ED 293 732

AUTHORTITLE

REPORT NOPUB DATENOTEAVAILABLE FROM

PUB TYPE

EDRS PRICEDESCRIPTORS

IDENTIFIERS

ABSTRACT

DOCUMENT RESUME

SO 017 743

O'Connell, James; Curle, AdamPeace with Work To Do: The Academic Study ofPeace.ISBN-0-907582-77-X8555p.St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY10010 ($4.95).Reports Descriptive (141)

MF01/PC03 Plus Postage.*Conflict Resolution; Higher Education; HumanRelations; *Peace*Academic Discourse; *Peace Studies

This document contains two lectures concerning thenature and status of peace studies. Adam Curle, in "The Scope andDilemmas of Peace Studies" presents: (1) the study of peace andrelated subjects; (2) diversities and contradictions in peacestudies; (3) personal interpretations; (4) teaching peace studies;and (5) moral and practical dilemmas. He urges people to recognizemankind's common traits and to eliminate or diminish those issuesthat are divisive. In "Towards an Understanding of Concepts in theStudy of Peace," James O'Connell examines the linkage of conceptsconcerning peace, justice, and freedom and considers coexistence inthe contemporary world in terms of the community of nations,technology, and arms control. Ideas and attitudes about the natureand extent of peace studies in academic environments are explored,and peace is identified as a subject that civilization cannot affordto ignore. (JHP)

***********************************************************************

Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be madefrom the original document.

***********************************************************************

Peace withWorkto DoThe Academic Study of Peace

James O'ConnellAdam Curie

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONOffice of Educational Research and Improvement

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATIONCENTER (ERIC)

S/This document has been reproduced asreceived from the person or Organizationoriginating it.

O Minor changes have been made to improvereproduction quality.

Points of view or opinions stated m this docu-ment do not necessarily represent off IciaiOERi position or policy.

"PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THISMATERIAL H BEEN GRANTED BY

m ERG ///9 HA/

TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCESINFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)."

2

Peace with Work to DoThe Academic Study of Peace

James O'Connelland

Adam Curie

BERG

Berg Publishers Ltd24, Binawood Avenue, Leamington Spa,Warwickshire CV32 5SQ, UK51 Washington Street, Dover,New Hampshire 03820, USA

First Published 1985© Berg Publishers 1985

All rights reserved. No part of this publicationmay be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without theprior permission of Berg Publishers Ltd

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

O'Connell, JamesPeace with work to do: the academic studyof peace.1. PeaceI. Title II. Curie, Adam327.1'72 JX1944

Library of Commis Cataloging in Publication Data

O'Connell, James, 1925-Peace with work to do.

1. Peace Study and teachingI. Curie, Adam. II. TitleJX1904.5.026 1985 327.1'72'07 85-11191

ISBN 0-907582-77-X (pbk.)

Printed in Great Britain by Industrial Press (Coventry) Ltd

4

Contents

Introduction James O'Connell 1

The Scope and Dilemmas of PeaceStudies Adam Curie 9

Towards an Understanding of Concepts in theStudy of 1=:,ace James O'Connell 29

5

Introduction

. . . and when Peace here does house,He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,

He comes to brood and sit.

G.M. Hopkins, Peace

Few would deny the centrality of the issue of peace inour time. Those who differ with one another aboutpeace do so less in terms of peace itself than in termsof values, notably justice and freedom, that areanalytically and socially linked with peace. For suchreasons the painful paradox continues that every-body favours peace; and yet peace remains a contro-versial term. It is a controversial term especially forthose who believe that many advocates of peace havenot properly weighed the claims of justice or wouldbarter freedom for the sake of an empty and fragilepeace. For related reasons those who remain uneasyabout much advocacy of peace resist also the endeav-our to bring in the academic study of peace.

If peace has been a central preoccupation in West-ern Europe, at least since the turn of the century,why has the structured study of peace not comeabout until recently? Three main factors seem to meto explain this lateness. Firstly, the social sciencesthemselves amongst which peace studies is bestclassed are late-comers: political science was nobetter developed by 1900 than when Aristotle left itover 2,000 years before; sociology and in somemeasure economics has only slowly built up itshouse and more slowly again put it in some order.Secondly, political science dealt in good measurewith the basic issues of peace, not least the orderinternal to the state as well as the order betweenstates, the latter order specifically being studied bythe new discipline of international relations which

1

6

emerged at the end of the First World War; andthough its approach to peace was narrow and under-developed, political science appeared to make a separ-ate study of peace unnecessary. Thirdly, rulinggroups have traditionally been concerned to promotesecurity, and often dominance, through military ca-pacity. Such attitudes made the study of peace aswell as the advocacy of peace look marginal: peacewas something to be pursued by those outside themain institutions of society and by those who helddifferent values from the ruling groups; and oftenthose who argued the cause of peace held themselvesapart from such institutions and proclaimed valuesthat looked impractical to those with the charge ofsocieties. However, in the wake of the Second WorldWar the situation began to change. It was then thatthe subject of peace studies began to be developed,and there is a certain parallel with the emergence ofthe science of international relations after 1918. BertMing, the founder of peace research in Holland,called it 'the science of survival'. Survival became aglobal issue in the years after 1945.

During the 1960s members of the Society of Friendsbegan to search for a British university that would setup a chair to study peace. They were unsuccessfuluntil an approach to Bradford in the early 1970s led asympathetic Vice-Chancellor, Ted Edwards, and hisdeputy, Robert McKinlay, to convince their univer-sity senate that the project was worthwhile andshould be accepted. Once the university had agreedto the project, members of the Society of Friends,operating through the Quaker Peace Studies Trust,raised funding for the chair in the space of ten weeks.The University of Bradford added its own share andthe chair was established in 1973. In those followingyears during which university expansion was stillpossible the university built a department around thechair: the School of Peace Studies.

Once the chair and ale department were founded,the next task was to promote the subject as well as toconvince academic peers and others that peace couldbe a proper subject of university work. While othercountries had much earlier accepted the worth of theacademic study of peace the United Kingdom was

ii 72

coining relatively late to such acceptance.* AdamCur le's inaugural lecture sought to argue a place inthe university for the venture and sketched ways inwhich peace studies as a subject could make a wayforward. My lecture, presented eight years later,takes a certain development for granted and deals ingood measure with ideas that were architectonic inthe development of the area study that peace studiesis.

It would be misleading not to admit that theSchool, operating within the tightly-knit organisationof British university work, did not have initial prob-lems in working out its degree structure, courses andassessment system. Moreover, in elaborating teach-ing and research that were heavily applied it was noteasy early on to separate academic work on peacefrom activism about peace in the minds of students.The latter tended to be impatient with theory andanxious for action. Only as the years went by did theconviction crystallise in the School that the true ac-tivism of university work is scholarship.

At the present moment the School's degree workfalls into three broad categories: an undergraduatedegree (BA); a taught Master's course (MA); andresearch leading to degrees (MPhil and PhD). Itseems useful to add here a sketch of the main catego-ries into which the teaching and research concentra-tions of both staff and students of the School broadlyfit.

Peace history, Exponents of a subject need to explore the history oftheory and its thought. Moreover, the long history of peacefulmethods action and pacifist movements offers material for

reflection. As yet this area is barely explored, unlike

*Some examples of earlier institutions are: The Center for Researchon Conflict Resolution (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 1959);International Peace Research Institute (PRIO, Oslo, 1959); Polemo-logical Institute (University of Groningen, 1961); Stockholm Inter-national Peace Research Institute (SIPRI, Stockholm, 1966);Canadian Peace Research Institute (Oakville, Ontario, 1961). Oftensuch research institutions when linked to universities introducedcourses in peace studies.

3

other social reform movements, and in stark contrastto the detailed histories of wars and battles. Not onlyhistorical description but philosophical analysisneeds to be brought to bear on the theory of a 'justwar' and on pacifist views. In this connection too theattitudes of the world's great religions earn a place inour consideration of theologies of peace. The studyof non-violent methods of social change in contem-porary society as well as the roles of peace organis-ations merit examination. In this context as wellproblems and challenges raised by peace educationare taken up. In concluding this section it is essentialto say that theoretical and ethical enquiry as well aspolitical and sociological considerations on non-violence have a certain primacy in the work of theSchool, as they have in the struggle for peace. Unlesslonger-term reflection as well as action can be under-taken on changing traditionally received bellical atti-tudes and values, it will not be possible for peaceideas to have a dissolving effect on many aspects ofsocial and individual violence. And if bellical attitudesand values, inherent in previous ages of human psy-chology, are not modified it will be impossible toinsulate indefinitely such attitudes and values fromcontemporary technology and nuclear weaponswith consequences too fearful to contemplate fully.

Nuclear and If peace theory has a certain primacy in the School thenon-nuclear nuclear issue has a psychological saliency. Unless thedefence nuclear problem is resolved there will not be any

other problem to resolve. It is also an issue that willremain acute and dangerous during the next twogenerations of humankind, at the very least. For suchreasons teaching and research deal with the polaris-ation of the two super-powers and the defence policiesof the British and other European powers as well asthe roles of the non-Soviet members of the WarsawPact. Attention is also given to the issue of nuclearproliferation which may well contain the most imme-diately destructive threat to peace. The School, ac-cepting that countries need to be reassured aboutmilitary precautions for security, has concerned itself

94

Relationsbetweeneconomicallydeveloped anddevelopingsocieties

Industrialisedsocieties

with alternatives to nuclear defence. It has organisedalso work on the politics of arms control negotiationsand disarmament.

In a world grown technologically small and in whichsocial thinking has not yet come to terms with thenew closeness of global neighbours peace studies isconcerned to do forward research on relations be-tween the world's regions. Peace, justice and devel-opment form the strands of such research whichinclude the use and allocation of energy resources,markets for commodities, the export of technologyand the sharing and education of skills. Politics,sociology and economics come together in much ofthis work. Developing societies are also studied intheir own right as well as in relation to other socie-ties. Issues such as the legitimacy of state authority,the work of government and public administration,the ideologies of development, the role of public andprivate enterprise, competitive ethnic modernisationand the reactions of primordial communities to rapidsocial change provide teaching topics and researchopportunities.

There is an abundance of teaching and research top-ics on industrially advanced societies. The problemfor peace studies is to make a realistic choice. Threeareas have effectively been taken up within theSchool. The first is race/ethnic relations in Europeancountries. The second is the problem cf industrial/social class divisions as well as the roots of class/industrial conflict in 1 country like Britain; and herethe most important contribution of peace researchmay be to develop the positive aspects of peace bylooking at worker/management participation policies,the effect of forms of consultation and shareddecision-making, and worker collectives/cooperatives/common ownership. The third area is that of the con-version of arms industries into industries for otherpurposes. Here peace in the industrial system may belinked with broader disarmament strategies.

10

Regions inconflict

Unfortunately various regions and countries providefascinating areas of study: the war between Iraq andIran in the context of oil revenues and religious andsocial change; the many facets of conflict in the In-dian sub-continent as well as in Afghanistan and SriLanka; the revolutionary movements in Latin America;the intractable Arab/Israeli contestation as well as theLebanese civil war; communal/ethnic crises in Cyprusand in Northern Ireland; civil wars in Angola, Mozam-bique and Zimbabwe; and, not !east, the simmeringthreat to peace in reactions to the apartheid policies ofSouth Africa. Themes such as social identity, fair accessto political power and economic resources, respect forhuman rights, and trauma of social change run as aleitmotiv through such research. In the School we haveconcentrated our efforts on the Arab/Israeli conflict andon the troubles in Northern Ireland. But we haveresearch being undertaken on the revolution in Iran.

The unifying outlook in the School is the concernfor peace. But this concern is meant to be structuredintellectually, related to the traditional academic disci-plines, and grounded empirically. The ideas andvalues of peace, justice and freedom pervade thework of the School which is manifestly not value-free. The work is however meant to be carried onwith integrity and fairness; otherwise it would failnot only to meet the requirements of academic rigourbut also not meet crucial conditions for deepeningunderstanding and building trust between personsand groups.

Let me finish this introduction by saying that, apartfrom academics rooted in an unbudging status quoand those upset by the belief that peace studies hasfallen into the hands of their political opponents (Ihave no desire to say that these groups may not bedisproportionately numerous), there is acceptance ofthe intellectual study of peace. Increasingly the situ-ation is that it is rare to find a developed country thatdoes not have an academic unit concerned with thesubject.* The most relevant and challenging academic

'Almost every issue of the International Peace Research Newsletter(the quarterly journal of the International Peace Research Associ-

1I, 6

problem now is to go on improving teaching andresearch. The truth is that there is no escaping theproblem of peace in our time. Minds have beenconcentrated on the issue by the technical develop-ment of weapons in the nuclear age and a concomi-tant failure to develop cooperative relations betweenstates. We know now that we will be destroyed ifpeace breaks down between the super-powers. Weknow also that within two or three generations thenuclear capacity available only to the super-powers atpresent is likely to become the possession of manymore powers. Moreover, there seems little likelihoodin the foreseeable future that defence can cope withthe potentialities of attack. In these circumstances thenuclear issue and the means needed to resolve itretain for us and our contemporaries an excruciatingurgency. For that reason alone there would be anextraordinary failure by academics an ultimatetrahison des clercs were they not to undertake asystematic study of the conditions of contemporarypeace. Yet it is also necessary to insist that the studyof peace ranges much more broadly than the nuclearissue or international politics. And in the longer runnuclear war may become avoidable only in so far asgroups begin to grasp the general worth of non-violent attitudes and come to realise that the costs ofinter-state and inter-group violence are higher thanhas tended to be traditionally received.

ation, the main professional body in the field) contains notices onnew peace research institutes and new peace studies courses.Recent establishments range from the Austrian Institute for PeaceResearch (under official auspices) to the New Zealand Foundationfor Peace Studies. This year (1985) the United Nations Universityfor Peace in Costa Rica is receiving its first students. The officiallyendorsed and funded US Academy of Peace is likewise about tobecome operative. There is a distinctly provincial cast to polemicsin Britain against the principle of peace studies as separate frommore genuine concern about how the area should be researchedand taught.

7

12

The Scope and Dilemmas ofPeace StudiesAdam Curie

Introduction Since I shall be dealing with what is, for many, alittle-known and perhaps mysterious or nebuloussubject, T have felt it necessary to cover a wider fieldthan is necessary in most inaugural lectures, wherethe speaker wishes to deal with a particular facet of asubject whose lineaments are in general well-known.For the sake of clarity, I have divided my talk intoseveral sections dealing with different aspects of thefield. I shall first attempt to locate peace studies in thewider range of related studies. Next, I shall attemptto define what is an admittedly, but I think healthily,diverse subject but then so are many others morestrongly established. From this act of reportage I shalloutline my own approach to peace studies. Then Imove on to a discussion of how all these ideas arewoven into a teaching programme, and what sorts ofcareer our students may reasonably hope to followafter graduation. This leads to a rather difficult con-sideration of the moral and practical dilemmas inwhich the student of peace may be placed. I end on anote of optimism that this university is setting aprogressive pattern for others to follow.

The study of It is, perhaps, wise to begin with an attempt topeace and identify the position of peace studies within the

. related subjects framework of other academic studies and disciplines.I am sometimes asked whether peace studies consti-tutes a separate discipline and, if so, what body ofknowledge it is founded upon. Let me deal with thesecond point later, for during the course of my lec-ture I shall be attempting to define the types of knowl-edge which I think may be thought of as comprisingpeace studies. With regard to the first question, as to

9

1r

whether or not peace studies be thought of as a disci-pline, I have to admit that I am more interested inproblems, both intellectual and practical, than in defin-ing disciplines.

These, it seems to me, were created not by naturebut by academics in order to demarcate spheres ofintellectual interest, and are now institutionalized inthe form of departments, faculties and so on. This, ofcourse,has been necessary in order to prevent chaosbut we have to be flexible. As knowledge advances,and as we are presented with fresh problems, we puttogether what had previously been separate, hencebiochemistry or social psychology, or we separate outof previously unitary subjects certain specialisms,such as genetics or molecular biology, which haveevolved to the status of virtually distinct branches ofstudy. In order to deal with the needs and difficultiesof the day, many of which in their complexity cutacross a number of these useful if artificial disciplinaryboundaries, we have such subjects as environmentalsciences, management, international relations, plan-ning, human purposes and the like, many of whichare taught in this University. These branches of studyhave arisen because existing disciplines, as definedand taught, were not quite able to encompass them.Thus, international relations evolved a few decadesago because history, politics, international law andeconomics could not individually throw sufficientlight on issues which were widely recognised to be ofgreat importance. All of them were relevant, but newways of combining them in focusing on particularissues had to be sought. Much the same could, Ithink, be said of peace studies. Whether or not,however, any particular field of intellectual endeav-our qualifies as a discipline strikes me as relativelyunimportant, provided that it is carried out withintellectual rigor, offers new and valid insights andgeneralisations, and has some practical significance.

Peace studies is, in fact, only the newest among arange of related studies. These comprise, amongothers, international relations (to which I have justreferred), conflict research, war studies, and strategicstudies, not to speak of the less easily defined workof the members of the various peace movements

.1 410

which, as for example in the case of MahatmaGandhi, Martin Luther King and Dom Helder Ca-mara, have had a considerable intellectual content.

A few rough definitions may assist us in under-standing this mosaic of relationships. War studies(apart from the more specific techniques of warmak-ing studied in staff colleges or defence colleges) in-volves the examination of how wars arise, how ingeneral they are conducted, how they may hebrought to an end and their impact on the social andeconomic fabric.

Strategic studies are concerned with many of thesame issues as war studies, but with the emphasis onwider strategic issues; geopolitics, the balance ofpower, economic warfare and the use of strategicweapons.

In conflict studies the stress is on the mutual reac-tion of people and groups in conflict situations, andhow this may be modified. It is definitely not con-fined to international conflict but deals equally withindustrial, social, racial, and other sorts of conflict.Conflict studies have been developed by some withgreat statistical sophistication, and various aspects ofgame theory are often employed. In general, conflictstudies emphasise only one stage of what I term (as Ishall shortly explain) peacemaking: the stage of nego-tiation or bargaining.

International relations deal, obviously, with therelationships between states, with diplomacy, inter-national law, with the international order and theway in which it is maintained and, of course, withinternational conflict and the processes of internationalpeacemaking.

The separation of these fields from each other andfrom peace studies is not precise and all of them atleast in certain aspects are facets of or are con-nected with each other. Peace studies and conflictstudies are, perhaps particularly close (for example,as illustrated by the name of the Richardson Institutefor Conflict and Peace Research in which, so far as Iam aware, no precise effort is made to separate thesefunctions).

Peace studies, at least as I define the field,. differsfrom these others in various ways. The focus is, as

11

15

the term implies, upon peace, that is to say upon arelationship between individuals, groups, nations, oreven larger units, which is based on cooperation. Itanalyses those conditions in which, instead of coop-eration, there is mutual hostility and violence, andseeks to discover techniques by which these relation-ships may be changed into peaceful ones.

However, before proceeding further with an exam-ination of the nature of peace studies I would like todefine what, in my opinion, the field does not in-clude. Some would perhaps disagree with me andthis illustrates that fact that there is some confusionabout the word 'peace'. This theme will recur duringmy lecture, so I will only deal with it briefly at thispoint. To my mind the study of peace is not the studyof pacification, of suppressing dissent, of maintain-ing the status quo however painful it may be to theless privileged. Some would maintain that peace wassimply the absence of overt violence, which can do asmuch harm as more open sorts and which may, onoccasion, be employed in the name of maintainingpeace or law and order. Nor, on the other hand, do Ibelieve that peace studies can be based on a kind ofsentimental attempt to make everyone be friends,without correcting genuine injustices or conflicts ofinterest between them. The student of peace, forexample, would not attempt to reconcile the masterand the slave without having first worked to abolishthe practice of slavery.

'Nor do I include in my definition of peace studiesapproaches which are mainly philosophical or psycho-logical. I admit that in doing this I am putting up oneof those artificial barriers which circumscribe all dis-ciplines or fields of study, but I believe that in thiscase, at this stage, it is necessary, in order that we cangrapple effectively with a field which is already verydiverse and complex. It has been put to me by seriouspeople that the only peace is the peace of God, thatthat is indeed a peace, as it is stated in the gospels,which passes all understanding and which, althoughsome of us may believe in it perso... Ay, it would beimpossible to introduce into the form of academicenquiry suggested by our principal foci of interest.Somewhat in the same vein, a young man asked me

12

recently whether there could be any peace, unlessindividuals had peace of mind. This is indeed aninteresting, but ambiguous and complex question:some of the most saintly and committed personshave been tormented inwardly while, on the otherhand, I have known of people who are reputed tohave enjoyed great peace after having committedsome atrocious act of sadism or revenge. This is notto deny the importance of the concept of peace ofmind, but simply to say that its study woulu take usinto unexplored avenues which might lead us awayfrom what I conceive as our main problems andpurposes.

Diversifies and Those who tend to think of themselves as beingcontradictions involved in peace studies or peace research thein peace studies terms are often used interchangeably, though per-

haps we should learn to differentiate them can bedivided along two lines: functional and ideological.The functional division is between those who areinterested in scholarship and those who are inter-ested in action: the latter may also be interested inresearch, but as a prelude to efficient action. Peaceresearchers, who may be drawn from any academicbackground, are concerned with a great diversity offields. This diversity may be judged by anyone whocares to look through the table of contents of, forexample, the Journal of Peace Research. I give a fewtitles chosen at random from recent issues: The MarxistTheory of War and Peace; The Place of InternationalLaw in Peace Research; Military Spending and SenateVoting in the United States; Domestic and ForeignConflict Behaviour of Nations; Developmental Ten-sion and Political Instability; Twenty-five Years ofLocal Wars; Freedom and Civilization: A QuantitativeConflict Model; Structural and Direct Violence; SocialInequality; Another Mother for Peace Campaign;Peaceful Co-existence; The Role of I.L.O. Standardsin the Global Integration Process; Peace Research andDeveloping Countries; Divided Berlin One Pastand Three Futures; Divided Nations as a Process: TheCase of Korea; Imperialism: The Dynamics of ColonialViolence; Ghetto Riots; Miscalculations in Deterrent

13

Policy; Religion, War and the Institutional Dilemma;Children's Developing Orientations to InternationalPolitics; Economic and Power Frustrations as Predictorsof Industrial and Political Conflict Strategies; Percep-tions of Foreign News; Middle East and the Theory ofConflict; Human Resource Cost of War, and so on andso on . . .

You may rightly feel that many of these titles mighthave been published in journals dealing not necess-arily with peace but with conflict, with war, inter-national relations, or indeed other social sciences.That they were riot, perhaps indicates somethingmore about the motivation and interests of the au-thors than the nature of the topic. Students of peacestudies also usually have other more orthodox labelssuch as economist, sociologist, political scientist,biologist and so on. It is the use to which theyhabitually put their discipline which differentiatesthem from their colleagues. I might add, however,that the application of the concepts and methods ofone discipline to a particular range of problems in thiscase those dealing with peace, may also influencethose concepts and methods. Thus, while the studentof peace may well be recognised as a distinguishedsocial scientist, he will probably be a somewhat unor-thodox one.

The activists are represented, for example, by manyof those who have over the years, been associatedwith War Resisters International or Peace News. I amnot suggesting that there are not able scholars amongthese who contribute also to the various learnedjournals. Bertrand Russell, after all, was one such.Indeed, many are interested in both academic workand action. Nevertheless, there is a cleavage. Theactivists are concerned to change situations whichthey conceive to be liable to lead to war and violence,and if they do carry out research it is in order thatthey may be better informed and so act more ef-ficiently. The 'pure' researchers tend to feel that it isenough to obtain the facts, that if only we wereadequately informed we would avoid wars and viol-ence. To which the activists reply: 'Who makes thedecisions; who uses your research results; they maybe as useful to the Pentagon' I use this word as a

14

3 a

symbol for the war machine 'as in promotingharmony and peace'. They would further maintainthat as well as offering information it is necessary toacquire the capacity or the influence to use it toachieve the right action. This functional split is oftena temperamental and often in part an ideological one.

But the chief ideological division between thosewho are involved with peace studies involves theirinterpretation of peace. To some, but I think nowfewer and fewer, peace is simply the antithesis ofwar: war may be the most fearful expression of anunpeaceful situation but I think that most peoplewould include in their field of interest peaceful andunpeaceful situations in such areas as industry, racerelations, community and even family relations. Themain difference, however, is between those who seepeace, on whatever scale, as the absence of overtviolence, and those who would equate it rather withsocial justice. The former would be in favour of main-taining the status quo on the grounds that whilethere is no open violence things are not so bad, butany attempt at change, particularly unconstitutionalchange, might lead to dangerous disturbances of theexisting order. The latter would maintain that often,as in South Africa, the relatively 'peaceful' status quois maintained by injustice and that, in fact, a maskedviolence is constantly done to the rights and indeedthe lives of human beings. This, they would say, isactually a condition of unpeacefulness which must bechanged. Those who feel like this would themselvesbe divided among some who believed that this formof what has been termed 'structural violence' (Gal-tung) can only be overthrown by militancy, involvingif necessary counter-violence, and others who believein ,ion - violent techniques of social change.

Around all these issues there is considerable de-bate, often acrimony. I do not, however, find thisdivisiveness to be unhealthy or undesirable. There isa ferment of concern, often very well informed, onquestions profoundly affecting human survival. More-over, some approaches to peace studies have eluci-dated the links between war and violence on the onehand, and on the other such perils to humanity asmassive poverty and hunger in the Third World,

15

ecological damage and the danger of depletion ofirreplaceable resources. Thus important links, theor-etical and practical, are forged.

A personal With all this diversity it is, however, important tointerpretation attempt to develop a central core of ideas which,

while permitting wide variations of interests anddiversity of opinion on many topics will, neverthe-less, permit some orderly growth, a greater deg/t.consensus. Many of us have tried to do this, andduring the last few years I, too, have grappled withthe problem, both in my writings, and latterly in myattempts to build up the School of Peace Studies atBradford University. It may perhaps help if I give abrief account of how my own approach evolved.

Having spent many years concerned with ThirdWorld problems and being much moved by the viol-ence and suffering I saw, I attempted to understandits origins. Then, over a period of four or five years, Iwas directly involved in mediation efforts in wars inAfrica and Asia, and my rudimentary ideas on peaceand violence began to focus on problems of inter-national negotiation. However, even as I developedmy conclusions, I realised that my approach was toonarrow. A skilful negotiator might ease a particularsituation, but the circumstances, the rivalries, theoppression, the scarcity of resources which hadgiven rise to it remained. Moreover, even if warsare brought to an end, many of the conditions associ-ated with war continue throughout large areas of theworld: people are driven from their homes, unjustlyimprisoned, separated from their families, flung intodetention camps, virtually enslaved, exploited bylandlords, victimised by the police, oppressed by thegovernment, starved and malnourished because ofofficial neglect or official policies; they are humiliatedand have their perceptions distorted by propaganda;many in fact die because of these conditions. Circum-stances such as these inflict such damage on humanlife, health, capacity for creative and happy existenceand work, and for the development of potential, thatI find it impossible to refer to them as peaceful: theyinflict upon human beings, though in a less direct

16

and concentrated form, many of the same destructivehorrors as does war.

From my perception of these circumstances I drewthree conclusions. Firstly, the study of peace shouldnot be confined to the analysis of means of prevent-ing or terminating wars.

Secondly, because many of these circumstanceswere internal rather than international thestudy of peace should not be considered as exclus-ively on the international level.

Thirdly, and for the same reason, I came to believethat support for a status quo which permitted orencouraged such unpeaceful conditions could in nosense be considered as the promotion of peace: onthe contrary, it was the tacit condoning of violence.

The concept of peace I found, however, to beunsatisfactory. It was both too vague, too emotive,and too manipulative. I therefore developed an ap-proach based on what I termed peaceful and un-peaceful relations between individuals, groups ornations. This concept enables us to analyse our inter-action in a number of dimensions psychological,economic, political and indeed human in terms ofwhich individuals are adversely affected. I definedpeaceful relationships as those in which individualsor groups are enabled to achieve together goalswhich they could not have reached separately, or atleast do not impede each other (but neutrality ofinteraction is, in my experience, rare). Unreacefulrelationships are those in which the uni's concerneddamage each other so that in fact they achieve lessthan they could have done independently, and inone way or another harm each other's capacity forgrowth, maturation or fulfilment; or they are relation-ships in which one party suffers in this fashion evenif the other does not and may gain advantage throughhis conquest.

The first task of peace in my opinion is, then, toidentify and analyse these relationships. I say 'ident-ify' because they may not always be obvious. I lookback on my own youth when, to most Englishmen,the colonial relationship seemed not only legitimateand natural, but also beneficient whereas, in factalthough there were many wise and humane colonial

21 17

administrators it was socially, psychologically,culturally and economically damaging to the colon-ised. And I say 'analyse' because such relationshipscan be complex even if, as in the case of war, they arenot hard to identify.

This leads directly to the next function of peacestudies, which is to use this information in order todevise means of changing unpeaceful into peacef7.1relationships. Here theory and practice may becomeclosely related. I am concerned with an attempt todefine the scope of peace studies rather than to elab-orate my own ideas in detail and will therefore not tryto describe the various stages by which believe thatunpeaceful relationships may be transformed intopeaceful ones; I will merely suggest that there mustbe certain key variables to take into account. One isthe relative degree of power (or perceived power) ofthe parties in the unpeaceful relationship. Let mesuggest in very simple terms the sort of thing I mean.Contrast a row between a small weak boy and a muchstronger bully who intends to steal the imall boy'spocket money, with a quarrel between two boys ofequal size and strength. The small boy's options aredifferent from those of the two equal contestants. Hemay back down and try to placate the bully, or tomatch his strength, for example, by arming himselfwith a stick or getting a friend to help him or byfinding some psychological way of intimidation: inthe absence of one or more of these the bully will notto deterred. The equal contestants can either fight itout or negotiate, or fight and then negotiate, or fightand part still enemies. But the weak boy cannot eitherengage in a straightforward fight, nor can he negotiatebecause he has nothing with which to bargain. If,however, he gains the advantage of a stick, an ally, orwhatever, he then has the same options as the otherpair.

Another variable is the perception of the situation.Let us take the boys again. The small boy may havebeen brought up in a society in which it is customaryfor bigger boys to exact tribute of the smaller ones.The latter do not like it, but accept it as part of thenatural order and their acquiescence is partially self-protective. There are many groups whose inadequate

18

22

perception of the situation prevents them from takingeff 2ctive action. In the case of the two other boysthere may be no real conflict of interest whatsoever,they may simply have quarrelled because one mis-understood what the other said. In this case a tactfulthird party may reconcile them before blows arestruck.

These examples have several implications. Firstly,that the quarrel (or some other form of unpeacefulrelationship) can be resolved (or made into a peacefulrelationship or at least moved in that direction)through changes in perceptions (growing awareness,in my terms) or changes in the power structure of therelationship (or at least the perceived power struc-ture), or both.

Secondly, that faulty perceptions and less apparentpower tend to be associated.

Thirdly, that negotiations between the strong andthe weak generally mean that the weak give in to thestrong.

Fotr ihly, that negotiations in the sense of bargain-ing are only likely to be mutually satisfactory if bothparties are more or less equally strong.

From these examples I derive two principles forpeace studies. There must be concern for changingperceptions, for enlarging awareness of social reality:and there must be concern for changing the balanceof power where strength is being employed to en-hance or maintain the strong at the .!xpense of theweak. These will have very different implications forboth analysis and action in different settings, but inall cases' they involve a purposeful alteration of theexisting situation.

Thus, certain unpeaceful relations can only movetowards a peaceful character after a period of change,even turmoil, in which, paradoxically, peace studies

as I perceive it must be implicated. But if thissounds strange one can only point to the alternativeof permitting the unpeacefulness to persist. It does,however, indicate a further role for peace studies:that of seeking non-violent approaches towardschanging the status quo, for it would seem to meinconsistent to repay one sort of violence withanother. Here we may gain guidance from a number

19

23

of approaches to non-violence, some of which havebeen systematically and even officially developedunder the title of civilian defence.

I have referred in passing to negotiation and it isclearly a task of peace studies to examine this processvery carefully, determining not only how to carry itout but in what circumstances it is appropriate in thatit may lead to a genuine settlement and not a formulafor submissinty It is part of the process which isnormally a major preoccupation of conflict research.

It is now time to mention a characteristic of peacestudies which differentiates the field from the othersreferred to earlier: its possible qualities. Most of thoseinvolved in the area do not think of peace as beingthe mere end of hostility or conflict but, as I havealready suggested, a more purposive eventual com-ing together for mutual advantage.

Thus, peace studies must be concerned with ap-proaches to reshaping society and the world order insuch a way that not only is violence, overt and covert,eliminated, but harmony and cooperation are estab-lished and maintained. For this reason, a furtherdimension is added: the study of the future andpossible alternatives to the existing system.

Given these very complex and varied tasks it willbe appreciated that peace studies must be a large anddiverse enterprise. It will call for the contribution ofpersons from very different academic backgrounds,possessing varied personal qualities and capacities. Ibelieve, however, that it is possible to construct aframework into which these different efforts q .1 fitconstructively and thus be applied to the commongood of humanity. The framework is essentially thestudy of relationships; the determination of whatrenders some destructive mutually or unilaterally,and what makes others constructive; the attempt todiscover, and in some cases to practise, the methodsby which the unpeaceful may be changed into peace-ful relationships; and finally the imaginative effort toenvisage a more peaceful world order.

Teaching peace Those of you who have listened to me up to this pointstudies and even perhaps found my definition of peace stud-

24

ies acceptable, may still be asking the sort of ques-tions which I admit to having asked myself when Ifirst began thinking about how to construct anacademic programme of peace studies. Would ourstudents end up with a body of knowledge whichwas well-structured, significant and useful? Or con-versly, would they end the course with a hodge-podge of miscellaneous information which it wouldbe very hard for them to apply, and which wouldlead to no recognisable opportunities for employ-ment? And, indeed, what forms of employmentmight a graduate in peace studies hope to obtain?

To begin with, let me briefly sum up what we hopeto do in our teaching programme. Firstly, to engagein a study, made systematic by the analysis of relation-ships, of important issues, both contemporary andhistorical; secondly, to attempt to apply analysis topractice; thirdly, to offer what I hope will be a goodgeneral education and a useful method of approachto some of the world's most urgent problems.

I can perhaps illustrate the way in which we hopeto achieve our purpose and, at the same time, pro-vide an answer to some of the questions by looking atone particular field of enquiry. You would not, Iknow, wish me to go into tedious details concerningthe curricula. These have already been published, butI find that formal descriptions of programmes inuniversity catalogues give very little indication as totheir real substance and quality. So let me give yousome illustrative details of a part of the programmewhich do not appear in the catalogue. Rather thanspread ourselves too widely we have decided that inour teaching on the international level we shall con-centrate on the Middle East. One reason for this isthat several of us have had direct ex, dente of thisarea, but it is perhaps more important that it representsa number of themes which are crucial to the under-standing of peaceful and unpeaceful relationshipsthroughout the world, and even those of us who donot know the Middle East have studied these themesin other settings and can apply them to the MiddleEastern situation. This troubled area of the world isthe scene of great power rivalry; it illustrates theextraordinary significance of an important natural

21

25

resource oil; it provides us with many examples ofthird-party intervention, both official and unofficial;of the role of United Nations peacekeeping forcesand, in general, of the scope and limitation- of UNinvolvement in international disturbances; it illus-trates the part of deep-seated historical, religious andnational elements in conflict; it provides interestingcomparison with other recent or current conflictswith which some of us have also been involvedthose of the Indian subcontinent, the Nigerian CivilWar, Southern Africa and the agonising problems ofNorthern Ireland; it illuminates questions of socio-economic development and of the relationship of therich and the poor nations which are also bound up inthe Middle Eastern situation; it provides classic in-stances of conflict situations and of the impact of warand war mobilisation upon several very differentsocieties. And, finally, it. offers an example of howlike-minded groups may struggle for peaceful aimsacross the barriers of conflict.

I am not suggesting that the Middle East should beused as a case study. I hope to imply something moreprofound and more universal. We shall be looking atthe relationship between many of these other el-ements I have mentioned development and under-development, colonialism, the distortions of percep-tions which come with hostility, and the dangerousgames of global strategy played by the great powers.These and the other things I have referred to are,of course, topics in themselves, but by being purpos-ively focused on the concrete issues of a particularpart of the world, over a particular period of time,they will, I hope, impart an understanding of thetotality of life, and also enable both our students andourselves to identify the separate strands out ofwhich is woven the tapestry of human experience.You may complain that inevitably knowledge in anysingle one of these interrelated fields is bound to befragmentary, but this depends upon the perspective.In my opinion it is more important to understandinteractions than to have an intensive knowledge ofone of the interacting elements at the cost of ignorance of the others. I recall my experience some years.,ago as so-called adviser on social affairs to the Plan-

26 22

ning Commission of Pakistan. A considerable num-ber of my colleagues were economists and there werealso specialists in agriculture, irrigation, mineral ex-traction, communication, housing and a number ofother fields. I think it was a fairly common experienceamongst us all that initially we found our own exper-tise of very little value because we had no under-standing of the complex interaction of other factors inwhich it had to be applied. We also found, however,that we could fairly easily learn enough about theskills of our colleagues to ask the right questions, togo to the right sources for information, and to adjustour own specialised approach to the broad purposesof the group as a whole. And, I should add, in sodoing to learn something !=nexpected about our ownparticular expertise. Thus, while I would not expectthat our students would become experts in all thevarious interrelated fields, or even in any of them, Iwould anticipate that they would become, as it were,specialists in disentangling relationships, or, to put itperhaps in a more positive way, in fitting thingstogether. Returning for a moment to my own experi-ence, I soon found that I learnt enough of econcmicdevelopment theory to guide me in my own non-economic contribution to a plan for economic devel-opment, and even to say things about developmentwhich were relevant to the thinking of my economistcolleagues.

This, I hope, will illustrate the way in which weaim to achieve the first and third objectives of which Irecently spoke, namely to study important issues andto provide a good general education. I have saidnothing as yet about the z,econd one which was toapply analysis to practice. We would not, of ::ourse,normally expect our students, more particularly ourundergraduate ones during their third year, whichwill be spent in employment away from Bradford, toget themselves involved in the Middle East or someother trouble spot. This could be perilous both forthemselves and for others. Our aims are much lessgrandiose. For th,..se who are particularly interestedin international affairs we woutd try to arrange forsome attachment to an appropriate agency overseas;for those who are more concerned with situations

23

2

within our own society (which would be approachedfrom the same comprehensive point of view as I havedescribed for the Middle East) there will be oppor-tunities of working with suitable community agen-cies. I certainly do not envisage that this work will, inany sense, be dramatic. On the other hand, the worldis made up of a great web of relationships many ofwhich have their unpeaceful elements, if we onlylearn how to recognise them, and I hope that duringtheir practical work our students will be able to per-ceive these relationships and, under wise guidance,perhaps Nun some of the approaches by which theymay be changed.

As for employment, I find it hard to think ahead forfour years to the time when our first undergraduateswill be looking for jobs. I will, however, attempt alittle crystal-gazing. But first, let me refer to ourpost-graduate students. A considerable proportion ofthese are likely to be somewhat older people whohave already been involved in the affairs of the worldand are taking what might be called a 'sabbatical inreverse' in order to come to intellectual grips withproblems which they have been facing at the practicallevel for some time previously. For ycunger people itwill, of course, be somewhat different. I imagine thatfor a proportion of them our course will simply pro-vide a good general critical education with focus onimportant problems, and that the openings availableto them would be as wide or as narrow as for manystudents with a good liberal education in, for exam-ple, history or geography. But I also envisage thatmany will be involved in different aspects of com-munity work or race relations, or will seek jobs inlabour organisations. Some who specialised in theinternational field may join agencies such as theInternational Labour Office, the United Nations Insti-tute of Training and Research, and World Council ofChurches, or Oxfam, or, if they are from overseas,the Organisation of African Unity. Or they may re-turn to grapple with the problems of their own coun-tries. Some may very appropriately go on to pro-fessional careers such as the law, practising it accord-ing to some of the principles which they have learnedthrough peace studies. A number may go into edu-

24

2 8

Moral andpracticaldilemmas

cation, empor into the fieous in Americand I trust wecountry. But it hof the world thatand new understanof time, new typeseither created througinclined to think thatpe_iod of the world'smajor wars but of conroles which we can harmay open up for studentsboth the skill and the motiva little bit for the better.

asising current or international affairs,d of peace education, now very vigor-a and beginning to spread over here,

ill be able to help the growth in thiss been my experience in other partsas people are trained in new skills

ding so, perhaps after some lapsef employment become available,h their efforts or for them. I amwe are entering a very troubledhistory, not necessarily one offusion and change, and that

ly envisage at the momentof peace studies who haveation to try to alter things

This reference to the possible difficulties which lieahead induces me to shift gear from the somewhatabstract and academic tenor of my lecture to discussbriefly what I hope will be the hypothetical implicationsof what I have been talking about. Let us assume thatin a period of economic and social confusion anabhorrent regime were imposed upon this country bya powerful minority, that democratic procedureswere abandoned, that those who were not of pureAnglo-Saxon descent were butchered or put intoconcentration camps, dissidents were brutally pun-ished, education was corrupted with racism, censor-ship imposed, and so on. (The same thing could, ofcourse, happen through invasion, and might havedone thirty-five years ago, but is now, I think, a lesslikely contingency.) The country would be manifestlydominated, in my terminology, by unpeaceful rela-tionships. How should we, and I mean of courseparticularly those who are involved in peace studies,and should be specifically concerned with suchthings, respond to this situation? There are severalalternatives:

1. We are pleasant as possible to our new rulers,hoping to gain their favour and then influence themto change their evil ways. I have personally refused

225

to be implicated in such efforts elsewhere, believingthem to be worse than useless.

2. We keep as quiet as possible, trying not to attractattention, and waiting for the time when the regimefalls and we can once more wage peace. This is a kindof cowardice which Gandhi called worse than viol-ence.

3. We can take up arms, join guerilla bands andsabotage groups, as many have done, includingCatholic clergy in Latin America, who felt that theonly way to extirpate violence was through counter-violence. Others would feel, however, that the ex-igencies of the struggle would force us to develop thesame type of oppressive bureaucratic structure as ouroppressors: that we might become so like them thatwhen we won we merely replaced one terror byanother.

4. Or we may take part in a non-violent struggle. Thepolitical objective of this is the same as for the pre-vious type of action. We do not, however, do to ourenemy what he has done to us: that is damage hispotential as a human being. Our weapons are themassive withholding of labour, boycotting, non-lethal sabotage, making intentional mistakes in everyofficial operation, civil disobedience of every sorteventually bringing the machinery of the state grind-ing to a standstill. Such a non-violent campaign re-quires, as indeed does a violent one, organisation,courage, determination, and persistence of a heroictype.

It is not my purpose to argue the advantages anddisadvantages of these different approaches, al-though I have already suggested that the first two donot appeal to me. Whether we feel impelled to em-ploy violent or non-violent techniques of resistance toan obnoxious regime or indeed to a foreign invader,depends upon considerations which are, on the onehand, moral, and on the other tactical and strategic. Iwould only emphasize that I am not advocating paci-fism of the traditional sort which a noted Quakerscholar (who is, in fact, Reader in War Studies in theUniversity of London) referred to as the 'intellectual

26

30

ghetto of pacifism', though I do recommend that weshould take serious account of the tough and tough-minded approaches to non-violence as described bysuch writers as Adam Roberts, Gene Sharp, GeorgeLakey, and Boserup and Mack. My main purpose is,however, to indicate that our commitment to peaceand peaceful relationships, as I have tried to definethem, may logically lead us to situations which areexceptionally uncomfortable and to decisions whichcould be all the more agonising because our choicemay be seen by some to contradict the principleswhich we profess.

I trust the circumstances will not arise in which mycolleagues or I, whether in peace studies or not, arefaced with such stark alternatives. We must notforget, nevertheless, that we must always be pre-pared to practise the principles which we preach, andthat in large ways or small the practice may make usunpopular with those who have the capacity to makelife uncomfortable for us.

Conclusion I have attempted to define the scope, nature andproblems of the field in somewhat intellectual terms.But I believe that most of my colleagues and I havecome to this work for reasons which are not primarilyintellectual. We have come to it, often with pain andsuffering, because we cannot resist the obligationsimposed upon us by our experiences in this darken-ing world. 'I have a dream', said Martin Luther Kingin a famous sermon. I, too, have a dream. In this sadage I have a dream which I shall not see come true,but which if we do not seek now to realise it ourgrandchildren will not see, either. I dream of a worldin which we are not separated from each other byfear, suspicion, prejudice, or hatred; in which we arefree and equal, considerate and loving with eachother.

By establishing peace studies at an intellectual andpractical level we may in some measure help thisworld to be born. Here lies our motive. But it cannotcome into being if we who comprise it are inwardlyriven by guilt, self-loathing, greedy ambition or de-spair. Let us, then, do all we can in the world and in

17

31

our minds, but above all cherish the humanity inourselves and in each other, not least in those fromwhom we are separated by the more superficial bar-riers of ideology, or religion, or race. Until we canrecognise that our common nature and our commondestiny are more important than the things whichdivide us, the shadows will continue to lengthenuntil night irrevocably falls.

28

32

Towards an Understandingof Concepts in the Study ofPeaceJames O'Connell

In this lecture I shall simply mention the backgroundto the study of peace since 1945. There was a firstphase that saw peace mainly as the absence of war. Asecond phase realized that a negative approach topeace was inadequate and moved towards socialreform and the ironing out of structural injustices asthe positive side of promoting peace. A third phasesaw sections of the peace movement, deeply con-cerned with wars of liberation, support such warsstrongly and come dose to defining peace as a statethat followed on a just war. In more recent times areawakened sensitivity to the possibility of nuclearwar, harder headed and more scientific thinkingamong those in peace groups who had never givenup their commitment to non-violence and oppositionto war, and new efforts to tie together concepts ofpositive and negative peace have meant that a ma-turer synthesis of thinking and experience in relationto peace is now possible. There will be no finalsynthesis because the continuity of personal andsocial living requires that syntheses go on beingmade and re-made.

What I want to do in this approach is, firstly,sketch the idea of peace and two other ideasfreedom and justice that are crucially related to it.These three ideas are fundamental to human living.Secondly, I want to draw attention to ideas com-munity, technology and development/arms control

that concern our living together in the contempor-ary world. This second set of ideas conveys the extra-ordinary paradox of present-day living in which greatmaterial achievement and the possibility of almost

29

33

Architectonicideas in thestudy of peace

Ideas and the basisof living

total human destruction are two sides of one coin.Both these sets of ideas are controlling or architec-tonic ideas in the study of peace. Finally, I want tomake some comments on the nature and organisationof peace studies.

The first set of ideas peace, justice, freedom areintrinsically linked with one another. The desire forpeace is ultimately the basis of the search for securityand survival which is a powerful, perhaps the mostpowerful, human urge. Yet human survival is notphysical only, crucial though the latter is. There is asaying of Socrates: 'Gentlemen, fear evil rather thandeath because evil runs faster than death'. For suchreasons peace is linked to freedom, the absence ofwhich is a great evil and the presence of whichenables persons to survive much as they see andwant themselves to be. Finally, peace and freedomremain empty without justice. To live deprived ofrights is to enjoy a shallow peace and possess ahollow freedom.

If peace, freedom and justice are intimately linked,peace has a certain practical primacy among them.Peace provides the conditions in which freedom canbest flourish and justice be best achieved. It is alsothe general condition towards which human effortmoves. As St Augustine puts it: 'For the good ofpeace is generally the greatest wish of the world, andthe most welcome when it comes . . . the sweetnessof peace which all men do love'. All the goods ofhuman endeavour are best held when they can beheld in the security of peace. But it is time to look in alittle more detail at each of these ideas in turn.

Peace The idea of peace contains two basic el-ements: willing co-operation among persons for socialand personal goals and the absence of violence (in theshape of direct physical, psychological or moral vi-olence). St Augustine sums up the positive element ofpeace in saying: 'Peace of all things is a well disposedorder' (City of God, xix, 13). Such order in the chang-ins circumstances of human life has to be a dynamicorder in which cc operation seeks not only to main-

30

1

twin concord between divergent human efforts butboth to perfect it and to adapt it to new situations.This cooperation has aims which are eventually aswide as life, truth, freedom, justice and love. Thenegative element of peace is the avoidance of discordor inflicted disorder in the shape of violence. It isoften the most psychologically salient of the elementsof peace. However it stimulates persons to removewhat harms them much as illness stimulates thescience of medicine to remove its harm and in prac-tice conditions the organisation of medicine morethan does the preservation of health. While it is easyto point out how inadequate negative peace is, it isworth insisting that such peace is a necessary thoughnot a sufficient condition of positive peace. Also, thepsychological saliency of negative peace reflects thepervaive normality of positive peace in human rela-tions. The danger of concentrating on negative peaceonly is that practitioners and theorists alike mayneglect to work on constructing the foundations ofpeace. Yet in recent Western European history peacebetween the main contenders in the last two civilwars (1914 and 1939) has been more firmly estab-lished by their discovering that their interests con-verge than by their recoiling from war.

In the previous paragraph the stress has been onthe concept of peace. In that sense peace can beunderstood as a state at which people arrive or hopeto arrive. The state of perfect peace in which the lionwill lie down with the lamb is a pervasive humanideal. Peace has also to be seen as process. Involved inany living concept of peace is a set of attitudes amongpersons that are dynamic and purposeful, that areready to carry the costs of the search for peace andthat seek to uphold the values of justice and freedominherent in stabilising peace. In short, peace is in StAugustine's words 'the tranquility of order' but it is adynamic order that seeks to under-pin human co-operation and remove not only violence but itscauses. Hopkins puts well the dynamism of peace:

. . . and when peace here does house,He comes with work to do, he does not come to

coo,

31

He comes to brood and sit.

Freedom Freedom is the ability that persons have tochoose their own future and to reject what is notchosen. Since the end of the eighteenth centurywithin Europe on a national or state level and inopposition to European colonialism outside Europethe desire of national or social freedom has inspiredpeoples and classes. But even in the most intimateparts of personal life where love reigns freedom isessential. Only what is given freely can be loveand lovers have to live with leaving those loved free,while accepting that love which is free may cease.Persons, groups and states have to live with theparadox that freedom is the condition and source ofhuman cooperation in peace and simultaneously thegreatest threat to it. Freedom can be used andabused, abused even to the extent of taking otherpersons' freedom away. Freedom itself is not exer-cised in a vacuum, nor is it at best arbitrary. It has torespect and deal with situations as it finds them. Ithas also in integrity to respect the freedom of others.It is in this context that to ensure peace there has tobe concern for human rights.

Justice Justice is giving everybody their due. Thegeneral principle is easy. Its application however as itmeets the inheritances of history, social organisation,differing individual abilities and varied needs is farfrom easy. Succeeding generations have had to revisetheir ideas of applied justice, for example, as newcircumstance have changed thinking and as in re-cent times new groups, notably nations, workingpeople and women have argued for a different under-standing of rights. Within contemporary states injus-tice in allocating goods between groups is hardlyfaced up to adequately anywhere. Between states thebreakdown into rich and poor countries, based onuneven access to the world's resources, remains ascandal of injustice.

Few things threaten peace as much as does resent-ment of injustice by individuals or groups. In fact,fear which principally threatens peace is most oftenbred in situations of resented injustice. In the tradi-

32

Living together inour times

tional theory of the just war thinkers consider thatwhat may be fought for has to be due in justice. Atthe limit this may be a people's right to survive. Yetthe theory is nuanced and does not make the claim tojustice an absolute right because war itself is not onlya source of great injustice but the cause of many otherevils. Hence, if tra.iitional theorists concede a right tofight, they hedge it in closely with insistences thatthere has not only to be a just cause but also justice inthe means used to wage war, not least in maintainingthe distinction between combatants as well as dis-cernment in weighing the proportions between jus-tice or any other good that is hoped to be secured bywar and the injustice as well as the other evils thatform an inevitable part of war. In other words, tradi-tional theorists and what persons of decencywould part company from them on the issue arguethat there are times when injustice has to be put upwith to avoid the greater evil that lack of peace canbe. In this approach injustice is not condoned. Ratherpeople are asked to reflect on the means of remedy-ing it as well as on the cost. In practice this impliesbringing a spirit of peace to living with injustice in away that recognises that human reality contains morevalues, and often richer ones, than justice. Yet justiceholds all values together; and all other values are heldfragilely without justice as they are held fragilelywithout peace.

Peace, freedom and justice are abstract values that tobe effective in our contemporary world need to bemediated through related attitudes and values as wellas through practical capacities and organisationalforms. To begin with, I want to suggest three ideasthat enable the values which we have been discuss-ing to operate effectively in concrete circumstances.These ideas are community, technology and de-velopment/arms control. Community implies a senseof belonging in which peace, freedom and justice cangrow; technology lies behind a vision of the controlover the world that is becoming possible to us; anddevelopment/arms control points to the awful ambi-valence of achievement where peace and communityremain insecurely obtained. I want, firstly, to look at

:1 733

the interplay of community, technology and develop-ment, stressing in the process the structural aspectsof the interplay. Then, secondly, I want to look atcommunity, technology and arms control, stressingmore this time the psychological aspects of the in-terplay.

Community In practice to live well with others, tolive with them in unity and to live with them inpeace, persons need a sense of community. Com-munity is a sense of belonging to persons, sharingobjectives with them and willing their good. It is intraditional philosophical language an analogousterm, finding shared but proportionately differingmeanings in being applied to different things. It isapplied to groups that range from families and localcommunities through nations and ethnic groups toreach out to the whole world. Where there is com-munity there is bound to be the cooperation and theabsence of violence that make up peace.

Community can be harmed in two ways. Firstly, itis injured where internal structures serve to throwpersons and groups into relations that embody injus-tice and/or threats to physical or cultural security andthat foster fear and dislike between persons andgroups. Secondly, it is weakened or taken away bythose who are ignorant of or ignore its existence. Thefirst harm sees negative peace injured. The secondtakes away the basis of cooperation that underliespositive peace. In the first form of harm communitiesare often thrown against one another within states ininter-ethnic, inter-class or inter-racial conflict or be-tween states or blocs of states in economic competi-tion or war. In the second form of harm the poorwithin, and even more so the poor without, can beforgotten. In the first kind of harm community isconfined; in the second community is not extended.If, on the one hand, conflicts which break communityhave been endemic in history, it is also true thatconflicts are almost always seen as aberrations (StAugustine remarks that even the goal of war is peace)and are localised in space and time. Historically, onthe other hand, neglect or the failure to extend com-munity by defining it too narrowly has been a much

34

more pervasive phenomenon. Partly this has beenbecause in the context of the scarcity of resourcesgroups preferred not to know than to be under pres-sure to share. More important again, they did nothave the physical capacity to travel or to communi-cate other than intermittently over any great dis-tance. Only as the scientific renaissance becameoperative through the industrial revolution did boththe problems of scarcity and distance begin to beresolved. In the process it also became easier totranslate an abstract understanding of humanity intoa sense of global community. But that brings usalready to the role of technology and to the necessityof development.

Technology Technology is a complex combinationof scientific method (observation, hypothesis, test orverification) applied to the development of tools andthe application of tools to the human and materialenvironment. It has three basic elements: attitudes,tools and techniques, and organisation. Firstly, ana-lytico-causal attitudes are brought to bear on everyproblem. Historical tradition, sacred meanings andsociological linkages may condition approaches toproblems but analytical attitudes, particularly thosegeared to number, remain central. Such technologicalattitudes, though they have a heavily applied orienta-tion, are however wider than efforts to apply know-ledge and have roots in ultimately speculativethrusts. Secondly, since the renaissance but espe-cially since the early industrial revolution, the appli-cation of scientific method to tool-making (appliedtechniques) has resulted in the multiplication of toolsand techniques until in the developed world men andwomen have altered or fabricated almost every inchof the space about them. Again, attitudes and toolswork in a dialectical relationship with one another,attitudes generating new tools and new tools gener-ating new attitudes. In the contemporary developedworld, for example, new weapons have called intoquestion the rationality of war between major pow-ers; and in developing societies new machines andmedicines have exorcised the gods more effectivelythan the most rigorous theistic analysis. Thirdly,

:1 935

concomitantly with scientific attitudes and industrialtools social structures have been generated that meetand facilitate the speed and complexity of the ma-chines. Bureaucracy administrators who areskilled, permanent and committed to political orother-forms of association is the central institu-tional structure devised or revised to cope with aswell as to make industrial society function. Obviouslythis description is an ideal-type (Weber). Howeverallowing for what history and sociology do to individ-ual bureaucracies, what the ideal-type descriptiondoes is to emphasise how far modern societies differfrom traditional societies where ruling and admin-istrative structures are, or were, linked firmly tokinship and age.

It is easy to give the impression that technology isneutral in a political or social sense. This is hardlylikely to be the case, given the pervasive impact oftechnology. As Celso Furtado puts it: 'Technologicalinnovations, which are the essence of economic de-velopment, do not simply provoke changes in thestructure of the productive system. They provoke. . . a series of chain reactions resulting from the

interdependence existing among the basic elementsof the culture as a whole'. There are two main direc-tion-controls in a value-embedded technology. Firstly,technology through its need for skills has a built-inmeritocratic bias. Persons, no matter how highly theyhave been placed or esteemed traditionally, can nolonger hope to wield political and social authoritywithout modern skills and those who possess thoseskills cannot easily be excluded from authority andsocial advance. The gains made by contemporarywomen illustrate this logic. Both the spread of skillswhich has a consciousness-raising effect and the de-cline of the need for physical strength have enabledwomen to make gains in spheres that range fromreducing the iacidence of polygyny in African coun-tries to competing in Western countries for tradition-ally masculine jobs not to mention the greateremployment availability of women from the spreadof better contraceptive methods. Secondly, technol-ogy serves the interests of those who control it andresponds to the ;Hues that they possess. For that

36

40

1

reason technology in an exploitative society or ex-ploitative world can be and is used to consoli-date or increase exploitation. It may, for example, beused to reinforce the unfair access to world resourcesthat the developed countries already have or it maybe used to buttress the disproportionate privileges ofnew elites within developing countries.

In discussing technology let me refer in particularto its tools and techniques of communication. Throughits information systems technology is spread and con-solidated. Moreover, individuals and groups and gen-erations can communicate with one another throughprinting, broadcasting and computing in a veritableexplosion of knowledge. Through the sharing of infor-mation and the speed of machines the world as well asits individual regions has been made small. Distance isa function of the time that it takes to traverse it; Londonis closer to Bombay now than it was to Newcastle 150years ago. It is*true, as Toynbee has remarked, that it iseasier to export sewing machines than ideas to Bombay

or vice versa. But these days print, films, words,translations make it harder though obviously andunfortunately not impossible to ignore other personsin their basic humanity. Thus too, for example, oncethe revelations of television and the interests of theAmerican middle classes converged it became mostdifficult to continue in Vietnam one of the last colonialwars. The Soviet rulers are being much more careful toconfine the impact of the Afghanistan war on theirsociety. In short, the world has steadily contracted. Theprocess of development is, in consequence, a worldissue. So to that let us now turn.

Development Development is a concept of the hu-man betterment of poor countries and peoples. Itbrings together the inchoate sense of the universal-ism of the human community of earlier times and thetechnological achievement of our times. Most peoplein the world are still poorly nourished, under-doctored and badly sheltered. Yet they live in a worldwhich in a physical sense is smaller than Britain wastwo hundred years ago and where poor neighbourscan no longer easily pass unrecognised as neigh-bours. It is true that it is taking time for people's

37

41

thinking to catch up with technology. But the fact isthat soon it will be as psychologically not to men-tion morally difficult to accept that there should berich and poor countries or utterly uneven distributionof the world's goods as it is difficult to accept thatthere should be extreme inequality within one coun-try. Disraeli's rejection of the two nations applies inour times to the whole world because we are not onlyconscious of poverty but able to do something aboutit. In mentioning Disraeli it is also important to keepin mind that there are pockets and at times more

of poverty within technologically advanced coun-tries that flout principles of justice and compassion.

Beyond justice as contemporary sharing attitudesthere needs to be a forward-looking sense of justicewhich takes heed of generations still to come. Allow-ing for changes in the use of resources that technol-ogy itself may bring about from successful innova-tion, it is hard to believe that countries can go onconsuming mineral and other resources at presentrates. Moreover, present rates and patterns of theconsumption of raw materials timber is an obviousexample are possible only because a small propor-tion of the world's population is involved in theconsumption. In fact, one of the gravest reproachesthat future generations if there are any maymake to us is that we have misdirected research onenergy and other resources at a time when it isalready clear that we need desperately to find newenergy sources as well as new forms of raw materialsfor production and use.

Finally, in the longer run the present set of devel-oped countries are faced with taking part in re-working not only consumption patterns but divisionsof labour between themselves and developing coun-tries. All this is owed in justice. If peace is preservedin the face of existing inequalities, it is only whileawareness of, and access to, technological possibilities grow among those who are becoming new neigh-bours in a 'global village' (McLuhan). In consequence,Western countries out of enlightened self-interest aswell as out of human solidarity are faced with the taskof helping neighbours. It is true that societies can in thelast resort only develop themselves. But they can under-

38

42

take the tasks of development best when they not onlyreceive adequate help but when richer neighbours exer-cise the discipline in their own houses that new formsof innovation, divisions of labour and patterns of con-sumption require.

Seeds of Community Through its foreshortened distances,creation: achievement its sharing of goods and trade and its enhancedor destruction communications, the modern world provides the

conditions for undereinning a sense of community.Its technological structures and the social organis-ation that permeates them facilitate a human comingtogether that is not dependent on fragile humangoodwill. In spite of the enormous problems that stillconfront the global community as its rich and poorparts move closer together and in spite of unresolvedproblems that fester in the developed world com-munal relations in Northern Ireland, race relations inthe United States and Britain, autonomy issues inSpain and Canada, large population proportions out-side general prosperity in almost every developedcounty, to mention some we already hold inprinciple technological solutions to age-old problemsof subsistence. The fact is that provided we can getthe phasing right peoples can now realise that theirmaterial interests are complementary and not con-flicting. People are in a morahense no better and noworse than ever they Were; and no contemporaryethical teaching suggests an advance on the Sermonon the Mount. The advance that has taken place isthat a certain potential abundance can remove frompeople the historic temptation to believe that theireconomic interests are in conflict with one another. Inthat way much temptation is avoided; and it is easierto be virtuous in avoiding temptation than in tryingto be strong in its presence. It is true that relativeadvances may deepen a sense of relative deprivation.But a combination of social communication and pro-ductive capacity offer us enormous possibilities ofhuman encounter and peace.

Technology In their rational, technical and socialprogress men and women are able to transform thephysical world as never before; they can overcome

39

4 3

the age-old threat of hunger; and they can deal withthe debilitating effects of disease. In other words,they control nature and fail-lion it to their image. Inthe process they feel a new sense of confidence indealing with the world; indeed, if they believe in Godstill, they see themselves as his co-creators ratherthan his beggars. They, finally, have a degree ofcomfort whether in eliminating darkness, moder-ating heat or cold, keeping out the wind or coveringspace that is profoundly new. They can, in fact,construct dwellings for ordinary people that havecomforts that kings did not have in ages past. Con-trol, confidence and comfort are so securely held thatlots of young people reared in the new era can indropping out afford to disdain its benefits. But theyare the exceptions that serve to underline the rulingtrends. The natural world also has experienced ef-forts that despoil it. But again built into contemporaryscientific approaches is a revision exercise that en-ables their exponents to reexamine and removeharmful initiatives.

This optimistic scenario .nust however be distin-guished from technological determinism theoriesin which the machines and the structures they evokeare thought to create circumstances of perfect ration-ality. Essentially all that I am contending is thatconditions are becoming available for a world to livein peace and plenty. An analogous forecast wouldnot however have consoled a German at the end ofthe Thirty Years War in 1648 who could not foreseeunification in 1871 nor another German in the ruinsof 1945 who could not envisage West European politi-co-economic confederation in 1958. One of the mostimmediate problems we face is that the pace of socialchange, which is in good measure dictated by thespeed of machines, is accelerating all the time and ismaking societies uneasy as it upsets established rela-tions between persons and between groups. More-over, such unease and certain elements of politicaland economic competition, not least among the bigpowers but also among lesser powers, that haveoutlasted their time enable hostile media to falsify aninformation role and to go on leading people to seeone another through unfavourable stereotypes. In

40

44

consequence, it is still difficult to establish the trustamong states and peoples that would facilitatecooperation and avoid war, especially the terror of awar whose weapons take their rise in the same tech-nology that is transforming the world so powerfully.In short, for all our potentially close drawing togetherand wonderful actual and potential abundance thephasing of the coming together and the sharing couldgo fearfully wrong. For that reason it is time to turn tothe issue of control over arms.

Arms control Reference has just been made to thetrauma and the collisions of the German peoplesover two centuries as they made their way towardsa dimly sought and for long reluctant unity. So tooreference has been made to West Europeans whofought two bloody civil wars (1914 and 1939) ontheir way towards discovering that their interestswere complementary and that while tensions wouldcontinue they could be contained and even profitedfrom. To come back to an earlier theme: the worldis growing as small now as Western Europe was in1939. But we cannot afford the short-sightedness,the lack of political and social structures, and theendemic fears of Europe and elsewhere of a genera-tion ago. Those failures cost Europe millions oflives. If we fall into the same failures, they will costus total destruction in Europe and close to total de-struction elsewhere in the world. We do not havethe time nor can we carry the cost of not workingout quickly, probably within the next fifteen totwenty years, political-and social structures that willenable us to cooperate with one another and avoidnuclear war.

The two military super-powers the UnitedStates and the Soviet Union (though the roles ofBritain, France and China introduce awkward andunnecessary complications) provide the mainthreat of global destruction in their theory of deter-rence and uncertain balance of terror. The most ob-vious weakness of deterrence is the instabilityinherent in an arms race where the prize is im-mense, possibly survival; where the competitors areall the time running faster and cannot see one

41

45

another clearly; and where there are in the last re-sort no binding rules in the game one may recallHobbes' famous pun: 'Where there are no rules ofthe game, clubs become trumps'. In these circum-stances nuclear war could be sparked off by miscal-culations, intrar.sigencies and fears in complexevolving crises. It could also be set off by client orsatellite states (nuclear or non-nuclear) dragging intheir patrons. Unfortunately such war could also bestarted by human error or madness or by mechan-ical failure. One must hope that leadership groupsin the super-powers will work out ways in whichtheir countries can move from coexistence to coop-eration. In the last resort they differ rather thanconflict ideologically; they stand to gain from econ-omic cooperation and trade with one another; andthey have everything to lose by indulging in pos-tures and acts, not least the arms race, that harmthem economically and involve a great risk of end-ing in war.

Whatever about the super-powers, we will haveto go on living in our time with the knowledge thatPandora's box is open. In fact, it is probabiy thecase that the most immediate threat of nuclear warlies among the lesser powers. The proliferation ofnuclear weapons threatens entire regions of theworld, not least the Middle East. Moreover, thegradual simplifying of nuclear technology as well asthe miniaturisation of nuclear weapons suggest thatlittle gangs of terrorists are more likely than not togain access to such weapons in the not-too-distantfuture. The thought hardly bears contemplation.Up to now the two super-powers, locked into theo-ries of mutual deterrence, have not turned flexiblytowards the burgeoning problems of nuclear prolifer-ation and terrorism. Yet the super-powers andother powers have not been left with a lot of timeto think out :tow they are going to elaborate struc-tures and develop attitudes to deal with such prob-lems. There are no alternatives to internationalpolicing, whatever shape that may take. More im-portant again, there is no alternative to world struc-tures, no matter how loose, that organise cogentlyrelations between states and regions and transna-

42

4 6

Peace studiesand academicorganisation

Ethics and defence

tional and multinational organisations. In this ap-proach the themes of the present sectiont2chnology, community, and development a- wellas arms control come together, and their rela-tionships with the fundamental themes of the firstsection peace, freedom and justice is doseand clear.

However I want to end this section by drawingtogether its arms control/armament reduction themewith its development theme. In the case cf the de-veloped countries spending on armaments is con-suming an enormous part of their resources. It iseasy to show a negative correlation between levelsof capital intensive military spending and economicgrowth. Moreover, the developed countries havesought to recoup part of their own investment,usually without too much political sensitivity or so-cial concern, by selling arms to Third World coun-tries, inducing the latter to live beyond their meansand to dissipate scarce development resources.Until they have substantially reduced their arms ex-penditure it is unlikely that developed countrieswill face up seriously in some equivalent of aMarshall Plan, for example to the problem ofaiding developing countries. There are, in fact, twogreat scandals of our time. One scandal is the exis-tence of systems of violence that imminently atechnical 15 minutes away only threaten to de-stroy millions of lives and centuries of achievement.The other scandal is the existence of extreme pov-erty in most parts of the globe. Arms control in theshape of phased and structured and relative disar-mament is the condition of the human survival ofthe First World. Development is the condition ofthe human hope of the Third World.

In this short section I want to suggest an idea orattitude that lies at the heart of peace studies. It is theconviction that conflict needs to be in so far as thisis humanly possible resolved by peaceful or non-violent means. Those who are drawn to peace studiesmay be fascinated by the intellectual problems of warand peace. In a similar way I am impressed by how

443

scholars concerned with social work are animated bya passion for improving the lot of deprived people.For such reasons the study of peace is an appliedstudy as are development economics and medicine,though it does not have a professional dimension likemedical studies or engineering.

Translated into applied scholarly pursuits thestudy of peace does much more than establish ethicalcriteria. Rather peace studies deals systematicallywith two sets of converging considerations. The firstset consists of ethical reasonings; the second is con-cerned with practical estimates of action. Both setsare linked, in so far as estimates of good and evil arebased on practical judgements of consequences. Em-bedded in the traditional theory of a just war there is,for example, an estimate made of I.* e proportionbetween any ends that war sets out to achieve andthe awful costs that come with war. It is for suchreasons that Christian Mellon in reflecting on nucleardeterrence argues ' . . . that ethical debates are [not]irrelevant, but that they are a sterile exercise, if theylimit their aims to issuing moral "condemnations" or"approvals", without giving any attention to thepractical, social and political problems which preventthese condemnations or approvals from having prac-tical effects. In the particular case of nuclear we,pons, it is obv'ously important to realise that peopledo not think about them only in terms of morality,but also in terms of security, defence against aggres-sion or blackmail, the need to feel protected, and soforth. However strong the moral condemnations, thelikelihood of unilateral nuclear disarmament will beslight as long as people remain convinced that nu-clear weapons are n'eded to defend their country,and that there is no other way by which protectioncan be secured . . . '. What I am arguing here inciting Mellon is that systematic reflection on peace isnot meant to remain in a cocoon of moralism.

Given the importance 4:11( reflection on how ethicaland behavioural needs interact on one another inworking out policies, it is crucial and here is themain applied thrust of peace studies that personscome to practical tasks convinced that peace is aprimordial need which is the condition of meeting

44

48

other human needs and underpinning other humanachievements. At its minimum such conviction in-cludes an awareness that war cannot any longer beassumed to be a generally acceptable way of settlingquarrels between stales. In stressing this minimum Iam not denying the theoretical possibility of a justwar whoever does not subscribe to a 'tz000s out'approach in Northern Ireland implicitly accepts a justwar theory. Moreover, I believe that there, are evilsworse than violence, worse even than the organisedviolence of war; and I reluctantly accept that a mini-mal use of force may prevent a later and greaterincidence of violence. What is important however inaccepting a theory of just war is that its conditions betaken seriously and given proper weight and notdiscounted in the hysteria of crisis or the blindness ofnationalist sentiments. For that reason a cause needsto be genuinely just and defensive only; there needsto be a proper proportion between whatever gain:,victory is calculated to achieve and the losses inhe-rent in war and it is in this principle of proportionas well as in the principle of discrimination that theimperatives of ethics throw their cogency againstnuclear war; there has to be a basic discriminationbetween combatants and non-combatants, setting re-cent erosions of such discrimination resolutely aside;and, finally, other means of reso!ving a conflict needto have been exhausted before war is embarked on,for unfortunately wars almost always come too soon.

If by implication I have distanced myself from atheory of pure pacifism, whatever about practicalpacifism in most concrete situations, I want howeverto finish this section with a word on pacifism.

Sociologically and politically pacifism is likely toremain minority and marginal. Yet it offers a preciousprophetic witness without which peace thought andaction would be much the poorer. Pacifism brings outthe primacy of conscience in the best human deci-sion-making. As well, such conscience upholds theright to do violence to no other person as well asupholding an unyielding determination to suffer, ifneed be, so as to defend the principle of non-violence. Those who reluctantly accept a theory ofjust war and know the difficulty of discerning the

45

49

Ideas and coverage

validity of any particular application of the theory arereminded by pacifists of the evil of war. They are alsoprompted by pacifists to find the courage of patienceto endure beyond the conventionally or traditionallytolerable in reckoning the balance between the endssought and the losses incurred in making war. Andby pacifist witness they are encouraged to refuse toaccept too soon that all non-violent means have beentried in avoiding war.

If peace studies (irenology or polemology are otherterms) now occupies an academic place in highereducation in various countries, I want to argue herethe benign paradox that peace studies is a proper andneeded academic study that has a worth related tothe importance of peace; and that none the less themain impact of the study of peace as well as the mostpervasive influence of the values of peace comethrough other academic disciplines, especially theother social sciences of politics, sociology, economicsand psychology. One reason for this last argument isthat far more persons will study, and research in, themain disciplines than will study peace as such; andthe social science disciplines in measure overlapwith, and can encompass, the concerns of peacestudies. What peace studies does is to take problemsof order that are already considered in or touched onwithin the disciplines and to deal with these prob-lems in a coordinated way and with a unified focus.What is also at issue here is the organising of theboundaries of disciplines. There is no perennial or-thodoxy in organising a particular study of society.Some may regret, for example, that political economydid not prevail as a discipline but for the sake ofa division of labour broke up into politics and econ-omics. Yet in a contrasting and coordinating approachhuman geography groups problems that are dealtwith in both socioi-g and economics. The relevanceof peace studies ,:.hat it has the unifying focus of aconcern for peace as geography has a similar focusin its concern fo7 the uses of the earth and dealswith issues of order where human cooperation iscrucial to human development and where violence ordisruption is threatened oz present. For such reasons

50

46

peace studies as a subject is best seen as an area stu,:ythe same is true of war studies which deals with

social content where other disciplines converge andwhere their methods are used. It is an area study inthe sense of engineering and medicine rather than ageographic area study such as European, African orAmerican studies. It is also an applied study likeengineering or medicine (though it is not a pro-fessional formation), in so far as it sets out to make itsresults available for practical action. In short, I amsaying that peace studies is an applied area study;and I am arguing its case as a most useful way oforganising a study of social order and disorder. WhatI am not saying indeed I am arguing the contrary

is that the study of peace is confined to peacestudies. In this context it is worth saying also that aconcern for peace is clearly not confined to those whogroup themselves in the peace movement.

Wh:rever peace is at risk, peace becomes a naturalarea of study. If I mention the factor of risk, it is tounderline how the negative element of peace theabsence or elimination of violence helps to focusthe positive element. Without holding both elementstogether the danger is that the study of peace willspread and diffuse into a preoccupation with all thatseems humanly desirable, grow excessively en-tangled with ideas of social reform and treat of hu-man perfectibility rather than human concern forpeace.

If there is no peace concern that the study of peacecannot take up, the same does not hold true fororganised peace studies in a school or university.Teaching and research have to accept limitations thatstem from combining subjects and curricula withinscarce time as well as accepting limitations inherentin scarce staffing. Overall, peace studies has to dealwith broad issues and in the process to draw on theresources of the established disciplines. It is con-cerned with concepts of peace wld freedom and jus-tice (philosophy); peace between states and betweenworld regions (international politics and economics);between races and between ethnic groups (politicsand sociology); peace between axial classes as wellas the social leavening of efforts to remove class

.4 5147

divisions (politics, economics and sociology); andpeace between labour and management (sociology,economics and industrial relations). Beyond theseareas there is a case in certain institutions and placesfor a study of peace in the family, peace between thesexes, peace between individuals, and individual in-ner peace. It is also more than useful, where time andresources permit, to be able to teach and learn aboutthe history of peace thinking and acting as well asabout the main contemporary trends in peace con-cerns. It is also possible to teach elements of mediat-ing and counselling. It would however be a greatmistake to overemphasise the importance of theselast methods as against, for example, attempts tounderstand and change structures that militateagainst peace. There was, for example, no hope ofmediating in the first Nigerian republic where theconstitutional structures pitted ethnic groups againstone another. Hope for peace and stability in thatcountry could only come with a reworked structurethat removed the domination of certain groups overothers. Also, no matter how well-organised peacestudies may be, it is possible to retain a certain flexi-bility in its approach. This can be done at any level ofstudy by enabling and encouraging students andteachers to take up research projects that deal withimmediate issues as well as by encouraging them tobuild into their peace studies an experiential elementstretching from improvised drama to group dynamicsand community work. Finally, if peace studies is anarea study where other disciplines meet, it is mypersonal opinion that its courses should provide aproper training in at least one standard discipline.The most accessible disciplines for this purpose tendto be politics and sociology.

Peace studies: Peace studies involves teaching and learning, re-scholarship, search and practical application. If its main emphasisdetachment and is applied, there is in peace studies as in all scholarlyapplication study a speculative thrust. For all the importance of

application the speculative thrust is essential. Its con-tribution is to provide a longer term perspective tolooking at peace as well as providing the detachmentand breadth that are sometimes missed out in practi-

48

52

cal concentration or in ideologically committed orien-tations. In this sense detachment itself forms part of abroad integrity that puts truth first and in teachingseeks to share truth and not to indoctrinate; and thatin intellectual discussion seeks light in argument andnever simply victory in confrontation. Lastly, specu-lative scholarship thrives in symbiosis with policy-orientated thinking as well as in dialogue with thought-ful action for peace.

It is difficult to overstress that peace studies entailsthe hard purification of scholarship. It may containan experiential component but it is an academic dis-cipline and is not a form of activist enterprise. Toretain the time and to develop the patience requiredfor learning as well as to maintain the detachmentvital to the search for knowledge an academic subjectneeds normally to remain distinct from and distancedfrom activism. This is not to say that persons in-volved in peace studies should not otherwise beactivist in peace issues as are, for example, medicaland scientific scholars. In our times, however, it maywell be the case that the best contribution to activismby members of the School of Peace Studies is toprovide intellectual resources and information foractivists. For quite some time now students and staffhave joined among other things in briefingpoliticians, providing training facilities for peace or-ganisers and speakers, offering advice on curricula toteachers, and generally endeavouring to carry onextension work and high level popularisation.

Obviously studying and teaching about peace isnot the only way of building for peace. Moreover,academics should distrust temptations to over-valuetheir own contributions. They should not forget theobservation of Hegel on his own discipline, philos-ophy: it is the owl that flies in the dark when the lightof the day is gone. But it is true that scientific socialthinking can inform and sensitise those who influ-ence public decisions and those who make publicdecisions. Existing peace groups in various countriesare much better informed now than they were ageneration back and have been able powerfully tocarry arguments on nuclear weapons policies, forexample, to relatively inflexible but now worried

5 3UM,

49

governments. At least some credit for this changeand its effects on public opinion deserves to go toscholars concerned with peace studies. In any casethere ate subjects such as peace that our civilisationcannot atitzd not to study. In the issue of peace whatis stake in our times at certain levels is the intellec-tual, .noral and physical well-being of individuals andgroups. What is of stake at a global level is not onlysuch well-being but human survival.

50'

54

Under the threat of global destructionthere has been a growing awareness thatpeace is not mainly the absence of warbut a good to be actively pursued. It ishere that peace research has an importantrole to play. In this booklet the first twoholders of the only Chair of Peace Studiesin Britain define the scope and the placeof 'the science of survival' among otheracademic subjects and point out ways inwhich the study of the conditions of peacecan contribute to its preservation.

£1.95 ISBN 0 907582 77 X

55