Conceptualising Peace

  • Oliver P. Richmond
Chapter
Part of the Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies book series (RCS)

Abstract

A number of different strategies for conceptualising peace have emerged in the intellectual and policy discourses examined in the previous chapters of this study. There appears to have been an evolution in approaches to dealing with conflict and constructing peace, which has moved away from the notion that peace was geographically contained, or contained and constructed by race, identity, or power, and also away from the notion that universal peace was an unlikely achievement. What seems to have developed is an understanding of a certain version of peace — the liberal peace — as being universal and also as being attainable, if the correct methods are concertedly and consistently applied by a plethora of different actors working on the basis of an agreed peacebuilding consensus, and focusing on the regimes, structures, and institutions required at multiple levels of analysis and in multiple issue areas by liberal governance. This development is a hybrid form related to the main strands of thinking about peace outlined earlier in this study, including the victor’s peace, constitutional, institutional, and civil approaches, and there exist both ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ versions.

Keywords

Civil Society Ideal Form Civil Society Actor Conflict Zone Conflict Environment 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. 1.
    John G. Ikenberry, AfterVictory, Princeton UP, 2001, p. 116.Google Scholar
  2. 2.
    See, among others, Richard Falk, On Humane Governance, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995; Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community, University of South Carolina Press, 1998; Vivienne Jabri, Discourses on Violence, MUP, 1996, pp. 145–67.Google Scholar
  3. 3.
    Sun Tzu, ‘The Use of Spies’, The Art of War. XIII, London: Penguin, 2003.Google Scholar
  4. 4.
    Martin Ceadal, ThinkingAboutPeace and War, Oxford: OUP, 1987, p. 4.Google Scholar
  5. 5.
    For example, see Roland Paris, At War’s End, CUP, 2004, p. 209.Google Scholar
  6. 6.
    Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, The West, Civil Society, and the Construction of Peace, London: Palgrave, 2003, p. 112.Google Scholar
  7. 7.
    For more on this see Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars, London: Zed, 2001, p. 34.Google Scholar
  8. 8.
    Ibid., p. 34.Google Scholar
  9. 9.
    Ibid., p. 52.Google Scholar
  10. 12.
    See James Rosenau, ‘Governance, Order and Change in World Politics’ in James Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (eds), Governance without Government, CUP, 1992, p. 7.Google Scholar
  11. 13.
    For more on this, see Johan Galtung, Peace By Peaceful Means Peace And Conflict, Development And Civilization, London Sage, 1996, p. viii.Google Scholar
  12. 14.
    See in particular Thomas Risse-Kappen, ‘Collective Identity in a Democratic Community’, in Peter Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: Columbia UP, pp. 357–99.Google Scholar
  13. 15.
    See Rob Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; David Campbell, Writing Security, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.Google Scholar
  14. 16.
    This is outlined in Robert Keohane’s famous paper, ‘International Institutions: Two Approaches’, in International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 4, 1988, p. 384.Google Scholar
  15. Ibid., pp. 379–396.Google Scholar
  16. 18.
    See in particular, Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of Politics, CUP, 2000: Thomas Rise-Kappen, ‘Ideas do not float freely’, International Organisation, Vol. 48, No. 2, 1994.Google Scholar
  17. 19.
    Vivienne Jabri, Discourses on Violence, MUP, 1996, pp. 145–67.Google Scholar
  18. 20.
    Richard Shapcott, ‘Cosmopolitan Conversations’, Global Society, Vol. 16, No. 3, 2002, p. 222.Google Scholar
  19. 21.
    Ibid., p. 222.Google Scholar
  20. 22.
    Stephen Hopgood, ‘Reading the Small Print in Global Civil Society’, Millennium, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2000, p. 10.Google Scholar
  21. 23.
    J. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, Cambridge: Polity, 1990, p. 64.Google Scholar
  22. 25.
    R.J. Rummel, The Just Peace, California: Sage, 1981, p. 11.Google Scholar
  23. 26.
    Raymond C. Kelly, Warless Societies and the Origins of War, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000, p. 108.Google Scholar
  24. 27.
    Ibid., p. 160.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Oliver P. Richmond 2005

Authors and Affiliations

  • Oliver P. Richmond
    • 1
  1. 1.School of International RelationsUniversity of St. AndrewsUK

Personalised recommendations