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Teaching Peace By Using Nonviolent Communication For Difficult Conversations In The College Classroom, Sara Koopman, Laine Seliga

Peace and Conflict Studies

Having empathy and respect for oneself and others when engaging in difficult dialogue is an essential part of peace education. Gandhi emphasized that involving emotions was more transformative than purely intellectual approaches to education. Nonviolent communication (NVC), as developed by Marshall Rosenberg, is a tool for fostering empathy and building connection across difference. Using NVC for difficult conversations in any college classroom is a way of mainstreaming peace education across the curriculum. Though there is literature on difficult conversations in the college classroom, and on the effectiveness of NVC in general and in K-12 classrooms, there is very little on …

Capturing The Flag: The Struggle For National Identity In Nonviolent Revolutions, Landon E. Hancock, Anuj Gurung

Peace and Conflict Studies

One goal of nonviolent resistance movements is to legitimize themselves in opposition to governments by undermining the latter’s leadership. We argue nonviolent groups that can ‘own’ the national identity are more likely to succeed, as they can assert the legitimacy of their vision for the state, and persuade other sectors of society to support their cause. Our argument is supported by the Arab Spring uprisings, where those resistance movements that were able to identify and claim ownership over a homogeneous national identity were more successful in pressing their claims. We view national identity as a component of symbolic power in …

Constructive Noncooperation: Living In Truth, Mark A. Mattaini, Kristen Atkinson

Peace and Conflict Studies

Mohandas Gandhi often indicated that nonviolence was “a science,” and he appears to have meant this literally. Consistent with this vision, in this paper, we outline and apply principles of behavioral systems science, an emerging data-based approach to understanding the dynamics of complex cultural systems, to the practice of constructive noncooperation (Gandhi’s “constructive programme”). Although Gandhi emphasized that constructive action was the most important and potent of nonviolent strategic options, constructive alternatives have been the least developed in the literature of nonviolent struggle. The reconceptualization of constructive noncooperation in behavioral systems terms offered here suggests that rigorous analysis of Havel’s …

“The Problem From Hell”: Examining The Role Of Peace And Conflict Studies For Genocide Intervention And Prevention, Paul Cormier, Peter Karari, Alka Kumar, Robin Neustaeter, Jodi Read, Jessica Senehi

Peace and Conflict Studies

Genocide is one of the most challenging problems of our age. In her book, “A Problem from Hell:” America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power (2002) argues that the United States, while in a position to intervene in genocide, has lacked the will to do so, and therefore it is incumbent on the U.S. citizenry to pressure their government to act. This article reviews how the topic of genocide raises questions along the fault lines of the field of Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS). In this article, a framework is provided to examine genocide and responses to it. This …

From Terrorism To Nonviolence And The Islamic Peace Paradigm: Jihad, Just War, Peace And Islamic Nonviolence, Sezai Ozcelik

Peace and Conflict Studies

Islamic contributions in the areas of peace, war, and nonviolence require to be revisited in post-September 11 world. With reinterpretation and redefinition of Islamic concepts of jihad (sacred struggle), sabr (patience), adl (justice), umma (community), sulha (reconciliation), hijra (exodus), diversity, and tolerance, this study attempts to contribute the Islamic understanding of war, peace, and nonviolence. Also, the story of Cain and Abel in the Qur’an shows an example for the nonviolent action together with other contemporary Islamic nonviolence actions such as Intıfıada, Kosovo, and Abdul Ghaffir Khan in Afghanistan. This study will examine the just war, qital (fighting), jihad (sacred …

A Journey Into The Future: Imagining A Nonviolent World, Elise Boulding

Peace and Conflict Studies

The inspiration for this essay came to me after a daylong workshop on Imagining a Nonviolent World which I offered for prisoners at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk on a wintry Saturday morning. This type of imaging workshop first evolved in the late 1970s, as I began to realize that we peace activists, working to bring about a nonviolent world without war, really had no idea how a world in which armies had disappeared would function. How could we work to bring about something we could not even see in our imaginations? Stepping back into the 1950s in my …

Peacemaking Through Nonviolence, Michael N. Nagler

Peace and Conflict Studies

Excerpt

Somalia, Rwanda and what was once Yugoslavia reveal the shocking inadequacies of the 'security regime' of our post-cold-war world. One response to these disasters has been to field more UN Peacekeeping operations; more operations were mounted in the four years between 1988-1992 than the previous forty. Yet, as we all know, this development was far from adequate, and in the end has brought the whole idea of UN peacekeeping into question. NATO head John Shalikashvili said early in 1992, "the days of pristine peacekeeping as we have understood it for years are probably over" (Shalikashvili, 1993). His solution was …