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Books on Peace Education: Call for Manuscripts
an article by Ian Harris, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
CPNN readers are invited to submit manuscripts for peace education to the series I am editing along with Jing Lin of the University of Maryland and Edward J. Brantmeier, Colorado State University.
We welcome manuscripts that address how peace education provides information about the roots of conflicts and strategies for peace. Peace education is an important part of peace-building, which helps avoid major conflicts by building a culture of peace through generating peaceful attitudes, dispositions, values, behaviors, action-orientations, and social structures. Books in this series will address how education can contribute to building a culture of peace by teaching: tolerance; diversity affirmation; common understanding; intercultural empathy; reconciliation; renewal; compassion; conflict management skills; and a variety of nonviolent, peace-building skills.
The editors welcome studies from a wide variety of disciplines—curriculum theory, educational psychology, history, philosophy, anthropology, and sociology of education, teacher education, comparative and international education, critical theory, cultural studies, language education, feminist studies, religious studies, and environmental education.
In our times, peace education efforts can be positive, integrative, restorative, generative, and transformative. In other words, rather than defining peace education in the negative such as education for the elimination of violence, peace education efforts can be understood in the positive as creative, generative efforts that integrate knowledge and action, that integrate differences in ways that both honor diversity and establish common ground. Peace education works on bringing people together. This series on peace education hopes to illuminate the problems, challenges, and rewards associated with using educational means to diminish/eliminate and avoid conflicts.
How effective is peace education in bringing about peace? What are its strengths and weaknesses as a strategy to achieve peace? How is peace education carried out in different venues—colleges, schools, and community groups? How is peace taught in different cultures? The editors welcome manuscripts about war and peace and other peace studies themes that exhibit a clear connection to teaching and learning for solutions to promoting harmony and to building a peaceful world.
Click here for examples of possible titles and descriptions of books already published in the series.
Submit your proposal to imh@uwm.edu
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DISCUSSION
Question(s) related to this article:
What are the most important books about the culture of peace?,
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Latest reader comment:
Johan Galtung is indeed the most perceptive peace researcher of our time.
Not only did he predict the fall of the Soviet Union quite precisely, but he has also predicted the fall of the American empire. Here are excerpts from his 2004 article,
On the Coming Decline and Fall of the US Empire
The prediction of the decline and fall of the US Empire is based on the synergy of 14 contradictions, and the time span for the contradictions to work their way through decline to fall was estimated at 25 years in the year 2000. There are more contradictions because the US Empire is more complex, and the time span is longer also because it is more sophisticated. After the first months of President George W. Bush (selected) the time span was reduced to 20 years because of the way in which he sharpened so many of the contradictions posited the year before, and because his extreme singlemindedness made him blind to the negative, complex synergies. . . .
Here is the list of 14 contradictions posited in 2000:
I. Economic Contradictions(US led system WB/IMF/WTO NYSE Pentagon)
1. between growth and distribution: overproduction relative to demand, 1.4 billion below $ 1/day, 100.000 die/day, 1/4 of hunger
2. between productive and finance economy (currency, stocks,bonds) overvalued, hence crashes, unemployment, contract work
3. between production/distribution/consumption and nature: ecocrisis, depletion/pollution, global warming
II. Military Contradictions (US led system NATO/TIAP/USA-Japan)
4. between US state terrorism and terrorism: Blowback
5. between US and allies (except UK, D, Japan), saying enough
6. between US hegemony in Eurasia and the Russia India China triangle, with 40% of humanity
7. between US led NATO and EU army: The Tindemans follow-up
III. Political Contradictions (US exceptionalism under God)
8. between USA and the UN: The UN hitting back
9. between USA and the EU: vying for Orthodox/Muslim support
IV. Cultural Contradictions (US triumphant plebeian culture)
10. between US Judeo-Christianity and Islam (25% of humanity; UNSC nucleus has four Christian and none of the 56 Muslim countries).
11. between US and the oldest civilizations (Chinese, Indian, Mesopotamian, Aztec/Inca/Maya)
12. between US and European elite culture: France, Germany, etc.
V. Social Contradictions (US led world elites vs the rest: World Economic Forum, Davos vs World Social Forum, Porto Alegre)
13. between state corporate elites and working classes of unemployed and contract workers. The middle classes?
14. between older generation and youth: Seattle, Washington, Praha, Genova and ever younger youth. The middle generation?
15. To this could be added: between myth and reality.
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