How do we measure peace, and whose peace are we measuring? This insightful, cutting-edge text, global in scope, addresses the wicked, thorny problem of peacebuilding evaluation by gathering contemporary research and best practices for assessing peacebuilding across multiple settings and challenges. Replete with evaluation design models, reflective thinking strategies, collaboration principles, data collection and analysis methods tools, continuous learning practices, and above all, authentic cases, the contributors parse the inherent challenges of conflict and peace. Students entering the field, whether as practitioners, researchers, donors, policymakers, or community organizers, will benefit from this book’s creative approaches, intellectual rigor, and practical examples of navigating and evaluating the political, personal, relational, and institutional challenges of measuring the effectiveness of peacebuilding efforts.

How do we measure peace, and whose peace are we measuring? This insightful, cutting-edge text, global in scope, addresses the wicked, thorny problem of peacebuilding evaluation by gathering contemporary research and best practices for assessing peacebuilding across multiple settings and challenges. Replete with evaluation design models, reflective thinking strategies, collaboration principles, data collection and analysis methods tools, continuous learning practices, and above all, authentic cases, the contributors parse the inherent challenges of conflict and peace. Students entering the field, whether as practitioners, researchers, donors, policymakers, or community organizers, will benefit from this book’s creative approaches, intellectual rigor, and practical examples of navigating and evaluating the political, personal, relational, and institutional challenges of measuring the effectiveness of peacebuilding efforts.

This inaugural volume in the Peter Lang Conflict and Peace series brings together works that richly depict the tensions between the promise and reality of applying communication principles and theories to conflict transformation and peacebuilding around the world and in the United States. Each chapter provides concrete examples of the doing of engaged scholarship in this context. Chapter contributors explain how their on-the-ground work has contributed to theorizing in communication and beyond as well as to conflict transformation and peacebuilding practice. Importantly, they also unearth the challenges in designing and implementing techniques and practices. As a collection, this edited volume underscores the communicative nature of conflict transformation and peacebuilding in particular, and engaged scholarship, in general. The collection also reveals tensions in doing engaged scholarship that are applicable to other contexts beyond conflict transformation and peacebuilding.

Central to a transformational approach to conflict is the idea that conflicts must be viewed as embedded within broader relational patterns, and social and discursive structures-and must be addressed as such. This implies the need for systemic change at generative levels, in order to create genuine transformation at the level of particular conflicts. Central, also, to this book is the idea that the origins of transformation can be momentary, or situational, small-scale or micro-level, as well as bigger and more systemic or macro-level. Micro-level changes involve shifts and meaningful changes in communication and related patterns that are created in communication between people. Such transformative changes can radiate out into more systemic levels, and systemic transformative changes can radiate inwards to more micro- levels. This book engages this transformative framework. Within this framework, this book pulls together current work that epitomizes, and highlights, the contribution of communication scholarship, and communication centered approaches to conflict transformation, in local/community, regional, environmental and global conflicts in various parts of the world. The resulting volume presents an engaging mix of scholarly chapters, think pieces, and experiences from the field of practice. The book embraces a wide variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, as well as transformative techniques and processes, including: narrative, dialogic, critical, cultural, linguistic, conversation analytic, discourse analytic, and rhetorical. This book makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing dialogue across and between disciplines and people on how to transform conflicts creatively, sustainably, and ethically.

Latino's increasing numbers and their uncertain voting behaviors have enticed Democrats and Republicans to actively court this demographic group, seeking their partisan identification. Through in-depth interviews with campaign strategists, a quantitative analysis of Latino-oriented television advertisements and a survey of Latino citizens, this project examines these efforts.

The authors of this edited volume present a case for why locally led peacebuilding matters and how it can have measurable and meaningful impact, even beyond preventing political violence. This book contributes a set of local voices to a global problem – how to prevent armed conflict and lead to lasting peace. The authors argue that locally led peacebuilding by community based organizations (both formal and informal) plays a crucial role in preventing violence and cultivating peace, one that is complementary to peacebuilding work done by local, state, and national governments within countries and between nation-states. Through the case studies presented, Locally Led Peacebuilding presents evidence for how and why locally led peacebuilding can prevent violence, and invites practitioners and scholars to critically examine the implications of locally led initiatives. From these examples, we all have an opportunity to learn about creating, implementing, researching, and funding locally led peacebuilding.

The authors of this edited volume present a case for why locally led peacebuilding matters and how it can have measurable and meaningful impact, even beyond preventing political violence. This book contributes a set of local voices to a global problem – how to prevent armed conflict and lead to lasting peace. The authors argue that locally led peacebuilding by community based organizations (both formal and informal) plays a crucial role in preventing violence and cultivating peace, one that is complementary to peacebuilding work done by local, state, and national governments within countries and between nation-states. Through the case studies presented, Locally Led Peacebuilding presents evidence for how and why locally led peacebuilding can prevent violence, and invites practitioners and scholars to critically examine the implications of locally led initiatives. From these examples, we all have an opportunity to learn about creating, implementing, researching, and funding locally led peacebuilding.

Latino's increasing numbers and their uncertain voting behaviors have enticed Democrats and Republicans to actively court this demographic group, seeking their partisan identification. Through in-depth interviews with campaign strategists, a quantitative analysis of Latino-oriented television advertisements and a survey of Latino citizens, this project examines these efforts.