Peace: Meanings, Politics, Strategies

by Linda Rennie Forcey

Overview

Linda Forcey writes in her introduction to this important new book that more than forty years have passed since Albert Einstein prophesied unparalleled catastrophe were we not to change our modes of thinking. Learning how we should go about this is peace studies. This book explores the meanings of peace, including political approaches and strategies for better understanding and change from a wide range of ideological and philosophical perspectives. The chapters, by scholars of sociology, history, psychology, political science, and several interdisciplinary fields, pose challenging philosophical, ideological, and pedagogical questions. The contributors encourage active thought about the complex interrelationship of the personal and systemic dimensions of peace.

Ideal for interdisciplinary, introductory peace study courses, this volume stimulates thought about the peace process by examining individual behavior and responsibility as well as that of the political and social collective. It challenges the reader into thinking deeply about peace by focusing on the complex interrelationship of its personal and structural dimensions. Although the book is organized into three parts—Meanings, Politics, and Strategies—the themes presented necessarily overlap. As is stated in the introduction, the meanings we give to the process of peace, the politics that govern the ways in which we view the world and our place in it, and the strategies for a better world we choose to pursue are so interrelated as to forestall neat compartmentalization.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275928339
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	10/11/1989
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

LINDA RENNIE FORCEY, Associate Professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton, is coordinator of the Peace Studies Concentration and director of the Peace Studies Education Center at Binghamton. She is author of Mothers of Sons: Toward an Understanding of Responsibility (Praeger, 1987) and many articles on women and peace.

Table of Contents

Meanings
Introduction to Peace Studies by Linda Rennie Forcey
Toward a Paradigm for Peace by Betty A. Reardon
Problems of Peace and War are Inseparable by Hal Nieburg
Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals by Carol Cohn
Can Peace Be Imagined? by Elise Boulding
Politics
Changing My Mind: Reflections of an Engineering Professor by George L. Sackman
Patriarchy, Peace, and Women Warriors by Christine Sylvester
Low-Intensity Conflict: A Growing Threat To Peace by Michael T. Klare
America's "New Thinking" by Daniel Yankelovich and Richard Smoke
Peace and War in the Modern World-System by Immanuel Wallerstein
Strategies
Conflict Escalation and Problem Solving by Dean G. Pruitt and Richard William Rick Fry
Interpersonal Factors, Structural Factors and Conflict Resolution Strategies by Louis Kriesberg
Game Theory, Cooperation, and Conflict by Glenn Palmer
What of Peace History? Lessons from World War I by Donald S. Birn
Structuralism and World Peace by W. Warren Wagar
A Rational Basis for Hope by Charles Hauss
Selected Bibliography
Index