Open this publication in new window or tab >>2021 (English)In: Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, ISSN 1542-3166, E-ISSN 2165-7440, Vol. 16, no 1, p. 3-8Article in journal, Editorial material (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Within peace and conflict research, the study of peace has received far less scholarly attention than the study of war and violence (Gleditsch et al., 2014). Moreover, among the studies that pay particular attention to peace, a negative peace conception, which equates peace with the absence of direct violence between formerly warring parties, has generally dominated. Consequently, peace itself is underconceptualised. Existing conceptions of peace do not provide analytical tools that can systematically describe, compare, and explain how peace varies across contexts. By way of illustration, the peace in Sri Lanka is evidently different from the peace in South Africa or the peace in Cambodia, and peace in all of these contexts has also evolved in different ways over time. Postwar processes of peacebuilding and development are complex and messy, and the outcomes are both unpredictable and highly diverse. This situation has prompted recent calls for the development of new theoretical frameworks, analytical tools, and methodologies that can enable nuanced empirical analyses and assessments of peace across empirical cases (e.g., Davenport et al., 2018; Diehl, 2016; Höglund & Söderberg Kovac, 2010; Jarstad et al., 2019).
This special issue, titled Exploring Varieties of Peace, responds to these calls and seeks to advance conceptual understandings as well as empirical analyses of peace that provide new insights into the ways in which peace is manifested, experienced, and understood. The special issue originates from the Varieties of Peace research programme and network, which was launched in 2017 at Umeå University, Sweden, with support from the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences.1 Several of the contributions were discussed at the Varieties of Peace Asia Conference, which was organised in Jakarta, Indonesia, October 22–24, 2019, in cooperation with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sage Publications, 2021
Keywords
peace, post-war, qualitative research, case studies, peacebuilding
National Category
Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalisation Studies)
Research subject
Peace and Conflict Research
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-182256 (URN)10.1177/1542316621995641 (DOI)2-s2.0-85103878849 (Scopus ID)
Funder
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, M16-0297-1
2021-04-142021-04-142023-03-24Bibliographically approved