One anthropologist’s answer to Glenn D. Paige’s question challenging peace studies

ABSTRACT

Glenn D. Paige pioneered in the revolutionary development of a far-reaching transformation of science, academia, and society from a killing to a nonkilling worldview, values, and attitudes. For six decades, anthropology has been accumulating scientific empirical evidence and rational arguments demonstrating that nonkilling societies exist, thereby rebutting the simplistic biological determinist myth that human nature inevitably and universally generates violence and war. Nevertheless, Hobbessians persist in their echo chamber advertising and celebrating the innate depravity of the human species as apologists for war and peace resisters. This systemic bias operates in synergy with the American industrial-military-media-academic complex and culture, the latter exemplified by a revealing comparison of war and football. With great intellectual courage and creative thinking, Paige critically challenges the anachronistic Hobbesian paradigm and offers a far more compelling and positive alternative for sustainable peace in the future.     

Nonviolence as teacher education: a qualitative study in challenges and possibilities

This paper explores the challenges and possibilities of teaching nonviolence in teacher education. Using qualitative teacher research, this paper discusses teacher education students’ responses to the notion of nonviolence and how to create beneficial pedagogical conditions for students to learn nonviolence and its meanings for education. The data were collected from three graduate classes that, to different degrees, addressed the role of nonviolence in education. Three shifts in students’ understanding of nonviolence as a result of their learning are identified: the shift from a narrow to a broad understanding, the shift from a passive view to a proactive view, and the shift from looking outside to looking inside and engaging in emotional work. The pedagogical conditions that facilitated these shifts are also discussed, including strategies for engaging students’ inner work, creating experiential relationships with the other, and transforming classroom relational dynamics. This study also suggests the need not to approach violence and nonviolence as binary but to approach nonviolence as a daily practice to continuously unlearn violence and promote nonviolent relationships. Implications of this study for teacher education are discussed last.     

2030年可持续发展议程下“人的安全”及其治理

2030年可持续发展议程作为一项新的全球发展计划,其目标是构建免于恐惧和暴力的和平、公正、包容的社会,其核心是消除全球贫困与促进包容性发展,包括消除贫困、饥饿以及应对气候变化等内容。该议程的主体内容体现了联合国所倡导的“人的安全”理念,这一理念强调各种威胁的相互关联性,人的安全和人的发展是同一事物相辅相成的,这种治理观要求广泛借助联合国系统,并且顾及地方、国家、区域和国际范围内各级公私部门行为体的特点和资源,拓展一种由各种利益攸关方组成的综合框架,其内容涉及粮食安全、气候安全、环境安全、社会安全、反恐、移民等重要的传统与非传统安全议题。其中,气候变化、资源消耗、南北差距等问题是可持续发展难以实现的重要动因。上述安全议程同时体现了各种广泛的经济、社会和环境关联性。因此,建构全球“人的安全”治理机制需以联合国为核心,并形成多层治理、建构广泛的国际伙伴关系,以实现联合国所倡议的全球可持续和平愿景。     

The everyday peace project: an innovative approach to peace pedagogy

A critical task for peace pedagogy is to challenge views of peace as primarily responses to declared war. Crisis-based politics tend to focus on exceptional situations and fail to capture the entire spectrum of violence. Premised on the idea that peace cannot be understood in isolation of larger structural problems, this paper proposes the concept of ‘everyday peace’ as a framework for peace education. Drawing from a pedagogical initiative, we examine how students engage with the concept of everyday peace and present our findings in three related domains: (1) definition of everyday peace, (2) application of everyday peace principles and (3) role of collaboration in everyday peace approaches. Our analysis underscored two important themes in participants’ definitions of everyday peace: (1) peace as a value-based praxis and (2) individual-level and systemic components of everyday peace. Applying these principles to a violent event in the local community, participant responses emphasized compassion, cultures of peace and the need to draw reflexive, meaningful connections between local and global contexts. The participants also outlined the synergistic role of collaboration in everyday peacebuilding. We discuss our findings in relation to extant research and consider implications of an everyday peace framework for holistic peace education.     

Looking beyond the economy: Pussy Riot and the Kremlin's voting coalition

The arrest of the protest punk band Pussy Riot (PR) in March 2012 and the subsequent prosecution of three band members pose a significant puzzle for political science. Although PR's performances presented a coherent alternative to the Putin regime's image of Russian reality, it was unlikely that the discordant music and crude lyrics of their art protest would inspire Russian society to take to the streets. Yet, the regime mounted a very visible prosecution against the three young women. We argue that the trial marked a shift in the Kremlin's strategy to shape state–society relations. In the face of declining economic conditions and social unrest, the PR trial encapsulated the Kremlin's renewed focus on three related mechanisms to insure social support: coercion, alliance building, and symbolic politics. The PR trial afforded the Kremlin an important opportunity to simultaneously redefine its loyal constituency, secure the Church–state relationship, and stigmatize the opposition.     

War-torn countries,natural resources,emerging-power investors and the UN development system

The unsustainable aid dependency of war-torn countries – most of which are rich in natural resources – makes it imperative to start gradually replacing aid with foreign direct investment (fdi) and exports. This article identifies ways in which stakeholders – governments, the international community, including the UN development system, foreign investors, and local communities – could work together in a ‘win-win’ situation. Most crucial is avoiding conflict-insensitive policies that fuel discord by putting governments and foreign companies, often from emerging markets, in direct confrontation with local communities. The control of natural resources is often a root cause of conflict, and the latter’s exploitation can become a major challenge as wars end. The peculiarities of war-torn countries are discussed along with the specific impediments to attracting fdi into the exploitation of natural resources. An effective and fair legal framework is necessary to ensure that investors do not operate as ‘enclaves’, creating new conflicts.     

Territories of peace: alter-territorialities in Colombia’s San José de Apartadó Peace Community

ABSTRACT

Scholars are increasingly re-theorizing territory beyond the nation-state given Indigenous and Afro-descendant groups’ demands for ‘territory’ as they confront land grabbing in Latin America. Yet alternative territorialities are not limited to such ethnic groups. Based on 16 months of ethnographic research between 2011 and 2016, I explore the relational territoriality produced by a peasant ‘peace community’ in San José de Apartadó, Colombia. By tracing the collective political subject produced by the Peace Community’s active production of peace through a set of spatial practices, places and values, which include massacre commemorations, food sovereignty initiatives and Indigenous–peasant solidarity networks, this contribution presents a conceptual framework for analyzing diverse territorial formations.     

Mestizaje,Córdoba's patria chica: beyond the myth of black disappearance in Argentina

This article examines the ‘disappearance of the black population’ by moving beyond the more traditional explanation of the blanqueamiento (whitening) movement at the end of the nineteenth century. In shifting the temporal framework to the republican period, 1820–1853, a more colorful explanation arises to address how the black population was first lightened which would lead to it being whitened during the second half of the nineteenth century. Ultimately because of mestizaje (racial mixture), blacks and other castas (a person who was not a Spaniard and often of a mixed racial heritage) became pardos. Pardos at first included those of mixed heritage with an elite status among other castas in the colonial period. As Córdoba joined the nation-building process, pardo encompassed all people of color, especially the growing, free black population. In order to explain this process, I traced African descendants who were originally labeled negro and changed to pardo in the 1813, 1822, and 1832 city censuses     

Interfaith dialogue at peace museums in Kenya

This paper makes a case for further studies on the contribution of peace museums to interfaith dialogue debate. Based on our experiences as museum curators, teachers and peace researchers and a review of published materials, we argue that there is a lacuna in the study on the contribution of peace museums to the interfaith dialogue debate. The development of community peace museums in Kenya,, in predominantly Christian communities, and the use of traditional religio-cultural artefacts in peace education and peace building is a case of interfaith dialogue worth documenting. With religious conflict threatening to tear the fabric of society apart, the question of interfaith dialogue is now paramount in the search for sustainable peace and development.     

The promotion of peace education through guides in peace museums. A case study of the Kyoto Museum for World Peace,Ritsumeikan University

This paper focuses on how peace education at a peace museum is promoted by a volunteer guide service for visitors. Peace museums are places where many materials related to war and peace history are on display. To support the learning experience of museum visitors, many peace museums in Japan provide a volunteer guide service. The Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan University, started such a service more than 20 years ago. A citizens’ group, called Friends for Peace, is in charge of the museum guide activities in cooperation with the museum. This article explains the purposes and nature of the service, and also reports on a survey of similar services offered by other peace museums in Japan.