Just Peace

Making a Just Peace: Human Rights & Domination Systems examines the quest for universal human rights as an appropriate -- even essential -- expression of Christian faithfulness.

The interplay between peace and justice plays an important role in any contemporary conflict. Peace can be described in a variety ways, as being 'negative' or 'positive', 'liberal' or 'democratic'. But what is it that makes a peace just? This book draws together leading scholars to study this concept of a 'just peace', analysing different elements of the transition from conflict to peace. The volume covers six core themes: conceptual approaches towards just peace, macro-principles, the nexus to security and stability, protection of persons and public goods, rule of law, and economic reform and accountability. Contributions engage with understudied issues, such as the pros and cons of robust UN mandates, the link between environmental protection and indigenous peoples, the treatment of illegal settlements, the feasibility of vetting practices, and the protection of labour rights in post-conflict economies. Overall, the book puts forward a case that just peace requires not only negotiation, agreement, and compromise, but contextual understandings of law, multiple dimensions of justice, and strategies of prevention. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Peace, Culture, and Violence is a collection of essays that examine the forms of violence that permeate everyday life and explore sources of non-violence by considering topics such as thug culture, language, hegemony, police violence, war, terrorism, gender, and anti-Semitism.

The rise of peace education both in scholarship and in practice has yielded numerous documents, websites, and publications with often divergent perspectives on what the field is, does, and means. The Encyclopedia of Peace Education provides a comprehensive overview of the scholarly developments in the field to date, so as to provide a common denominator for the various actors involved in advancing peace education internationally. Thus, this edited volume serves as an essential reference guide that traces the history and emergence of the field, highlights foundational concepts, contextualizes peace education practice across international and disciplinary borders, and suggests new directions for peace educators. From core conceptual perspectives to the moral and spiritual foundations of the field to the role of the United Nations, the Encyclopedia grounds peace education in a solid theoretical and practical framework through the writings of the field’s most renowned scholars. This volume will target undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars and practitioners working in international and non-governmental organizations in the field of peace education.

The man who many considered the peace candidate in the last election was transformed into a war president, writes bestselling author and leading academic Stephen Carter in The Violence of Peace, his new book decoding what President Barack Obama s views on war mean for America and its role in military conflict, now and going forward. As America winds down a war in Iraq, ratchets up another in Afghanistan, and continues a global war on terrorism, Carter delves into the implications of the military philosophy Obama has adopted over his first two years in office. Responding to the invitation that Obama himself issued in his Nobel address, Carter uses the tools of the Western tradition of just and unjust war to evaluate Obama s actions and words about military conflict, offering insight into how the president will handle existing and future wars, and into how his judgment will shape America s fate. Carter also explores war as a way to defend others from tyrannical regimes, which Obama has endorsed but not yet tested, and reveals the surprising ways in which some of the tactics Obama has used or authorized are more extreme than those of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Keeping the nation at peace, Carter writes, often requires battle, and this book lays bare exactly how America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are shaping the way Obama views the country's role in conflict and peace, ultimately determining the fate of the nation.

The state of Israel is often spoken of as a haven for the Jewish people, a place rooted in the story of a nation dispersed, wandering the earth in search of their homeland. Born in adversity but purportedly nurtured by liberal ideals, Israel has never known peace, experiencing instead a state of constant war that has divided its population along the stark and seemingly unbreachable lines of dissent around the relationship between unrestricted citizenship and Jewish identity. By focusing on the perceptions and histories of Israel’s most marginalized stakeholders—Palestinian Israelis, Arab Jews, and non-Israeli Jews—Atalia Omer cuts to the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict, demonstrating how these voices provide urgently needed resources for conflict analysis and peacebuilding. Navigating a complex set of arguments about ethnicity, boundaries, and peace, and offering a different approach to the renegotiation and reimagination of national identity and citizenship, Omer pushes the conversation beyond the bounds of the single narrative and toward a new and dynamic concept of justice—one that offers the prospect of building a lasting peace.

This work presents a longitudinal study, of greater than 10 years, of all the major peace building initiatives with an educational encounter-based approach in Israel and Palestine, during times of relative peace and times of acute violence (1993-2008). Involving various fields, this research contributes to the broad fields of peace and conflict resolution, social movements, and organizational studies.

A Cultural History of Peace presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. The set of six volumes covers over 2500 years of history, charting the evolving nature and role of peace throughout history. This volume, A Cultural History of Peace in the Modern Age, explores peace in the period from 1920 to the present. As with all the volumes in the illustrated Cultural History of Peace set, this volume presents essays on the meaning of peace, peace movements, maintaining peace, peace in relation to gender, religion and war and representations of peace. A Cultural History of Peace in the Modern Age is the most authoritative and comprehensive survey available on peace in the twentieth and twentieth century.

This book presents a clear and comprehensive introduction to the diverse and wide-ranging ethical aspects of war and peace. In a fair-minded and engaging analysis, Nigel Dower introduces the different ethical theories in traditional and contemporary debates ? realism, just war theory and pacifism ? and subjects each to detailed critical scrutiny. He frames these debates within a related but distinct framework of three approaches to international relations, namely skeptical realism, internationalism and cosmopolitanism. The book also identifies and evaluates two further important perspectives, militarism and pacificism. Whilst analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the different outlooks, Dower makes a strong case for a cosmopolitan pacificist position, arguing that we need to see peace in more positive terms than merely the absence of war. The book uses a wide range of examples from across the world and includes discussion of nuclear weapons, new wars, terrorism, humanitarian intervention and human security. Written as a textbook for students who have no prior knowledge of philosophical ethics, The Ethics of War and Peace is designed to help students understand and see the relevance of how a professional philosopher can engage ethically with the world. Each chapter contains a helpful survey of its contents at the beginning and a set of questions for individual reflection or group discussion at the end. This book will be essential reading for students of security studies, conflict resolution, peace studies, philosophy and political theory and anyone interested in the ethical questions which arise from the study of war and peace.

Ronald Young's central thesis is that from 1981-86 Israeli and Arab leaders signaled on several occasions their willingness to move toward Israeli-Arab peace, but the Reagan administration did not respond to their appeals. The Bush administration would do well to read and learn from this illuminating document. Young and his wife, Carol Jensen, served as Middle East representatives of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) from 1982- 85. AFSC's presence in the region began in 1949. Young notes several key opportunities that were missed, including Washington's failure to oppose unequivocally Israel's invasion of Lebanon; the failure of the Reagan administration to capitalize on the president's landslide victory and the resulting reduced domestic political pressure by implementing new initiatives; and the US propensity to act unilaterally when multilateral proposals, including working more effectively through the United Nations, could have been more productive. -- From http://www.jstor.org (Sep. 23, 2016).

Peace through tourism refers to a body of analysis which suggests tourism may contribute to cross-cultural understanding, tolerance and even peace between communities and nations. What has been largely missing to date is a sustained critique of the potential and capacities of tourism to foster global peace. This timely volume fills this void, by providing a critical look at tourism in order to ascertain its potential as a social force to promote human rights, justice and peace. It presents an alternative characterisation of the possibilities for peace through tourism: embedding an understanding of the phenomenon in a deep grounding in multi-disciplinary perspectives and envisioning tourism in the context of human rights, social justice and ecological integrity. Such an approach engages the ambivalence and dichotomy of views held on peace tourism by relying on a pedagogy of peace. It integrates a range of perspectives from scholars from many disciplinary backgrounds, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), tourism industry operators and community, all united by an interest in critical approaches to understanding peace through tourism. Additionally diverse geo-political contexts are represented in this book from the USA, India, Japan, Israel, Palestine, Kenya, the Koreas, Indonesia, East Timor and Indigenous Australia. Written by leading academics, this groundbreaking book will provide students, researchers and academics a sustained critique of the potential and capacities of tourism to foster global peace.

War, Peace, and Reconciliation invites Christians and the churches into a conversation over how to think about war from a standpoint in faith. It asks how reconciliation, which is central to Christian life and doctrine, can engage the realities of war without surrendering its fundamental affirmations. It defines these realities politically by discussing the meanings of power, peace as a particular organization of power, and the international system. The study of war and politics is unavoidable, as is the engagement with reconciliation, because all human existence and activity exist in the context of the gracious work of God to renew and reconcile the fallen creation. The inquiry is theocentric and christocentric. It culminates in a call to the churches to examine all their practices in the light of this perspective.

The Israeli peace movement has been in decline since the 2000s. In particular, the liberal Zionist groups, who call for peace for the sake of the security and continuity of Israel, have become paralysed and almost voiceless since the second Intifada. However, despite the stagnation around the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, this book argues that other important groups have emerged that present new ways to challenge the status quo. These are radical groups that act in solidarity with the Palestinians and human rights organisations and whose aim is to reveal the realities of the occupation and hold the government to account. Leonie Fleishmann argues that these groups have been, and remain, the agenda setters, pushing the more moderate groups to mobilise more quickly and encouraging them to take up more confrontational ideas. Using social movements theory, and based on 50 interviews and participant observation, this book sheds light on contemporary Israeli peace activism.

Bringing together scholars and educators based in Myanmar, the USA, the UK, Denmark, and Thailand, this book presents new perspectives and research on the struggle for social justice and peace in Myanmar at this critical juncture. It shows how actors from diverse backgrounds and regions of Myanmar are drawing from their identities, evoking their agency, and using critical pedagogy to advance social justice and peace. The chapters provide the compelling life stories of the authors, specific examples of what they are doing, and insights of how their work might be applied to other contexts. The topics discussed include addressing structural violence, peace curriculum development, identity-based conflict, teaching the history of the country, promoting inclusion, civic education, critical pedagogy, teacher agency, and agendas of research funding for peacebuilding. The foreword and afterword, written by well-known scholars of Myanmar, address the relevance and importance of the book vis-a-vis the current social and political crisis following the February 2021 military coup.

These are the stories of 365 women, men and children worldwide who have acted as peacemakers during the last 2500 years. They include human rights and antiwar activists, scientists and artists, educators and scholars, songwriters and poets, film directors and authors, diplomats and economists, environmentalists and mystics, prophets and policymakers. All sacrified for the dream of peace, some even died for it.