Peace research and peace edycation

1982 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 277-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Baylis
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Peace Studies ◽  
Scholarly Journals ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research Institutes ◽  
Peace Research

Despite the proliferation in recent years of scholarly journals, university and college departments and research institutes dealing with peace studies, it would be difficult to conclude that this area of academic enquiry is as yet firmly established in the wider field of International Relations. It may well be, as one sympathetic writer noted recently, that peace research is ‘alive, vigorous, rapidly maturing and producing a good deal of work conforming to the tenets of social science’. At the same time it remains a fairly new field and one which, over the years, has suffered, and continues to suffer, from internal disputes, particularly about substance and values. In some respects these debates and controversies are a sign of intellectual vigour. It must also be said, however, that in the past the ‘lack of agreed focus and definition ideological divisions, competing disciplinary biasses, ambiguities of priorities and purposes’, have led to ‘an unhealthy confusion and mystification of issues’ which has helped to prevent its wider acceptance within the academic field.

scholarly journals Forum on Laura Zanotti, Ontological Entanglements, Agency, and Ethics in International Relations: Exploring the Crossroads (Routledge, 2019)

2020 ◽  
pp. 030582982097168
Author(s):  
Michael P. A. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Development ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
Peace Studies ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
International Organisations

This forum addresses Laura Zanotti’s Ontological Entanglements, Agency, and Ethics in International Relations: Exploring the Crossroads, a landmark work for quantum International Relations (IR) that seeks to demonstrate the critical purchase of quantum thinking for exploring novel worldview. Interveners question the value added by the quantum turn in IR theory, both as it related to critical and broader debates. Zanotti’s particular intervention – drawing on a wide variety of themes in social theory, peace studies, feminist theory, metatheoretical debates in IR, international organisations, international development, and beyond – is approaches from the perspective of feminist theory, affect theory, temporality, philosophy of social science, and critical theory. In the spirit of exploring the crossroads, this forum brings together different lines of thinking that intersect through Ontological Entanglements but also extend onward, opening provocative questions for future scholarship in critical quantum IR.

Methodological problems of interdisciplinary peace research

2021 ◽  
pp. 8-21
Author(s):  
Mykola Genyk
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Peace Studies ◽  
John Xxiii ◽  
Peace Research ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Pope John Xxiii

The increase in international tensions and the threat of global selfdestruction has determined the appearance of new interdisciplinary sciences aimed to investigate ways of contradictions resolving and raising the peace process’s effectiveness. Since the Second World War, issues of peace have become the object of study for several disciplines: polemology, eirenology, conflict resolution, and peace studies. They coexisted and rivalled in questions of methods and ways of cognition and achievement of peace. From 1960 to 1980, peace studies had been taking the first place. It had broadened and deepened the object and methods of peace research and been transformed into a separate interdisciplinary scientific field for studying and analyzing the preconditions for forging a lasting peace. Peace studies has combined conflict studies, development studies, philosophical-ethical reflections, historical context, and the international relations theory. Within peace research, two main schools have coalesced. The American traditional school (J. Burton) went in for peace keeping through predominantly analyzing international relations, arms control, disarmament, balance of power, and methods to establish peace „from the top”. The Scandinavian critical school (J. Galtung, B. V. A. Rolling, K. Boulding), based on updated social doctrine of the catholic church (the encyclicals of Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI), studied the underlying basis of conflict, having developed the theory of positive peace as a state of absence of not only direct but also of structural violence. Since the beginning of the 21st century, over 300 academic institutions and universities have been engaged in peace studies. Current peace research focuses on problems of global climate change, terrorism, sustainable development, failed states, and violation of human rights. At the same time, unsteady terminology is a significant problem of peace studies. R. Seidelman spoke about peace studies as a discipline in its infant stage. Evidently, a hybrid type of warfare, novel compound risks and threats to international security will promote the appearance of new directions of peace research. Key words: war, conflict, peace studies, peace research, peace process, conflict resolution, polemology.

Juvenile Delinquency: Can Social Science Find a Cure?

1986 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don C. Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Juvenile Delinquency ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current State ◽  
Crime And Delinquency ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Causes Of Crime

In the first half of this century, criminologists voiced a good deal of optimism regarding the search for the causes of crime and delinquency. Further, they exhibited a good deal of enthusiasm for correctional intervention based upon scientific knowledge. However, although criminological knowledge has grown impressively in the past two or three decades, criminologists have produced many specific findings and conditional propositions but few unequivocal scientific generalizations. In addition, pessimism about treatment has replaced optimism, following the discovery that “nothing works.” This article takes stock of the current state of affairs and offers suggestions regarding directions to be pursued.

Mechanisms and microfoundations in International Relations theory

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-389
Author(s):  
WILLIAM MCGINLEY
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Central Place ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Unit Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
Micro Level

AbstractThis article looks at prospects for a mechanism-based research strategy in the study of International Relations. Over the past three decades, the notions of mechanism and microfoundation have taken a central place in discussions of explanation and ‘micro-macro’ problems in social science. The upshot of much of this discussion has been a call for mechanism-based explanations – explanations of macro-level phenomena in terms of micro-level mechanisms. Some work of this kind can already be found in IR theory, including in systemic research. However, a number of IR theorists, including Kenneth Waltz and Alexander Wendt, have argued that micro-oriented strategies like this will not work, pointing to incongruities between system- and unit-level phenomena. This article argues that these pose less hindrance to a fully-developed model of mechanism-based explanation, and that the field has much to gain from further exploration of this strategy. In particular, mechanism-based explanations could help bring structure back to the centre of discussion in IR theory, and might even give us a way out of the field's own micro-macro problems.

AStudy of WarandAn Agenda for Peace: reflections on the contemporary relevance of Quincy Wright's plan for a ‘New International Order’

1996 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Beck
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
New World Order ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Peace Research ◽  
Causes Of War

By all accounts Quincy Wright was a ‘great man’. He has been called the ‘founding father’ of the academic field of International Relations, a ‘teacherpar excellence,’ and a ’painstaking and indefatigable scholar’. Wright's students and colleagues have extolled him as ‘exceptionally learned’, the ‘father of “peace research”’, and the ‘prophet of a new world order’. Such praise is scarcely hyperbolic. Indeed, during his eighty years (1890–1970), Quincy Wright followed a ‘continuous and omnivorous regime … in assimilating vast bodies of human knowledge’. Combining broad theoretical interests with a concern for policy and problem-oriented inquiry, he ‘explored the boundaries, asked the questions, pointed the directions, and set the standards for the [International Relations] profession not only in the United States, but in the world at large’. In his ambitious quest to ascertain the causes of war and peace, Wright drew liberally from the insights of many disciplines, and in so doing produced a formidable corpus of scholarly writing virtually unrivalled in its scope and breadth.

Truth and power, monks and technocrats: theory and practice in international relations

1996 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
University Curriculum ◽  
The Social ◽  
The University

‘The study of international relations is not an innocent profession.’1 It is not like the classics, or mathematics, an abstract logical training for the youthful mind. The justification for the place it has gained in the university curriculum rests upon utility, not on aesthetics. The growth of the social sciences in Western universities in the past century, and their remarkable expansion over the past thirty years, has been based upon their perceived contribution to better government, in the broadest sense. ‘The forever explosive relationship between social science and public policy’ has been embedded in the discipline of International Relations from the outset.2

Diversification propaganda work with foreign audiences

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4(13)) ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Shiyu Zhang ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Strategic Partnership ◽  
The Past ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Relationship

Over the past decade, bilateral relations between China and Russia have attracted the attention of the whole world. As neighbors and rapidly developing countries, China and Russia are becoming increasingly important in the international arena. The strategic partnership and interaction between China and Russia occupy a significant place in the politics of both countries. Cooperation is developing dynamically in various fields, primarily in politics. After 2012, a change of government took place in China and Russia, which brought new changes to international relations. Studying the involvement of the media in this process can clarify their impact on international relations, in particular, their role in the relationship between China and Russia.

Feudal Europe, 800–1300: communal discourse and conflictual practices

1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Structural Theory ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Fundamental Significance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Scientific Argument

The discipline of international relations faces a new debate of fundamental significance. After the realist challenge to the pervasive idealism of the interwar years and the social scientific argument against realism in the late 1950s, it is now the turn of critical theorists to dispute the established paradigms of international politics, having been remarkably successful in several other fields of social inquiry. In essence, critical theorists claim that all social reality is subject to historical change, that a normative discourse of understandings and values entails corresponding practices, and that social theory must include interpretation and dialectical critique. In international relations, this approach particularly critiques the ahistorical, scientific, and materialist conceptions offered by neorealists. Traditional realists, by contrast, find a little more sympathy in the eyes of critical theorists because they join them in their rejection of social science and structural theory. With regard to liberal institutionalism, critical theorists are naturally sympathetic to its communitarian component while castigating its utilitarian strand as the accomplice of neorealism. Overall, the advent of critical theory will thus focus the field of international relations on its “interparadigm debate” with neorealism.

Latin America and the League of Nations

1926 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-30
Author(s):  
Percy Alvin Martin
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
Post War ◽  
International Status

To students of international relations it has become almost a commonplace that among the most significant and permanent results of the World War has been the changed international status of the republics of Latin America. As a result of the war and post-war developments in these states, the traditional New World isolation in South America, as well as in North America, is a thing of the past. To our leading sister republics is no longer applicable the half-contemptuous phrase, current in the far-off days before 1914, that Latin America stands on the margin of international life. The new place in the comity of nations won by a number of these states is evidenced—to take one of the most obvious examples—by the raising of the legations of certain non-American powers to the rank of embassies, either during or immediately after the war. In the case of Brazil, for instance, where prior to 1914 only the United States maintained an ambassador, at the present time Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, and Japan maintain diplomatic representatives of this rank.Yet all things considered one of the most fruitful developments in the domain of international relations has been the share taken by our southern neighbors in the work of the League of Nations. All of the Latin American republics which severed relations with Germany or declared war against that country were entitled to participate in the Peace Conference. As a consequence, eleven of these states affixed their signatures to the Treaty of Versailles, an action subsequently ratified in all cases except Ecuador.

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