hanbook of peace and conflict studies

Handbook of Peace and
Conflict Studies

The fields of peace and conflict studies have grown exponentially since their initiation in
Scandinavia about a half century ago by Johan Galtung. They have forged a transdisciplinary
and professional identity distinct from security studies, political science and International
Relations.
The Routledge Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies offers a cutting-edge and transdisciplinary
overview of the main issues, debates, state-of-the-art methods and key concepts in peace and
conflict studies today. The volume is divided into four sections, commencing with ‘Understanding and Transforming Conflict’, moving sequentially through ‘Creating Peace’ and ‘Supporting Peace’, and culminating with ‘Peace Across the Disciplines’. Each section features new
essays by distinguished international scholars and/or professionals working in peace studies and
conflict resolution and transformation. Drawing from a wide range of theoretical, methodological and political positions, the editors and contributors offer topical and enduring
approaches to peace and conflict studies.
This book will be essential reading for students of peace studies, conflict studies and conflict
resolution. It will also be of interest and use to practitioners in conflict resolution and NGOs, as
well as policymakers and diplomats.
Charles Webel is currently Fulbright Senior Specialist in Peace and Conflict Studies. During
2005, he was Director of the Centre of Peace Studies and a professor of social science at the
University of Tromsø, Norway. He is the author of Terror, Terrorism, and the Human Condition
(2005) and co-author with David P. Barash of Peace and Conflict Studies (2002).
Johan Galtung is widely acknowledged as the founder of peace studies and peace research. He
has published extensively in these fields. He is currently co-director of TRANSCEND, a global
network of peace scholars and conflict transformers.



Handbook of Peace and
Conflict Studies

Edited by

Charles Webel and Johan Galtung


First published 2007
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routedge
270 Madison Avenue, New York NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2007 Selection and editorial matter Charles Webel and Johan Galtung; individual chapters,
the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Handbook of peace and conflict studies / edited by Charles Webel and Johan Galtung.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Peace-building. 2. Conflict management. I. Webel, Charles. II. Galtung, Johan.
JZ5538.H36 2007
303.6′6—dc22
2006027025

ISBN 0-203-08916-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–39665–4 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–08916–2 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–39665–3 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–08916–3 (ebk)


Contents

List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors

Introduction
1 Introduction: toward a philosophy and metapsychology of peace
Charles Webel
2 Introduction: peace by peaceful conflict transformation – the
TRANSCEND approach
Johan Galtung

viii
ix

1
3

14

Part 1: Understanding and transforming conflict

3 Negotiation and international conflict
Fen Osler Hampson, Chester A. Crocker and Pamela R. Aall

35

4 Mediation
Sara Horowitz

51

5 Former Yugoslavia and Iraq: a comparative analysis of international conflict
mismanagement
Jan Oberg

64

6 Peace studies and peace politics: multicultural common security in
North–South conflict situations
Kinhide Mushakoji

86

v


CONTENTS

7 Disarmament and survival
Marc Pilisuk
8 Nuclear disarmament

David Krieger

94

106

Part 2: Creating peace
9 Counselling and training for conflict transformation and peace-building:
the TRANSCEND approach
Wilfried Graf, Gudrun Kramer and Augustin Nicolescou

123

10 Nonviolence: more than the absence of violence
Jørgen Johansen

143

11 Human rights and peace
Jim Ife

160

12 Reconciliation
Joanna Santa-Barbara

173

13 Peace as a self-regulating process
Dietrich Fischer

187

Part 3: Supporting peace
14 Gender and peace: towards a gender-inclusive, holistic perspective
Tony Jenkins and Betty A. Reardon

209

15 Peace business: an introduction
Jack Santa-Barbara

232

16 Peace Journalism
Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick

248

17 Peace psychology: theory and practice
Antonella Sapio and Adriano Zamperini

265

18 Rethinking peace education
Alicia Cabezudo and Magnus Haavelsrud

279

Part 4: Peace across the disciplines

19 Peace studies as a transdisciplinary project
Chadwick F. Alger

vi

299


CONTENTS

20 The spirit of war and the spirit of peace: understanding the role of religion
Graeme MacQueen

319

21 International law: amid power, order and justice
Richard Falk

333

22 The language-games of peace
Anat Biletzki

345

23 Peace and the arts
Patrick McCarthy

355

24 Peace through health?
Neil Arya

367

Part 5: Conclusion
25 Peace and conflict studies: looking back, looking forward
Johan Galtung and Charles Webel
Index

397

401

vii


List of Illustrations

Tables
2.1
2.2
2.3
13.1
13.2
13.3
13.4
15.1
16.1
17.1

19.1

Peace by peaceful conflict transformation: a TRANSCEND model
Ten faultline dimensions and two levels of organization
Peace: negative and positive, direct, structural, cultural
Eight components of peace
Some examples of positive and negative feedback loops
Six defects of a feedback system, with possible remedies
Some potential remedies against the six basic defects in social
feedback systems
Traditional and peace business paradigms
Galtung’s table
Differences between traditional psychology and peace psychology
Functions appearing in names of UN Systems agencies

17
21
31
188
189
192
203
242
251
269
305

Figures
11.1
17.1

17.2
18.1
18.2
19.1

Rights and responsibilities: individual and collective
Three interactional responses to an attack
Interactive-emotional model
Relationships in time and space
The dialectics between theory and practice
Emergence of peace tools in the League of Nations and the UN
system
23.1 Paradise Now, silkscreen and paint on canvas
24.1 Peace through health working model
24.2 Breaking the chain of war: medical peace action in a framework of
prevention

viii

169
273
275
281
285
302
365
379
383

Notes on Contributors

Pamela R. Aall is Vice President for Education at the US Institute of Peace. She is also
President of Women in International Security, an organization dedicated to promoting the
visibility and influence of women in foreign affairs. With Chester A. Crocker and Fen Osler
Hampson, she is co-editor of several books, including Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing
International Conflict (2001) and Grasping the Nettle: Analyzing Cases of Intractable Conflict (2005).
She also is co-author of Taming Intractable Conflicts: Mediation in the Hardest Cases (2004) and the
Guide to IGOs, NGOs and the Military in Peace and Relief Operations (2000). Her research interests
include mediation in inter- and intra-state conflicts, non-official organizations in conflict management and resolution, and the role of education in exacerbating conflict and promoting
reconciliation.
Chadwick F. Alger is Mershon Professor of Political Science and Public Policy Emeritus, the
Ohio State University. His research and teaching has focused on three linked themes. First is
the development of long-term strategies for peace-building. He was Secretary General of the
International Peace Research Association from 1984 to 1987. Second is the expanding peacebuilding roles of some 30 organizations in the UN system, with special interest in the roles of
NGOs/civil society. For a number of years he conducted extensive field research at the UN
Headquarters in New York City and at the headquarters of the UN and UN Specialized
Agencies in Geneva, Switzerland. Third is the world relations of people and organizations in
local communities. He is author of The United Nations System: A Reference Manual (2006) and
editor of The Future of the UN System: Potential for the Twenty First Century (1998). He was
President of the International Studies Association, 1978–79.
Neil Arya is a family doctor involved with projects on violence reduction in El Salvador (postconflict) and mental health in Palestine (active conflict). He has been a lecturer on Peace
through Health both at McMaster and the University of Waterloo, and holds academic positions in Environment and Resource Studies at the University of Waterloo, and Family
Medicine both at McMaster University and the University of Western Ontario. He has served
as President of Physicians for Global Survival and Vice President of International Physicians for
the Prevention of Nuclear War. Dr Arya has published on health effects of small arms and

ix

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

nuclear weapons, peace through health, a health-based model of security, as well as various
health and environmental issues. He is co-editor of a book with Joanna Santa Barbara on Peace
through Health (forthcoming).
Anat Biletzki is Professor of Philosophy, Tel Aviv University and was a former chairperson of
B’Tselem – the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
Professor Biletzki’s research interests range from Wittgenstein and Hobbes to analytic philosophy, political thought and human rights. Her professional and philosophical activities converge in the area of human rights and she is often invited abroad – for public lecturing, for
seminars at human rights conferences, for interviews, and for meetings with human rights
counterparts all over the world. Publications include Paradoxes (1996), Talking Wolves: Thomas
Hobbes on the Language of Politics and the Politics of Language (1997), What Is Logic? (2002) and
(Over)Interpreting Wittgenstein (2003).
Alicia Cabezudo, from Argentina, specializes in Education for Democracy, Cultures of Peace,
and Human Rights, as rooted in recent Latin American history. She is Professor at the School of
Education, University of Rosario, Argentina, and Education Coordinator at the UNESCO
Chair on Culture of Peace and Human Rights, University of Buenos Aires. Her recent publications include Educacion en Derechos Humanos. Un ejercicio para la Construccion de la Ciudadania
(2006); Educacion para la Paz y los Derechos Humanos: un desafio actuala (2006); Learning to Abolish
War: Teaching toward a Culture of Peace, with Betty Reardon (2002); and ‘Tasks and directions for
the global campaign for peace education’, also with Betty Reardon, in Disarmament Forum
Newsletter, Volume 3, United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, Geneva (2001).
Chester A. Crocker is James R. Schlesinger professor of strategic studies at the Walsh
School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. He served as chairman of the board of the
United States Institute of Peace (1992–2004), and continues as a member of its board. From
1981 to 1989, he was US Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs. He is the author of High
Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood (1992), co-author (with Fen Osler
Hampson and Pamela Aall) of Taming Intractable Conflicts: Mediation in the Hardest Cases (2004)
and co-editor of Grasping the Nettle: Analyzing Cases of Intractable Conflict (2005), Turbulent Peace:
The Challenges of Managing International Conflict (2001) and Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in
a Complex World (1999).
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University and since 2002 Distinguished Visiting Professor, Global Studies, University of California

at Santa Barbara. He is also Chair of the Board, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and on the
editorial board of The Nation and The Progressive. His recent books include a co-edited volume,
Crimes of War: Iraq (2006). The Decline of World Order: America’s Neoimperial Foreign Policy (2004)
and The Great Terror War (2003).
Dietrich Fischer is Academic Director of the European University Centre for Peace Studies,
Burg Schlaining, Austria. He is a former MacArthur Fellow in International Peace and Security
Studies at Princeton University and Co-Director of TRANSCEND. He is the author of
Preventing War in the Nuclear Age (1984) and Non-Military Aspects of Security: A Systems Approach
(1993) and co-author of Warfare and Welfare: Integrating Security Policy into Socio-Economic Policy
(with Nobel Laureate Jan Tinbergen, 1987), Winning Peace: Strategies and Ethics for a Nuclear-Free
World (with Wilhelm Nolte and Jan Oberg, 1989), and Conditions of Peace: An Inquiry (with

x


NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Grace Boggs et al., 1991). He has been a consultant to various United Nations agencies on
issues of disarmament and development.
Johan Galtung is a Professor of Peace Studies and the founder and Co-director of TRANSCEND: A Peace and Development Network. Born in Oslo, Norway, he has doctorates in
mathematics and sociology. He is the founder of the International Peace Research Institute,
Oslo, and of the Journal of Peace Research. His recent book publications include: Human Rights in
Another Key (1994); Peace By Peaceful Means (1996); Conflict Transformation by Peaceful Means
(1998, 2000); Searching for Peace (with Carl G. Jacobsen and Kai Frithjof Brand-Jacobsen)
(2000); Rethinking Conflict: The Cultural Approach (2002); ‘Democracy works: people, experts
and the future’ (with Håkan Wiberg, eds), FUTURES, Special Issue, March 2003; USA Glasnost
(with Rick Vincent) (2003); Transcend & Transform (2004); and Pax Pacifica: The Pacific
Hemisphere and Peace Studies (2005).
Wilfried Graf holds a PhD in Sociology. He is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Sociology
of Law and Criminology and Co-Director of the Institute for Integrative Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding in Vienna, Austria. Between 1983 and 2005, he was Senior Researcher

at the Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution. Currently he is conducting
dialogue workshops in order to support the peace process in Sri Lanka, and is also engaged in
similar projects in Central Asia, the South Caucasus and West Balkans. Dr Graf is a lecturer and
trainer at numerous universities and academies. His main research interests are the study of
culture and the collective unconscious in processes of violence, war, peace and conflict
transformation.
Magnus Haavelsrud is a Professor of Education at the Norwegian University of Science and
Technology in Trondheim, Norway. His work deals with the critique of the reproductive role
of education and the possibilities for transcendence of this reproduction in light of the traditions of educational sociology and peace research. His publications include Education in Developments (1996); Perspectives in the Sociology of Education (1997, 2nd edition); Education Within the
Archipelago of Peace Research 1945–1964, co-authored with Mario Borrelli (1993); Disarming:
Discourse on Violence and Peace, editor (1993); and Approaching Disarmament Education, editor
(1981).
Fen Osler Hampson is the Director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs,
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. His books include Taming Intractable Conflicts: Mediation in
the Hardest Cases (2005), Grasping the Nettle: Analyzing Cases of Intractability (2005), Madness in the
Multitude: Human Security and World Disorder (2002). Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing
International Conflict (2001). Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World (1999). Nurturing Peace: Why Peace Settlements Succeed or Fail (1996). Multilateral Negotiations: Lessons From
Arms Control, Trade and the Environment (1995 and 1999) and Unguided Missiles: How America
Buys Its Weapons (1986).
Sara Horowitz is a Professor of Negotiation in the School of Agriculture of the University of
Buenos Aires. She is a TRANSCEND member and Co-Director of the TRANSCEND
Peace University, mediator and peace worker. She is Secretary of the Latin American branch of
IPRA, the International Peace Research Association. She is the author of six books in Spanish,
dealing with adoption; mediation in general; mediation at school; community; and peace in
school.

xi


NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Jim Ife has been Professor and Head of Department of Social Work and Social Policy at both
the University of Western Australia and Curtin University. He was the inaugural Head of
the Centre for Human Rights Education, and Haruhisa Handa Professor of Human Rights
Education, at Curtin University, until his retirement in 2006. He has published in the fields of
community development and human rights, and his books include Community Development
(3rd ed. 2006) and Human Rights and Social Work (2001). He is a former Chair of Amnesty
International Australia.
Tony Jenkins is the Co-Director of the Peace Education Center at Teachers College,
Columbia University and the Global Coordinator of the International Institutes on Peace
Education (IIPE). He has extensive consultative experience, including work with universities,
NGOs and several UN agencies. His current work focuses on pedagogical research and educational design and development, with special interest in alternative security systems, disarmament and gender. Among his recent publications are ‘Disarming the system, disarming the
mind’, in Peace Review (2006) and ‘A peace education response to modernism: reclaiming the
social and pedagogical purposes of academia’, in Jing Lin and Christa Bruhn (eds) Educators as
Peacemakers: Transforming Education for Global Peace (in press).
Jørgen Johansen is a freelance peaceworker, lecturer and researcher. He is affiliated with the
Transcend Peace University, and the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies, Coventry
University. He is author of Bombemålet Norge, Atomstrategi, Ytringsfrihet og Razzia [Norway the
Bombtarget, Nuclear Strategy, Freedom of Speech and Police Raid] (1984); Aldri Mer 9. April
[Never More April 9] (1987); Socialt Försvar – en ickevåldsrevolution [Social Defence – A nonviolent Revolution] (1990); Den Nødvendige Ulydigheten [The Necessary Disobedience] (with Åsne
Berre Persen, 1998); and Sosialt Forsvar, ikkevoldskamp mot vår tids trusler [Social Defence,
Nonviolent Struggle Against the Threats of Our Time] (2000).
Gudrun Kramer is Co-Director of the Institute for Integrative Conflict Transformation and
Peacebuilding in Vienna, Austria and Co-Director of TRANSCEND International. Between
1999 and 2005, she was Programme Director for projects related to conflict regions at the
Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution. Ms Kramer was also responsible
for the training courses that are designed to prepare civilians for peace-building activities in
crisis areas. Currently she is conducting dialogue workshops in order to support the peace
process in Sri Lanka, and is also engaged in similar projects in Central Asia, the South
Caucasus and West Balkans. She is a lecturer and trainer at numerous universities and

academies.
David Krieger is a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and has served as President
of the Foundation since 1982. Under his leadership the Foundation has initiated many innovative and important projects for building peace, strengthening international law and abolishing
nuclear weapons. He is the author of many studies of peace in the nuclear age, including the
book Nuclear Weapons and the World Court (1998).
Jake Lynch is Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University.
With Annabel McGoldrick, he is the joint author of Peace Journalism (2005) and many book
chapters and articles about conflict, peace and the ethics of reporting. He is a member of
the Toda Institute working group on Peace Journalism and a founder member of the
Peace Journalism commission of the International Peace Research Association. He was

xii


NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

previously a senior international journalist, having worked as a Political Correspondent for Sky
News, Sydney Correspondent for the Independent newspaper and a news anchor for BBC
World.
Graeme MacQueen taught Buddhist text and narrative in the Religious Studies Department
of McMaster University for 30 years. In 1989, he became founding Director of the Centre for
Peace Studies at McMaster, after which he helped develop an undergraduate programme in
Peace Studies and co-directed a peace-building programme with projects in Sri Lanka, Gaza,
Serbia and Afghanistan. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters,
as well as three books, including a novel.
Patrick McCarthy is a painter and sculptor, living in Los Angeles. Besides his daily painting,
he is also at work on a philosophical manuscript entitled ‘Supreme Happiness’, as well as
a fictional narrative about an artist going about his life in Los Angeles. His website is:
patrickmccarthygallery.com.
Annabel McGoldrick is an experienced international reporter in television and radio news.

She has covered conflicts in the Philippines, Indonesia and Israel−Palestine. She produced the
BBC documentary, ‘Against the War’, with Harold Pinter, during the NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia in 1999. With Jake Lynch, she is the joint author of Peace Journalism (2005) and many
book chapters and articles about conflict, peace and the ethics of reporting. She has taught in
the universities of Sydney, and Queensland, Australia. Annabel is a qualified psychotherapist
with a special interest in journalism and trauma.
Kinhide Mushakoji, Director of the Peace Research Institute at Meiji Gakuin University in
Tokyo, was Vice Rector for Regional and Global Studies at the United Nations University in
Tokyo from 1976 to 1989. He is a Japanese authority on international affairs and particularly
interested in peace research. He is the former Director of the Institute for International Relations at Sophia University in Tokyo, which he founded in 1969, a year after joining the Sophia
faculty. He has been a Visiting Professor at Princeton and Northwestern Universities in the
USA and subsequently a Senior Scholar at the East West Center in Hawaii and Consultant to
the Commission on Society, Development and Peace in Geneva. He was Vice President of the
International Political Science Association. Among his publications are ‘Introduction to Peace
Research’, ‘Japanese Foreign Policy in a Multi-Polar World’, and ‘Behavioral Science and
International Politics’.
Augustin Nicolescou is Project Coordinator and Researcher at the Institute for Integrative
Conflict Transformation and Peace-building in Vienna, Austria. He is the coordinator of the
IICP dialogue workshops for the support of the peace process in Sri Lanka. Mr Nicolescou
received his BA in Political Science from McGill University in Montreal, Canada and his MA
in Peace and Conflict Studies from the European University Centre for Peace Studies in
Stadtschlaining, Austria. His current research focus is on the role of networks, norms and trust
in conflict transformation processes.
Jan Oberg is co-founder and Director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future
Research, TFF, in Lund, Sweden (www.transnational.org). His main books are Myth About Our
Security, To Develop Security and Secure Development, Winning Peace (co-author) and Predictable
Fiasco: The Conflict with Iraq and Denmark as an Occupying Power (2004).

xiii

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Marc Pilisuk is Professor Emeritus, the University of California, and a Professor at the
Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center. He is the author of International Conflict and
Social Policy (1972); The Healing Web: Social Networks and Human Survival (1986); The Triple
Revolution: Social Problems in Depth (1968); Triple Revolution Emerging (1971); Poor Americans: How
the White Poor Live (1971); and How We Lost the War on Poverty (2005).
Betty A. Reardon is a peace educator with a half century of experience in the field. She is the
founding Director of the Peace Education Center at Teachers College Columbia University
and of the International Institute on Peace Education, an international experience in peace
education offered annually, each year in a different world region. She has taught at all levels of
formal education. Her work has been in the development of pedagogies relevant to the substance and purposes of peace knowledge, with emphasis on gender issues, human rights and
human security. Among her many publications are Sexism and the War System (1985) and
Education for a Culture of Peace in a Gender Perspective (2001).
Jack Santa-Barbara is currently Director of the Sustainable Scale Project, an NGO focusing
on the relationship between economic theory and practice and the biophysical limits of global
ecosystems. He is also an Associate of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University in
Hamilton, Ontario, and a Member of Transcend: A Peace and Development organization. He is
co-author, with Johan Galtung, of Peace Business: The Role of Business in Reducing Violence,
Inequity and Ecological Degradation, (in press).
Joanna Santa-Barbara is affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry and Centre for Peace
Studies, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, as well as with Physicians for Global
Survival Canada, Science for Peace and TRANSCEND. Her research interests include conflict
transformation, Peace through Health and the impact of war on children. Publications include
Peace through Health (forthcoming).
Antonella Sapio is a medical doctor, child neuropsychiatrist and social psychologist.
Currently, she is Professor of Peace Psychology at the University of Florence in Italy. She is the
author of many scientific publications, including the important volume Per una Psicologia della
Pace (2004, ed. F. Angeli). She has founded, together with other collegues, the Società Italiana di

Scienze Psicosociali per la Pace [Italian Society of Psychosocial Sciences for Peace] (SISPa) and
is involved in many activities for peace, emphasizing the promotion of a culture of nonviolence
in institutional peacebuilding.
Charles Webel is currently a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Peace and Conflict Resolution.
Previously, he was Director of the Centre for Peace Studies at the University of Tromsø,
Norway, and was a Guest Professor at the UNESCO Chair for the Philosophy of Peace at the
University of Castellon, Spain. He studied and taught at Harvard University and at the University of California at Berkeley, and is a research graduate of the Psychoanalytic Institute of
Northern California. He is author of Terror, Terrorism, and the Human Condition (2004), coauthor (with David Barash) of Peace and Conflict Studies (2002), and has published widely in
philosophy, psychology, and social science journals. He has also been active in many peace
organizations, having also served as West Coast Secretary of Concerned Philosophers of Peace.
Adriano Zamperini is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Padua, Italy.
The promoter of many scientific and cultural initiatives on peace, together with other

xiv


NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

colleagues he has founded the Società Italiana di Scienze Psicosociali per la Pace [Italian Society
of Psychosocial Sciences for Peace] (SISPa), of which he is the President. His books include
Psicologia sociale della responsabilità: Giustizia, politica, etica e altri scenari [Social Psychology of
Responsibility: Justice, Politics, and Other Scenarios] (1998); Psicologia dell’inerzia e della solidarietà: Lo spettatore di fronte alle atrocità collettive [Psychology of Inertia and Solidarity: The
Bystander Before Collective Atrocities] (2001); and Prigioni della mente. Relazioni di oppressione e
resistenza [Mind Prisons: Oppression and Resistance Reports] (2004).

xv



Introduction

1
Introduction
Toward a philosophy and metapsychology of peace
Charles Webel

The importance of securing international peace was recognized by the really great men of former
generations. But the technical advances of our times have turned this ethical postulate into a matter
of life and death for civilized mankind today, and made the taking of an active part in the solution
to the problem of peace a moral duty which no conscientious man can shirk.
(Albert Einstein 1984: 43)
Although attempting to bring about world peace through the internal transformation of individuals is difficult, it is the only way. . . . Peace must first be developed within an individual. And I
believe that love, compassion, and altruism are the fundamental basis for peace. Once these qualities
are developed within an individual, he or she is then able to create an atmosphere of peace and
harmony. This atmosphere can be expanded and extended from the individual to his family, from
the family to the community and eventually to the whole world.
(Dalai Lama, in Thich Nhat Hanh 1991: vii)
If we begin with the need to survive, we immediately see that peace is a primary requirement of the
human condition itself.
(Johan Galtung, in Galtung and Ikeda 1995: 110)
Love, work, and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it.
(Wilhelm Reich 1971: Epigraph)
Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong. . . . The law of love will work, just as the law of gravitation
will work, whether we accept it or not. . . . The more I work at this law the more I feel the delight
in life, the delight in the scheme of the universe. It gives me a peace and a meaning of the mysteries
of nature that I have no power to describe.
(M. K. Gandhi 1930/2002: 46)
The history of human civilization shows beyond any doubt that there is an intimate connection

between cruelty and the sexual instinct; but nothing has been done towards explaining the
connection, apart from laying emphasis on the aggressive factor in the libido.
(Sigmund Freud 1905/1989: 252)

3


CHARLES WEBEL

And how long shall we have to wait before the rest of mankind becomes pacifists too? There is no
telling. . . . But one thing we can say: whatever fosters the growth of culture works at the same time
against war.
(Sigmund Freud 1932/1959: 287)
. . . peace (the sum total of the love objects to be preserved) is the new mother symbol threatened
by the dragon-war; not to fight for the mother-peace against the dragon-war is to desert what we
love because the need to prove that we know how to fight . . . is narcissistically more important
than the preservation of what we love.
(Fornari 1974: 231)
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever
is powerful may be just.
(Pascal, in Ackerman and DuVall 2000: 1)

Preface
For millennia, philosophers, religious thinkers and political activists have written about and
demonstrated for ‘peace’ and decried war. Yet a ‘philosophy’ of peace is still in its infancy. And
while theorists, strategists, tacticians and planners of war and ‘security studies’ dominate both
the academy and the halls of power, philosophers who profess and march for peace do so
outside the mainstream philosophical curriculum, far removed from those with the power to
make and enforce important political decisions, and often to the dismay and castigation of their
more ‘echt philosophical’ colleagues.

For over a century, psychologists and psychoanalysts have attempted to illuminate the often
elusive and murky depths of the human psyche. But a ‘depth psychology’ of peace is also merely
inchoate. Psychologists who research and teach peace, like their philosophical comrades, do so
on the margins of their discipline, and usually as a supplement to more ‘rigorous, scientific’
investigations.
Philosophers and psychologists are all ‘for’ peace. But those who attempt to bring peace
studies and peace research into their ‘professional’ work, at least in much of the Anglophonic
world, risk marginalization and even exclusion from their disciplinary practices, powers and
perks. As a result, scholars who wish to study, research, teach and practise peace have begun in
the past half century to create their own counter-institutions, where they may do so without
the risk of continued academic and professional isolation.
And psychoanalysts, perhaps modernity’s most acute probers of conflicts unconscious and
interpersonal, are shunned almost entirely by the halls of academic learning and medical
research and shun, almost entirely, a depth analysis of the emotional and cognitive hallmarks of
inner peace (or harmony) and outer discord (or conflict). Unlike Freud, who engaged in an
epistolary discussion with Albert Einstein about the depth-psychological origins of war and
mass violence, most analysts in the mainstream ‘object relations’ and ‘drive-theoretical’ traditions are reluctant to stray from the inner sanctum of the clinical case conference and take a
public stand on the unconscious sources of bellicose and peaceful behaviour. In contrast, an
earlier generation of analysts, including Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm, actively sought to
understand and transform the characterological and cultural sources of authoritarianism and
militarism. But in our time, analytic ‘silence’ tends to extend far beyond the analytic hour with
the analysand.
There are some hopeful contraindications, however. In the US and UK, progressive and

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peace-oriented philosophers have banded together in such organizations as ‘Concerned Philosophers for Peace’, ‘Radical Philosophy’ and ‘International Philosophers for the Prevention of

Nuclear War’ (created by John Somerville as a sister group of ‘International Physicians for
the Prevention of Nuclear War’). Several journals and many conferences have been held by
these organizations. And psychologists have their own division of ‘Peace Psychology’ in the
American Psychological Association and have recently published two books about peace
psychology (Christie et al. 2001; Macnair 2003).
Psychoanalysts, while speaking as individuals in favour of peaceful means of conflict resolution and in opposition to war in general and to recent wars in particular, still tend, at least in
the English-speaking world, to shy away from ‘politicization’ of their ‘science’. Many Latin
American and European analysts are less reluctant to publicize their privately held pacifist
sentiments. On the whole, however, most contemporary philosophers, psychologists and
psychoanalysts remain publicly mute about war and peace.
Consequently, in large part because of the modernist and postmodernist shifting of peace
analysis and research to the fringes of ‘elite’ professional discourse and outside the institutional
reward structure of mainstream academia and politics, a philosophical theory of ‘outer’ peace
and a depth psychological comprehension of ‘inner’ peacefulness seem as desirable today as
they did thousands of years ago. And just as evasive and elusive.
Hence we are confronted with a seeming paradox – peace is something we all desire, and yet,
except for relatively brief intervals between wars, seem unable to attain (except on paper). And
peace studies, peace research, peacekeeping and peacemaking are almost universally acclaimed
to be laudable activities, but not for ‘serious’ scholars and clinicians doing their ‘day’ jobs.
Is an ontology, a metaphysics of peace possible, or even desirable? If so, what might it look
like?
Can a deep psychological account of emotional well-being, and its opposite(s), be offered,
possibly on scientific principles rooted in contemporary psychoanalysis and neuroscience? If so,
what might this contribute to contemporary theories and practices of nonviolence and
peacemaking?
In this chapter, I will not attempt to give a comprehensive, much less a definitive response to
these questions. There is neither sufficient knowledge nor adequate space to do so. Instead,
what is possible in this brief introduction is to raise, and perhaps to reframe, these questions,
to look at peace and its philosophical and metapsychological prerequisites in a provocative,
possibly novel, way.

What is, and might be, peace?
Perhaps ‘peace’ is like ‘happiness’, ‘justice’, ‘health’ and other human ideals, something every
person and culture claims to desire and venerate, but which few if any achieve, at least on an
enduring basis. Why are peace, justice and happiness so desirable, but also so intangible and
elusive? But perhaps peace is different from happiness, since it seems to require social harmony
and political enfranchisement, whereas happiness appears, at least in Western culture, to be
largely an individual matter.
Alternatively, perhaps peace does indeed resemble individual happiness – always there,
implicit in our psychological make-up and intermittently explicit in our social behaviour and
cultural norms. Peace is a pre-condition for our emotional well-being, but a peaceful state of
mind is subject to cognitive disruptions and aggressive eruptions.
Peace is a linchpin of social harmony, economic equity and political justice, but peace is also

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constantly ruptured by wars and other forms of violent conflict. Like happiness, peace remains
so near . . . and yet, like enduring love, so far . . ..
Spiritual and religious leaders from the Buddha and Jesus to Gandhi and the Dalai Lama have
been inclined to equate peace and love, both in their inner dimensions and in the manner in
which people who are spiritually developed interact with others, most acutely with those who
may hate and envy them. In the twentieth century, Freud and other depth psychologists
explored the vicissitudes of our loving and hating feelings, both toward our ‘selves’, and to
others both near and dear (especially our mothers), and to those distant and often dangerous
(the ‘enemy’ within and without).
Eros and aggression, love and hate, are intermingled from birth to burial. Understanding and
pacifying our conflicted inner worlds – our need for and flight from love of ourselves and

others – is an intellectual and political project of the highest and most urgent order. This
undertaking must run in tandem with the necessity of comprehending and transforming the
conflicts rampant in our interpersonal and political realms of interaction and division.
If peace, like happiness, is both a normative ideal in the Kantian sense – a regulative principle
and ethical virtue indicating how we should think and act, even if we often fail to do so – as well
as a psychological need – something of which we are normally unaware but sporadically
conscious – then why are violence and war (the apparent contraries of social, or outer, peace), as
well as unhappiness and misery (the expressions of a lack of inner peace), so prevalent, not just
in our time but for virtually all of recorded human history? Given the facts of history and the
ever-progressing understanding of our genetic and hormonal nature, is peace even conceivable,
much less possible?
These are issues that have been addressed from time immemorial, in oral form since the dawn
of civilization and in written form since at least the periods of the great Greek and Indian
epochs. But they seem no closer, and perhaps even farther, from resolution than they were at the
times of the Iliad and the Mahabharata.
‘Peace’, like many theoretical terms, is difficult to define. But also like ‘happiness’, ‘harmony’,
‘love’, ‘justice’ and ‘freedom’, we often recognize it by its absence. Consequently, Johan Galtung and
others have proposed the important distinction between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ peace. ‘Positive’ peace denotes the simultaneous presence of many desirable states of mind and society, such
as harmony, justice, equity, etc. ‘Negative’ peace has historically denoted the ‘absence of war’
and other forms of widescale violent human conflict.
Many philosophical, religious and cultural traditions have referred to peace in its ‘positive’
sense. In Chinese, for example, the word ‘heping’ denotes world peace, peace among nations.
While the words ‘an’ and ‘mingsi’ denote an ‘inner peace’, a tranquil and harmonious state of
mind and being, akin to a meditative mental state. Other languages also frame peace in its
‘inner’ and ‘outer’ dimensions.
The English lexicon is quite rich in its supply of terms that refer to and denote peace. In
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, for example, the meanings of peace are clearly
defined.
Initially, in Webster’s, peace is defined negatively, as ‘freedom from civil clamor and confusion’, and positively as ‘a state of public quiet’ (Webster’s 1993: 1660). This denotes –peace and
+peace in their political or ‘outer’ sense. Webster’s proceeds further to define (political or outer)

peace positively as ‘a state of security or order within a community provided for by law, custom,
or public opinion’ (ibid.).
Webster’s second distinct definition of peace is a ‘mental or spiritual condition marked by
freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions’ (−peace in its personal or ‘inner’
sense) as well as ‘calmness of mind and heart: serenity of spirit’ (+inner peace) (ibid.). Third,

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peace is defined as ‘a tranquil state of freedom from outside disturbances and harassment
(+inner peace resulting from −peace) (ibid.). Fourth, peace denotes ‘harmony in human or
personal relations: mutual concord and esteem’ (this is what I will call interpersonal or intersubjective peace) (ibid.).
Next, peace is defined by Webster’s as (1) ‘a state of mutual concord between governments:
absence of hostilities or war’ (+outer peace caused by −outer peace) and (2) ‘the period of such
freedom from war’ (−outer peace) (ibid.). The sixth definition of peace is the ‘absence of
activity and noise: deep stillness: quietness’ (+inner peace caused by −inner peace) (ibid.). And
the final lexicographical meaning of peace in the English language (American version) personifies peace as ‘one that makes, gives or maintains tranquility’ (as God being the ultimate
cause of peace on earth and as identified with peace, or Peace, itself) – ‘divine peace’ (or Peace?).
(ibid.).
Dictionary definitions of abstract terms can only go so far. But in the case of the English
lexicon, the semantics of peace gets us remarkably far. For in this important dictionary, the
meanings of peace are clearly classified into both + and −, as well as ‘inner and outer’ components. Two additional denotations are what I am calling ‘interpersonal or intersubjective’
(ITP) peace, and ‘divine peace’ or the divine peacemaker (God, or in polytheistic and mythological cosmologies, the gods). I will not go into various spiritual, theological and/or religious
views of peace and Peace, but I will explore some aspects of intersubjective peace, especially in
what I shall call its ‘dialectical’ determination. For it is in this intersubjective zone that some
important contemporary and cutting-edge philosophical, psychological and psychoanalytic
theories and research strategies converge.

A dialectical determination of peace
Peace is often defined or determined negatively. Peace is ‘the absence of war’. Peace is ‘nonviolence’. Etc. We know peace by its absence.
We would agree that the Second World War was certainly not a time of peace, at least for
much of the Northern Hemisphere. But what about much of the Southern Hemisphere from
1919 to 1945? Were sub-Saharan Africa, most of Latin America, and the homelands of the
Anzus countries ‘at peace’ because they were not battlegrounds? And what about the period of
the ‘Cold War’? Was that a ‘Cold Peace’ as well?
These historical considerations lead us back to first, perhaps to ‘ultimate’, principles, regarding not just the meaning(s) of peace, but its ‘essence’, its ontology. Is peace like other theoretical
terms–justice, freedom, virtue and equality, to name a few? Something intangible but which
virtually all rational people prize? Or is it even less tangible, less perceptible, an ideal without an
essence, an ‘ideal type’ (in Max Weber’s formulation) but still bearing a ‘family resemblance’
to other, more tangible human desiderata? Perhaps peace is both an historical ideal and a term
whose meaning is in flux, sometimes seemingly constant (as in ‘inner peace of mind’) but also
noteworthy for its relative absence on the field of history (as in ‘world peace’).
Peace is dialectical. In this world, peace is neither a timeless essence – an unchanging ideal
substance – nor a mere name without a reference, a form without content. Peace should neither
be reified by essentialist metaphysics nor rendered otiose by postmodernist and sceptical
deconstruction.
Peace is also not the mere absence of war in a Hobbesian world of unending violent conflict.
Peace is both a means of personal and collective ethical transformation and an aspiration to cleanse the
planet of human-inflicted destruction. The means and the goal are in continual, dialectical evolution,

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sometimes regressing during periods of acute violent conflict and sometimes progressing nonviolently and less violently to actualize political justice and social equity. Like history and life,
peace is a terrestrial creation struggling for survival in a constantly changing, and sometimes
threatening environment.

Thinking peace
In thinking about and thinking peace, it is helpful to make clear distinctions between what
peace is and might be, and what peace is not and should not be. Thinking ‘negatively’ (critically
or dialectically), it is important to note that peace is not mere pacification: it is not active or
subtle domination and manipulation of less by more powerful actors (or −pacification). Peace is
also not quiescence and acquiescence by a ‘pacified’ population (+ pacification) fed ‘bread and
circuses’ by a ‘benevolent’ empire or autocrat.
On the contrary, peace in its progressive or dialectical mode denotes active individual and collective selfdetermination and emancipatory empowerment. Peace entails continuous peacekeeping and peacemaking. And peacemaking requires active and continual personal and collective transformation,
pacifistic rather than pacifying in its means of psychological and political development.
Similarly, the belief system of those who both think and practise peace and who actively seek
to attain it by peaceful (nonviolent) means – true pacifism – is not passivism. Genuine pacifism is
transformative and activist, employing nonviolent means of social and personal change to resist oppression,
war, and injustice and to promote personal and social moral integrity and radical, peaceful means of
transforming conflicts and actors.
Given the history of the recent past and the current parlous state of our world, one might
understandably be tempted to be sceptical about the prospects for enduring peace on earth in
an era (error?) of potential instantaneous global war with weapons of mass and vast destruction.
But it is worth recalling that other political ideals once thought unachievable also came to pass.
It took centuries, even millennia, to outlaw slavery and legitimize human rights. It might take
at least as long to delegitimize political violence, both from above (by the state) and from below
(by non-state actors).
And ‘peace on earth’ might in fact be unachievable, at least for a sustained period of time.
That does not invalidate the struggle to achieve a world with greater justice and equity and
without violence, or at least with significantly less violence, injustice and inequity. On the
contrary, the nonviolent struggle to liberate humanity from its means of self-destruction and
self-enslavement is its own end. The absence of a guarantee of ‘success’ in the effort to bring
peace to humanity, and the real possibility of the failure of the human experiment, do not
undermine the effort to pacify existence but instead bestow on it a kind of existential nobility
and political virtue.

Peace and its antitheses: terror and terrorism
The antithesis of peace is not conflict. Conflicts appear historically inevitable and may be
socially desirable if they result in personal and/or political progress. Conflicts may, perhaps
paradoxically, promote and increase peace and diminish violence if the conflicting parties
negotiate in good faith to reach solutions to problems that are achievable and tolerable, if not
ideal.
And sometimes the antithesis of peace is not violence, even political violence, since violent

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