causes of violence."[3] As a result the topics had broadened enormously. By 1994, a review of course offerings in peace studies included topics such as: "north-south relations"; "development, debt, and global poverty"; "the environment, population growth, and resource scarcity"; and "feminist perspectives on peace, militarism, and political violence."[4] At the same time, peace studies faculty began to offer courses on more mundane forms of violence, such as conflict resolution and anger management. [5] This broadening of the curricula attracted some criticism, since peace studies faculty were viewed as dilettantes, not fully competent in the disciplines (such as economics) whose ideas were invoked as solutions to problems of conflict.[6] In addition, observers such as Bruce Bawer note that the policies proposed to "eliminate the causes of violence" are uniformly leftist policies, and not necessarily policies which would find broad agreement among social scientists.[7]

The number of colleges offering peace studies courses is hard to estimate, mostly because the courses may be taught out of different departments and have very different names. A 1995 survey found 136 U.S. colleges with peace studies programs:

"Forty-six percent of these are in church related schools, another 32% are in large public universities, 21% are in non-church related private colleges, and 1% are in community colleges. Fifty-five percent of the church related schools that have peace studies programs are Roman Catholic. Other denominations with more than one college or university with a peace studies program are the Quakers, Mennonites, Brethren, and United Church of Christ. One hundred fifteen of these programs are at the undergraduate level and 21 at the graduate level. Fifteen of these colleges and universities had both undergraduate and graduate programs."[8]

[edit] Peace studies as a research activity

Although individual thinkers such as Immanuel Kant thought a great deal about peace (see philosophy of peace), it was not until the 1950s and 1960s that peace studies began to emerge as an academic discipline with its own research tools, a specialized set of concepts, and forums for discussion such as journals and conferences. Beginning in 1959, with the founding of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (associated with Johan Galtung), a number of research institutes began to appear.[9]

In 1963, Walter Isard, the principal founder of Regional science assembled a group of scholars in Malmö, Sweden, for the purpose of establishing the Peace Research Society. The group of initial members included Kenneth Boulding and Anatol Rapoport. In 1973, this group became the Peace Science Society. Peace science was viewed as an interdisciplinary and international effort to develop a special set of concepts, techniques and data to better understand and mitigate conflict.[10] Peace science attempts to use the quantitative techniques developed in economics and political science, especially game theory and econometrics, techniques otherwise seldom used by researchers in peace studies.[11] The Peace Science Society website hosts the second edition of the Correlates of War, one of the best collections of data on international conflict.[12] The society holds an annual conference, attended by scholars from throughout the world.

In 1964, the International Peace Research Association was formed at a conference organized by Quakers in Clarens, Switzerland. Among the original executive committee was Johan Galtung. The IPRA holds a biennial conference. Research presented at its conferences and in its publications typically focuses on institutional and historical approaches, seldom employing quantitative techniques.[13]

[edit] Description of Peace studies

Peace Studies can be classified as such:[citation needed]

  • Multidisciplinary, encompassing elements of Politics, Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology and Economics.
  • Multilevel. Peace Studies examines intrapersonal peace, peace between individuals, neighbours, ethnic groups, states and civilisations.
  • Multicultural. Gandhi is often cited as a paradigm of Peace Studies. However, true multiculturalism remains an aspiration as most Peace Studies centres are located in the West.
  • Both analytic and normative. As a normative discipline, Peace Studies involves value judgements, such as "better" and "bad".
  • Both theoretical and applied. Peace Studies is useless unless applied.

Peace and conflict studies is now established within the social sciences: it comprises scholarly journals, college and university departments, peace research institutes, conferences, as well as outside recognition of the utility of peace and conflict studies as a method.

[edit] Ideas from Peace studies

[edit] Three conceptions of peace

Three conceptions of peace have been instrumental in establishing an intellectual climate in which peace research might prosper.[citation needed]

  • The first is the line of rational reasoning that peace is a natural condition, whereas war is not. The premise is simple for peace researchers: to generate and present enough information so that a rational group of decision makers will seek to avoid war and conflict.
  • Second, the view that war is sinful is held by a variety of religious traditions worldwide, often most strongly by minority sects which do not maintain political power: Quakers, Mennonites and other Peace churches within Christianity; Jains within the religious life of India, and many sects of Buddhism.
  • Third is pacifism: the view that peace is to be a prime force in human behaviour.

[edit] Conflict triangle

Johan Galtung's conflict triangle works on the assumption that the best way to define peace is to define violence, its antithesis. It reflects the normative aim of preventing, managing, limiting and overcoming violence.[citation needed]

  • Direct (overt) violence, e.g., direct attack, massacre.
  • Structural violence. Death by avoidable reasons such as malnutrition. Structural violence is indirect violence caused by an unjust structure and is not to be equated with an act of God. Hurricane Katrina, which struck the USA in 2005, was a so-called "act of God", but the deaths in the poorer black population of New Orleans are an example of structural violence, since their deaths were related to societal imbalance.
  • Cultural violence. Cultural violence occurs as a result of the cultural assumptions that blind one to direct or structural violence. For example, one may be indifferent toward the homeless, or even consider their expulsion or extermination a good thing.

Each corner of Galtung's triangle can relate to the other two. Ethnic cleansing can be an example of all three.

[edit] Negative and positive peace

Negative peace refers to the absence of direct violence. This aim raises the problem of the tyrant, who oversees a non-violent empire but does not foster a sense of peace. Parallels of this problem are to be found in literature such as Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.[citation needed]

Positive peace refers to the additional absence of structural and cultural violence. This aim raises the problem of the "happy slave", who when told he is free, retorts that he "does not want to be free".[citation needed]

[edit] Normative aims

Three normative aims of Peace Studies are peacekeeping, peace building (e.g., tackling disparities in the distribution of world wealth) and peacemaking (e.g., education). Peacekeeping falls under the aegis of negative peace, whereas efforts toward positive peace involve elements of peace building and peacemaking.[citation needed]

[edit] Teaching Peace to the Military

One of the interesting developments with peace and conflict studies is the number of military personnel undertaking such studies. This poses some challenges, as the military is an institution ostensibly committed to war-making. In a recent article "Teaching Peace to the Military", published in the journal Peace Review [14], Dr James Page argues for five principles that ought to undergird this undertaking, namely, respect but do not privilege miltiary experience, teach the just war theory, encourage students to be aware of the tradition and techniques of nonviolence, encourage students to deconstruct and demythologize, and recognize the importance of military virtue.

[edit] Quotes related to Peace Studies

  • "War appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modern invention" - Henry Maine
  • "Would it not be wise to endow the science of peace with strong schools just as one has its sister the departments of war?" - Rafael Dubois
  • "Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war." - Maria Montessori

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Dugan, 1989: 74
  2. ^ Harris, Fisk, and Rank 1998
  3. ^ Harris, Fisk, and Rank 1998
  4. ^ Harris, Fisk, and Rank 1998
  5. ^ Harris, Fisk, and Rank 1998
  6. ^ Bawer 2007
  7. ^ Bawer 2007
  8. ^ Harris, Fisk, and Rank 1998
  9. ^ Harris, Fisk, and Rank 1998
  10. ^ Home
  11. ^ Peace Studies Program - Student Information- Graduate Minor Field
  12. ^ Correlates of War 2
  13. ^ History of the IPRA
  14. ^ Page, James S. 2007. 'Teaching Peace to the Military'. Peace Review, 19(4):571-577.

[edit] Sources

  • Bawer, Bruce "The Peace Racket", City Journal, Summer 2007 link
  • Dugan, M. 1989. "Peace Studies at the Graduate Level." The Annals of the American Academy of Political Science: Peace Studies: Past and Future, 504, 72-79.
  • Harris, Ian, Larry J. Fisk, and Carol Rank. (1998). "A Portrait of University Peace Studies in North America and Western Europe at the End of the Millennium." International Journal of Peace Studies. Volume 3, Number 1. ISSN 1085-7494 link
  • López Martínez, Mario (dir) Enciclopedia de paz y conflictos. Granada, 2004. ISBN 84-338-3095-3, 2 tomos.

[edit] External links

[edit] Journals

[edit] Other periodicals

[edit] Scholarly societies

[edit] Data

[edit] Research institutes