1.

Definitions of peace studies

Peace studies is akin to medicine. It is interdisciplinary, applied, rigorous, has a values dimension (privilege, health), and
its findings are often ignored by those who would most benefit. But there is this difference: The need for medical schools and
medical training is recognized, the need for peace education and training is not. - Robert C. Johansen, Professor of Political
Science, Notre Dame University
An interdisciplinary field that looks at economic, political, and social systems and examines ideology, culture, and
technology as they relate to conflict and change. Career related activities include policy research, lobbying, public education,
petitioning and protest action, community service, and intercultural diplomacy. - Foreign Affairs Magazine
An interdisciplinary field that analyzes the causes of war, violence, and systematic oppression, and explores processes by
which conflict can be managed so as to maximize justice while minimizing violence. - Daniel Thomas
From its inception as a multidisciplinary field, Peace Studies has included the concepts, methods, and findings of diverse
disciplines while focusing on three general areas of study: 1) the causes and conditions that generate and sustain violent
conflict; 2) the mechanisms and models for the resolution of violent conflict; 3) and the norms, practices, and institutions for
building peace. - George Lopez of Notre Dame University's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies
Concept of peace studies
Peace studies is a broad, interdisciplinary activity, which includes research, reflection, and dialogue concerning the
causes of war, conflict, and violence and the orientation necessary to establish peace, conflict resolution, and nonviolence.
Scholars, researchers, or students from nearly any discipline can participate in the systematic and careful study of peace
issues.
Peace studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that draws on political science, sociology, history, anthropology,
theology, psychology, philosophy, and other fields to: 1) understand the causes of armed conflict; 2) develop ways to prevent
and resolve war, genocide, terrorism, gross violations of human rights; and 3) build peaceful and just systems and societies.
Beginnings - The foundations of the field were laid in Europe in the 1950s and '60s with the founding of several
peace research institutes. Some of the oldest and most prestigious peace research institutions include the Peace Research
Institute of Oslo; the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University in Sweden; and the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute. The first colleges in the U.S. to offer peace studies were associated with historic peace
churches (Quaker, Mennonite, and Church of the Brethren). The number of academic programs in peace studies grew
substantially in North America after the Vietnam War and in response to the nuclear arms buildup of the 1980s.
The field today - About 400 colleges and universities around the world offer peace studies programs of one kind or
another (only a few, including the Kroc Institute, also offer graduate degrees). In 1986, the Kroc Institute was founded to
provide leadership in peace studies, a growing field that is increasingly drawn upon by scholars, foreign ministries, the
United Nations, humanitarian agencies, civil society organizations, government, and the military. As a 50+-year-old
academic field, peace studies has a literature (books and journals), an active base of scholars, an established curriculum, and
a pedagogical tradition that includes classroom teaching, experiential learning, internships, and international study.
'Peace' defined - Within peace studies, peace is defined not just as the absence of war (negative peace), but also the
presence of the conditions for a just and sustainable peace, including access to food and clean drinking water, education for
women and children, security from physical harm, and other inviolable human rights (positive peace). This idea is rooted (isi
are originea) in the understanding that a just peace is the only sustainable (durabil) kind of peace; an approach that seeks
merely (o aborddare care urmareste doar) to stop the guns while ignoring the denial (negarea) of human rights and unjust
social and political conditions will not work in the long run.
This does not mean that all reflection is or must be done on a global level, for peace studies raises questions about
the relationships of men and women, of racial and cultural interactions, of ideological conflicts, about relationships in
businesses, communities, or families, about the uses of science and technology, about definitions of violence or nonviolence,
about the paradigms around which we organize our lives, and about the visions of alternative possibilities embodied in art
and literature, etc. One might argue, therefore, that peace studies as an activity involves moving to a new self-critical and
broadly human level of thought and consciousness in which we comprehend why it is so important to research, reflect on,
and discuss these issues.
Peace studies as an interdisciplinary field also appears concomitant with a worldwide encounter (ciocnire) with a
plethora of potentially lethal global problems or crises. We realize today that we had better begin thinking globally, and that
we had better begin thinking in terms of peace rather than war, because civilization is threatened from a number of angles in
ways that it never was before the 20th century. We are aware today of population explosion, on-going climate collapse,
diminishing natural resources (like fresh water, arable land, and rain-forests), worldwide pollution from both toxic and nontoxic wastes, and the threat of massive, globally devastating wars.