Peace and Conflict Studies

Peace and conflict studies is a social science field that identifies and analyses violent and nonviolent behaviours as well as the structural mechanisms attending conflicts (including social conflicts) with a view towards understanding those processes which lead to a more desirable human condition. A variation on this, peace studies (irenology), is an interdisciplinary effort aiming at the prevention, de-escalation, and solution of conflicts by peaceful means, thereby seeking 'victory' for all parties involved in the conflict. This is in contrast to war studies (polemology) which has as its aim on the efficient attainment of victory in conflicts, primarily by violent means to the satisfaction of one or more, but not all, parties involved. Disciplines involved may include political science, geography, economics, psychology, sociology, international relations, history, anthropology, religious studies, and gender studies, as well as a variety of others.

Read more about Peace And Conflict Studies:  Historical Background, Description, Normative Aims, Teaching Peace and Conflict Studies To The Military, From Conflict Resolution Via Liberal Peace- and Statebuilding To Trans-rational Peace and Elicitive , Criticism and Controversy

Famous quotes containing the words peace and, peace, conflict and/or studies:

    ... in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquillity will return again.
    Anne Frank (1929–1945)

    Plead, Sleep, my cause, and make her soft like thee,
    That she in peace may wake and pity me.
    Thomas Campion (1567–1620)

    Two principles, according to the Settembrinian cosmogony, were in perpetual conflict for possession of the world: force and justice, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge; the law of permanence and the law of change, of ceaseless fermentation issuing in progress. One might call the first the Asiatic, the second the European principle.
    Thomas Mann (1875–1955)

    You must train the children to their studies in a playful manner, and without any air of constraint, with the further object of discerning more readily the natural bent of their respective characters.
    Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)