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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Peace studies > General
Are new forms of activism emerging in Algeria? Can civil society
effect political reform in the country? The violence between
radical Islamists and the military during the Algerian civil war of
the 1990s led to huge loss of life and mass exile. The public
sphere was rendered a dangerous place for over a decade. Yet in
defiance of these conditions, civil society grew, with thousands of
associations forming throughout the conflict. Associations were set
up to protect human rights and vulnerable populations, commemorate
those assassinated and promote Algerian heritage. There are now
over 93,000 associations registered across the country. Although
social, economic and political turbulence continues, new networks
still emerge and, since the Arab revolts of 2011, organised
demonstrations increasingly take place. Civil Society in Algeria
examines these recent developments and scrutinizes the role
associations play in promoting political reform and democratization
in Algeria. Based on extensive fieldwork undertaken both before and
after the Arab Spring, the book shows how associations challenge
government policy in the public sphere. Algeria is playing an
increasingly important role in the stability and future peaceful
relations of the Middle East and North Africa. This book reveals
the new forms of activism that are challenging the ever-powerful
state. It is a valuable resource for Algeria specialists and for
scholars researching political reform and democratization across
the Middle East and North Africa.
Practice and research of peace education has grown in the recent
years as shown by a steadily increasing number of publications,
programs, events, and funding mechanisms. The oft-cited point of
departure for the peace education community is the belief in
education as a valuable tool for decreasing the use of violence in
conflict and for building cultures of positive peace hallmarked by
just and equitable structures. Educators and organizations
implementing peace education activities and programming, however,
often lack the tools and capacities for evaluation and thus pay
scant regard to this step in program management. Reasons for this
inattention are related to the perceived urgency to prioritize new
and more action in the context of scarce financial and human
resources, notwithstanding violence or conflict; the lack of skills
and time to indulge in a thorough evaluative strategy; and the
absence of institutional incentives and support. Evaluation is
often demand-driven by donors who emphasize accounting given the
current context of international development assistance and budget
cuts. Program evaluation is considered an added burden to already
over-tasked programmers who are unaware of the incentives and of
assessment techniques. Peace education practitioners are typically
faced with forcing evaluation frameworks, techniques, and norms
standardized for traditional education programs and venues.
Together, these conditions create an unfavorable environment in
which evaluation becomes under-valued, de-prioritized, and
mythologized for its laboriousness. This volume serves three
inter-related objectives. First, it offers a critical reflection on
theoretical and methodological issues regarding evaluation applied
to peace education interventions and programming. The overarching
questions of the nature of peace and the principles guiding peace
education, as well as governing theories and assumptions of change,
transformation, and complexity are explored. Second, the volume
investigates existing quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods
evaluation practices of peace educators in order to identify what
needs related to evaluation persist among practitioners. Promising
practices are presented from peace education programming in
different settings (formal and non-formal education), within
various groups (e.g. children, youth, police, journalists) and
among diverse cultural contexts. Finally, the volume proposes ideas
of evaluation, novel techniques for experimentation, and creative
adaptation of tools from related fields, in order to offer
pragmatic and philosophical substance to peace educators' "next
moves" and inspire the agenda for continued exploration and
innovation. The authors come from variety of fields including
education, peace and conflict studies, educational evaluation,
development studies, comparative education, economics, and
psychology.
This book is open access and available on
www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched.
The study of war in all periods of prehistory and recorded history
has always commanded the attention of historians, dramatists, poets
and artists. The study of peace has, however, not yet gained a
comparable readership, and the subject is attracting an increasing
amount of scholarly research. This volume presents the first work
of academic research to tackle this imbalance head on. It looks at
war and peace through the ages, from the Classical world through to
the 18th century. It considers the nature and advocacy of war and
peace both from an historical perspective but also a philosophical
one, particularly looking at how universal peace, which began as a
personal philosophy, became over the centuries a political
philosophy that underpins much of modern society's attitudes
towards warfare and militarism. Roger Manning begins his journey
through history by looking at the Greek martial ethos and
philosophical concepts of peace and war in the ancient world;
moving through the Roman empire's military advances, he explores
the concepts of war and peace in the medieval world and the
Renaissance, with the writing of Machiavelli and Erasmus; finally,
his account of the search for a science of peace in the 17th and
18th centuries brings the book to its conclusion.
How can a just peace be built in sites of genocide, massive civil
war, dictatorship, terrorism, and poverty? In Strategies of Peace,
the first volume in the Studies in Strategic Peacebuilding series,
fifteen leading scholars propose an imaginative and provocative
approach to peacebuilding. Today the dominant thinking is the
"liberal peace," which stresses cease fires, elections, and short
run peace operations carried out by international institutions,
western states, and local political elites. But the liberal peace
is not enough, the authors argue. A just and sustainable peace
requires a far more holistic vision that links together activities,
actors, and institutions at all levels. By exploring innovative
models for building lasting peace-a United Nations
counter-terrorism policy that also promotes good governance;
coordination of the international prosecution of war criminals with
local efforts to settle civil wars; increasing the involvement of
religious leaders, who have a unique ability to elicit peace
settlements; and many others--the authors advance a bold new vision
for peacebuilding.
Survival, the IISS's bimonthly journal, challenges conventional
wisdom and brings fresh, often controversial, perspectives on
strategic issues of the moment. In this issue: Barry Posen argues
that Europe is better placed to defend itself militarily than many,
including the IISS, have portrayed it to be Kori Schake examines
the prospects of Republican politics in a post-Trump America Daniel
Byman and Aditi Joshi call for protocols to curb the abuse of
social media by malign agents and states Nigel Gould-Davies
explains Russia's stance on Belarus with reference to Moscow's long
history of involving itself in its neighbours' affairs And nine
more thought-provoking pieces, as well as our regular book reviews
and Noteworthy column. Editor: Dr Dana Allin Managing Editor:
Jonathan Stevenson Associate Editor: Carolyn West Assistant Editor:
Jessica Watson
'Honorable Mention' 2017 PROSE Award - Education Practice Bringing
together the voices of scholars and practitioners on challenges and
possibilities of implementing peace education in diverse global
sites, this book addresses key questions for students seeking to
deepen their understanding of the field. The book not only
highlights ground-breaking and rich qualitative studies from around
the globe, but also analyses the limits and possibilities of peace
education in diverse contexts of conflict and post-conflict
societies. Contributing authors address how educators and learners
can make meaning of international peace education efforts, how
various forms of peace and violence interact in and around schools,
and how the field of peace education has evolved and grown over the
past four decades.
"Positive Peace "is a scholarly and creative compilation of
articles on peace education, nonviolence and social change. Arun
Gandhi (grandson of Mahatma Gandhi) sets the scene in his
introduction with the challenge that positive peace is both a
resisting of the physical violence of war and the passive violence
of the psychological structures that lead to conflict. Peace
education rises to meet that challenge. In twelve chapters,
philosophers and educators look at a variety of topics from
Gandhian nonviolence, to pragmatic conflict solving; hope and the
ethics of belief, to the way we use violent language; mothering and
peace activism, to multiculturalism and peace. Recurring themes
are: pragmatic nonviolence, the ethics of care as an antidote to
violence, and hope in a violent world. Chapters on the use of film
in peace education, song and nonviolent activism, and teaching art
history and peace, demonstrate pragmatic possibilities for would-be
peace educators. Arun Gandhi in his introduction asks, "For
generations human beings have strived to attain peace, but with
little or no success. ... Why is peace so illusive? Is it
unattainable? Are humans incapable of living in peace?" This book
suggests that peace education has a large part to play. It is an
important attempt to begin to meet the challenge.
Human history has been marked by the great number of people born
into conditions of war, violence, oppression and social exclusion.
But at the same time, this history has been shaped by the long
struggle for human rights and the people who have committed
themselves to the practices of solidarity and nonviolence. The
Power of Hope: Thoughts on Peace and Human Rights in the Third
Millennium is a dialogue between two high-profile activists and
thinkers who discuss the concrete ways we can shift to a world that
prioritises justice and human dignity. Adolfo Perez Esquivel -
Argentinian human rights activist and winner of the 1980 Nobel
Peace Prize - played a vital role in resisting military
dictatorship and was arrested and tortured under the Argentine
militarist government. Daisaku Ikeda is a peacebuilder, Buddhist
philosopher, educator, author and poet as well as being the
founding president of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), the world's
largest Buddhist lay organisation. Their dialogue intertwines their
rich personal experiences in the struggle for human rights with
wider reflections on how to make the Third Millennium the
millennium of peace. The book combines rich accounts of Latin
America under the brutality of the 1970s military regimes; insights
from the Buddhist faith on the role of meditation for human rights
activists; recognition of the crucial role of women in the practice
of nonviolence; thoughts on international geopolitics and the
legacies of Hiroshima; and discussion of the perilous role of
globalisation in the loss of identities and ethical values.
In Ethnic Identity and Minority Protection: Designation,
Discrimination, and Brutalization, Thomas W. Simon examines a new
framework for considering ethnic conflicts. In contrast to the more
traditional theories of justice, Simon's theory of injustice shifts
focus away from group identity toward group harms, effectively
making many problems, such as how to define minorities in
international law, dramatically more manageable. Simon argues that
instead of promoting legislative devices like proportional
representation for minorities, it is more fruitful to seek
adjudicative solutions to racial and ethnic-related conflicts. For
example, resources could be shifted to quasi-judicial human-rights
treaty bodies that have adopted an injustice approach. This
injustice approach provides the foundation for Kosovo's case for
remedial secession, and helps to sort out the competing entitlement
claims of Malays in different countries. Indeed, the priority of
Thomas W. Simon's Ethnic Identity and Minority Protection is to
ensure the tales of designation and discrimination told at the
beginning of the work do not become the stories of brutalization
told at the end. In short, the challenge tackled in this text is to
assure that reason reigns over hate.
Long caught between powerful neighbours, Ladakh is now a border
region in the vast Indian nation state. In this detailed,
anthropological study Fernanda Pirie traces the ways order has been
created by, but also despite and in defiance of, the powerful
external forces of religion, war, politics and wealth. Gradually a
clear analysis unfolds of the subtle dynamics that have long
characterised relations between local communities and centres of
power and which can successfully be applied to the wider region.
This exemplary study of conflict resolution brings to light the
means by which small communities, both rural and urban, negotiate
peace amidst the heterogeneous forces of modernity, while at the
same time critically re-examining theories that over-emphasize the
explanatory power of Buddhism. This rich ethnographic account of
local practices fills a conspicuous gap in secondary literature on
Tibetan law.
The Director-General of UNESCO, Koichiro Matsuura, writes in the
Foreword to this book: ""The present study by James Page provides a
timely exposition of what might be argued to be a philosophy of
peace education. It provides an overview of different philosophical
approaches, and from diverse culture perspectives, of peace
education throughout the world. As such it offers an important
addition to the emerging literature on peace education and the
culture of peace, as well as an important commentary on the peace
mission of UNESCO."" CONTENTS: Acknowledgments. Preface. Foreword.
1 The Problem of Peace Education. 2 Virtue Ethics and Peace
Education. 3 Consequentialist Ethics and Peace Education. 4
Conservative Political Ethics and Peace Education. 5 Aesthetic
Ethics and Peace Education. 6 The Ethics of Care and Peace
Education. 7 Conclusions. 8 Abbreviations. Citation Method.
References. Name Index. Subject Index.
Long before it became fashionable to talk of climate change,
drought and water shortages, the authors of this lucid and
trenchant dialogue were warning that planet earth was heading for
uninhabitability. They exchange viewpoints and insights that have
matured over many years of thought, study and reflection. One of
the authors is a Westerner--a man of many parts, both wartime
resistance fighter and leading industrialist, who founded one of
the first think tanks to address seriously the human prospects for
global survival. The other represents the philosophical and ethical
perspectives of the East--a Buddhist leader who has visited country
after country, campaigning tirelessly for the abolition of nuclear
weapons and war in all its forms. Engaging constructively and
imaginatively with such seemingly intractable problems as
population growth, the decline of natural resources,
desertification, pollution and deforestation, Ikeda and Peccei show
that many of these problems are interrelated. Only be addressing
them as part of a web of complex but combined issues, and by
working together for peace and justice, can human beings expect to
find lasting solutions. The best prospect for the future lies in an
ethical revolution whereby humanity can find a fresh understanding
of itself in holistic connection with, rather than separation and
alienation from, the planet itself.
Military organizations are cultures, and such cultures have
ingrained preferences and predilections for how and when to employ
force. This is the first study to use a comparative framework to
understand what happened with the U.S. military endeavor in Somalia
and the British effort in Bosnia up to 1995. Both regions were
potential quagmires, and no doctrine for armed humanitarian
operations during ongoing conflicts existed at the outset of these
efforts. After detailing the impact of military culture on
operations, Cassidy draws conclusions about which military cultural
traits and force structures are more suitable and adaptable for
peace operations and asymmetric conflicts. He also offers some
military cultural implications for the U.S. Army's ongoing
transformation. The first part of the study offers an in-depth
assessment of the military cultural preferences and characteristics
of the British and American militaries. It shows that Britain's
geography, its regimental system, and a long history of imperial
policing have helped embed a small-war predilection in British
military culture. This distinguishes it from American military
culture, which has exhibited a preference for the big-war paradigm
since the second half of the 19th century. The second part of the
book examines how cultural preferences influenced the conduct of
operations and the development of the first post-Cold War doctrine
for peace operations.
The Darfur conflict has presented the international community
with a number of challenges. How can the fighting be stopped in
Darfur? What can be done to save lives and help the two million
people displaced by the conflict? And how to help bring about
peace, while ensuring that the peace agreement for the Second
Sudanese Civil War (1983 - 2005) is implemented? Drawing on
original research, and tracing the history of international
responses to the conflicts in Sudan, Richard Barltrop investigates
what has determined the outcomes of international mediation and
relief in Sudan. In the process, he shows that Darfur must be seen
within the wider context of conflict in Sudan, and that lessons
should be drawn both for Sudan and for the effective practice of
conflict resolution.
Cultures of violence are characteristic of many countries in
sub-Saharan Africa and attempts to move towards cultures of peace
have often proved difficult and ineffectual. And yet, the wide
variations in levels of violence within and between countries show
that it is not inevitable; rather, it is the result of choices made
at individual, community and societal levels. This book examines
the potential of peace infrastructures as vehicles to strengthen
and spread progress towards cultures of peace. Peace
infrastructures vary hugely in sophistication and level. The
examples examined in this book range from tiny structures which
help resolve conflicts between individuals and within community
organisations, peace committees which serve local communities,
peace education and peace club programmes in schools, mediation
mechanisms to prevent election violence and to ministries of peace
to coordinate government and non-government efforts in peacemaking
and peacebuilding. The overall finding is that the development of
peace infrastructures at all levels has great potential to build
cultures of peace. 1. It is the only book available which documents
the experience and potential of nonviolence in post-independence
sub-Saharan Africa. 2. It makes a persuasive case for the
development of various peace infrastructures in order to make peace
sustainable. 3. It explains how strategic planning can be utilised,
both to bring about change and to institutionalise it.
The perceived impact of WTO law on the domestic regulatory autonomy
of WTO Members is increasingly becoming the subject of controversy
and debate. This book brings together in an integrated analytical
framework the main WTO parameters defining the interface between
the WTO and domestic legal orders, and examines how WTO
adjudicators, i.e. panels and the Appellate Body, have construed
those rules. A critical analysis identifies the flaws or weaknesses
of these quasi-judicial solutions and their potential consequences
for Members' regulatory autonomy. In an attempt to identify a more
proper balance between WTO law and regulatory autonomy, it develops
an innovative interpretation of the National Treatment obligations
in GATT and GATS, drawing upon compelling arguments from legal,
logic and economic theory.
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