Critical Research Agenda for Peace

8/13/2019 Critical Research Agenda for Peace

1/29

Critical Research Agendas for Peace:The Missing Link in the Study ofInternational Relations

Oliver P. Richmond*

An elaborate intellectual and policy framework has been con-

structed in order to preserve and protect peace. The con-

cept of peace is often used to refer to what Plato would have

described as an ideal form, or to depict a minimalist, realist-

liberal version in which there is an absence of overt violence

particularly between or within states. These common and dif-

fering usages illustrate that the concept of peace has generally

been overlooked, and is often deployed in an ill-specified

manner, while at the same time implying extraordinary levelsof legitimacy. This article explores the consequences of not

engaging with the concept of peace and outlines the possibil-

ities inherent in opening up multiple conceptualizations of

peace as a critical research agenda central to International Re-

lations. KEYWORDS: peace, violence, conflict, critical research,

international relations

Peacefreedom from war, disturbance, or dissension (entered

the English Language in twelfth century): quiet, stillness, con-cord (thirteenth century); peacemaker (fifteenth century)1

Peace may or may not be a modern invention but it is cer-

tainly a far more complex affair than war.2

The savage wars of peace . . .3

War is peace.4

Peace, and its conditions, is commonly assumed to be well under-

stood by all who make up what is often referred to the interna-tional community of liberal states. An elaborate intellectual and

Alternatives 32 (2007), 247274


2/29


3/29

Conceptualizing Peace

Peace is rarely conceptualized, even by those who often allude to it.

Not only has it rarely been addressed in detail, but also the theo-rization of peace in IR is often hidden away in debates about war

and conflict. This is so even in the states, institutions, organiza-

tions, and agencies whose officials and representatives often pre-

sent peace as an ideal form worth striving to achieve, and which

dominate the discourses of IR in policy and in intellectual terms.9

Making peace in the international system has mainly been concep-

tualized as Western activity derived from war, from grand peace

conferences, and more recently, the sophisticated contemporary

institutionalization of key norms and governance processes associ-ated with the liberal peace.10Where theorists do attempt to engage

with peace as a concept, they often focus upon units such as states

or empires, thus broadly discounting the role and agency of indi-

viduals and societies in its construction and sustainability.11

For many individuals and actors within the international com-

munity, peace is reasonably well described by its Christian inter-

preters: Peace is the tranquility of order according to Saint Augus-

tine.12 These interpretations, like many, do not exclude lawful

self-defense, meaning just war, once all peace efforts have failed.13War and peace are, of course, closely connected. This can be

traced back throughout history, but specifically relevant to con-

temporary IR are two main waves of intervention by European

states. The first was in the name of Christianity during the Cru-

sades of the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, and during the

conquest of the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The second was a result of nineteenth- and twentieth-century impe-

rialism, which was, of course, conducted in the name of European

civilization.14 This tension continues to be reflected in contempo-rary debates about humanitarian intervention. One only has to ex-

amine the ideological formulations of the twentieth century to see

how violent peace and its attainment might be. War has always

been used to establish, expand, and objectify a specific version or

conceptualization of peace, a peace that is just in the eyes of de-

fenders or aggressors, as the 1990 Gulf War over Kuwaits sover-

eignty, or the Crusades over the possession of the Holy Land might

illustrate. Defining and constructing peace has therefore always

been a self-interested endeavor, even for idealists, though it mayalso be the case that violence deployed to attain a specific version of

b l i l l h h i l h ld if

Oliver P. Richmond 249


4/29

made over the US use of atomic weapons against Japan at the endof World War II). Many would agree with the assertion that thelogic of strategy pervades the upkeep of peace as much as the mak-

ing of war.15 Indeed, according to this view, war has the virtue thatit prevents its own continuation by exhausting participants and re-sources, thus being the origin of peace. From this somewhat tau-tological perspective, war has a natural course which is impededby the practices of the international community relating topeace.16

Though there are many different terms for war in the Englishlanguage, peace remains a sole denominator.17 Though it may besubject to multiple interpretations, these are rarely made explicit

even beyond orthodox approaches to IR. Though critical versionsof peace research, conflict studies, development studies, culturalstudies, other related areas, and IR are now implicitly convergingon a disparate notion of emancipation as a prerequisite for peace,only peace research really entails an explicit conception of peaceas being either negative or positive in character as a focus for itsresearch and normative agendas. One of the problems that soonbecomes apparent in any discussion of peace is the concepts ten-dency to slip into either a universal and/or idealistic form, or to

collapse under the weight of its own ontological subjectivity. Forthis reason, a historical narrative of peace is fraught with difficultyand orthodox approaches to IR are forced to retreat behind ratio-nal problem-solving approaches to order, albeit self-interested andunashamedly rooted in a specific context, which are then projectedglobally on the basis of a claimed universalism.

As a consequence what has emerged has been an orthodoxassumption that first the management of war must be achieved be-fore the institutions of peace can operate, at a global, regional,

state, and local level. Peace has, in Western political thought in par-ticular, been enshrined first in the belief that only a limited peace ispossible, even despite more utopian leanings, and recently thatpeace can now be built according to a certain epistemology. Milita-rization, force, or coercion have normally been the key mechanismsfor its attainment, and it has been imbued with a hegemonic under-standing of universal norms, now increasingly instilled throughinstitutions of governance.

It is generally assumed by most theorists, most policymakers,

and practitioners, that peace has an ontological stability enabling itto be understood, defined, and thus created. Indeed, the implica-i f h id f d b b i di h i i ll

250 The Missing Link in the Study of International Relations


5/29

concept of peace as a subjective ontology, as well as a subjective

political and ideological framework. Indeed, this might be said to

be indicative of orientalism, in impeding a discussion of a posi-

tive peace or of alternative concepts and contexts of peace.18 In-deed, Saids humanism indicates the dangers of assuming that

peace is universal, a Platonic ideal form, or extremely limited.

An emerging critical conceptualization of peace rests upon a

genealogy that illustrates its contested discourses and multiple con-

cepts. This allows for an understanding of the many actors, con-

texts, and dynamics of peace, and enables a reprioritization of

what, for whom, and why, peace is valued. Peace from this per-

spective is a rich, varied, and fluid tapestry, which can be contex-

tualized, rather than a sterile, extremely limited, and probablyunobtainable product of a secular or nonsecular imagination. It

represents a discursive framework in which the many problems that

are replicated by the linear and rational project of a universal

peace (effectively camouflaged by a lack of attention within IR)

can be properly interrogated in order to prevent the discursive

replication of violence.19 This allows for an understanding of how

the multiple and competing versions of peace may even give rise to

conflict, and also how this might be overcome.

One area of consensus from within this more radical literatureappears to be that peace is discussed, interpreted, and referred to

in a way that nearly always disguises the fact that it is essentially

contested. This is often an act of hegemony thinly disguised as

benevolence, assertiveness, or wisdom. Indeed, many assertions

about peace depend upon actors who know peace then creating it

for those that do not, either through their acts or through the

implicit peace discourses that are employed to describe conflict

and war in opposition to peace. Where there should be research

agendas there are often silences. Even contemporary approachesin conflict analysis and peace studies rarely stop to imagine the

kind of peace they may actually create. IR has reproduced a science

of peace based upon political, social, economic, cultural, and legal

governance frameworks, by which conflict in the world is judged.

This has led to the liberal peace framework, which masks a hege-

monic collusion over the discourses of, and creation of, peace.20A

critical interrogation of peace indicates it should be qualified as a

specific type among many.

Key Themes



6/29

absence of open violence but not of threat, or there exists a uto-

pian version of peace, perhaps to be arrived at by pacificism. To

date the more common disciplinary focus of IR has been on war or

order in which peace lurks in the background as a minimal or lib-eral assumption or an ideal form. There has been far more pub-

lished in the subdisciplines of peace and conflict studies, which

have taken up the mantle of interrogating the concept and praxis

of peace in a way which IR should perhaps have done at a discipli-

nary level. Such contributions range from those of Wright, Bould-

ing, Rapaport, Richardson and Sorokin, Galtung, and others work-

ing in the realm of peace and conflict studies. These thinkers have,

in their own different temporal and epochal moments, provided a

rich discussion of the concept of peace and how it is achieved, andone which when exported more broadly into the discipline of IR,

sets the contemporary liberal peace into sharp, and somewhat

unflattering, relief. More recently, the diverse work of Patomaki,

Lederach, Jabri, Walker, Bleiker, Nordstrom, and others21 has con-

tinued to develop a critical approach to the problem of peace,

often drawing on the work of Marx, Gramsci, Foucault, and Haber-

mas, among others. Problems related to the role of the interna-

tional political economy, global justice, hegemony and domination,

culture and identity, communication, representation, and ex-change have been brought up in this context. Problems associated

with the way violence is inbuilt into certain modes of thought,

ontologies, and methodologies have been identified. The need for

alternative methods such as discourse analysis or ethnography, in

order to address problems relating to justice, emancipation, and

unprivileged communication have been identified, as has the blur-

ring of orthodox concepts of peace and conflict.

The impetus for the study of peace was initially expressed in a

huge body of literature technically outside of IR. This often referredto the social and advocacy movements that emerged to lobby for

political enfranchisement, disarmament, or slavery, and touched

upon the ideas of peace through human rights, the abolition of war,

world federalism, and democracy, or passive resistance. This litera-

ture often shared a common set of goals and assumptions, though it

emerged within different issue areas or disciplines. It was published

by a broad range of academics, commentators, economists, politi-

cians, and policymakers in official and nonofficial guises. Some of

the best known include Angells The Great Illusion(which was pub-lished before World War I and attacked what he argued was a flawed

d li li k b d i i ) K Th E



7/29

and was very influential for the postWorld War II peace), andNicolsons Peacemaking 1919(which provided an insiders wry andhighly critical account of the machinations at Versailles in 1919).

Added to the many volumes such as these published during theseyears was the work of committees such as Chatham House, theCommission to Study the Basis of a Just and Durable Peace, theCouncil for Foreign Affairs, and the British International Commit-tee.22After World War I the founding of university chairs in IR andthe establishment of a variety of centers and institutions all con-tributed to an optimism that war represented a problem that couldbe solved by the study of peace. Yet, very quickly this research pro-ject was surpassed by realist-liberal-oriented approaches, which pre-

sented a much bleaker view of the tragedy of IR, and so deferredthe study of peace as a mainstream project.

One of the key early studies in the twentieth century was A. C. F.Bealess The History of Peace: A Short Account of the Organised Move-ments for International Peace (1931). This was an important volumebecause it foreshadowed the manner in which peace has been writ-ten and thought about since. According to Beales, any study of peaceentailed a history of international relations23 requiring the exami-nation of the philosophical roots of peace, the evolution of

schemes for world peace, the emergence of peace societies andmovements from the nineteenth century, and finally the Concertof Europe and World War I and after. Even at this time Beales wasaware of the negative connotations to be found in the study ofpeace, including cranks, pacificism, and peace propaganda.24

This observation is still germane in the context of its antithesisthe contemporary heroic, macho, and tragic reading of IR derivedfrom the dominant realist-liberal-theory axis. Beales argued thatboth international man (a precursor of cosmopolitianism) and

world peace depends upon enlightened self-interest and inter-dependence, perhaps configured into a world federation inwhich checks and balances control the tendencies that disruptworld peace.25 This is a very familiar path.26

Quincy Wrights book The Study of War (1942) reworked theseideas with a focus on the problem of war, but also made an impor-tant contribution on the question of peace from an internationalistperspective. He argued that peace lay in equilibrium, and thatefforts were commonly made to objectify peace according to reli-

gion, law, arbitration, disarmament, or international organization.He also complained that the positive idea of peace was often

d d d d d i i l i i li



8/29

Peace System. This became a seminal text in the discussion of how

peace may be achieved by focusing on the creation of functional

institutions to develop an assurance of peace between states as well

as social equality through the working of international services.28This strand of thought has become important in an underlying dis-

course of peace through prosperity. This was a forerunner of the

popular binary framework of a negative/positive peace,29 but it

mainly focused on the methods for achieving this peace system

rather than the resultant peace.

The agendas relating to the prevention of war, mentioned in

the preamble to the UN Charter, led Kenneth Boulding and his

team to found the Journal of Conflict Resolution, whose pages are

now notable for their adoption of the US positivist agenda forresearch on war, violence, conflict, and related projects such as the

democratic peace. This attempt to create a peace science was a

reaction to the failure to prevent war in the period until the found-

ing of the UN, and in parallel with the behavioral revolution in

social science in the United States. Working with Kelman and Rap-

paport, and drawing heavily on the statistical work of Richardson,

Boulding argued that the failure of the discipline of IR had meant

that the international system recycled a pathologically obsolescent

states-system, which needed to be countered by reformed interna-tional institutions and an enhanced research and information

capacity.30Work was still focused on the roots of violence, however

(notably Dollards work on frustration-aggression theory).31

The broader implications of the study of peace were now being

realized, pertaining not just to an international system of states

but also to the communities that comprised states. For example,

Deutsch examined the development of political community and

how to make conflict productive.32 He argued that social interac-

tions are guided by participants perceptions of the others capac-ity for awareness, and expectations for participants conduct. This

occurs in a social environment, composed of many interacting sub-

systems. This broadening of the debate on peace is illustrated by

Galtungs notable argument that a positive peace existed when

structural violence is removed, and until that point a negative peace

prevails. This provided a guide for peace research as area of study,

though it has also been heavily criticized for bringing too many

variables into the equation of making peace.33 However, his iden-

tification of subtle variations of peace, and of the continuing exis-tence of violence in crude versions of peace often deployed by real-

i d lib l hi k i i l ib i I l k h



9/29

Burton, Azar, and other scholars associated with the concept ofconflict resolution developed a conceptualization of peace thatwould fulfill Burtons theory of human needs,35 and thus lead to a

resolution of the deep-rooted dynamics of conflict. This involvedproviding for the universal drive to satisfy basic needs includingsecurity, identity, recognition, and participation. Azars notion ofprotracted social conflict recognized the prolonged struggle ofcommunal groups for their basic human needs which tend to beobscured by the state-centric nature of the international system.36

He identified the repression of human needs as the root of pro-tracted conflicts, and pointed to the role of structural factors suchas underdevelopment.37 Thus, Azar equates development with peace,

further expanding the concept of peace.38As Galtung has pointedout, human needs theory can be used to build a priority of issuesthat should be addressed.39 Burton developed his initial approachin his quest to create a paradigm shift in thinking about conflict bydrawing on systems theory in which social systems develop andlearn through the experiences of their constituent parts. Rapoportdeveloped this idea and argued that the underlying assumptionsthat are inherent to the system are default values, which mem-bers of the system will rely on when problems occur. This is termed

first order learning. However, the transformation of social sys-tems to deal with conflict requires second order learning, whichentails an ability to challenge assumptions.40 Burton and Dukesdeveloped this idea so that the problem-solving approach couldbecome the means to overcome obstacles that prevent secondorder learning. In these terms, conflict resolution becomes conflictprovention, which examines the human and structural dimen-sions of conflict in order to promote conditions that create coop-erative relationships leading to a self-sustaining peace.41 Curle

also made an important contribution here, in that he saw peace asequating to human development in an era where it was more nor-mally associated with the balance of power.42 Additionally, EliseBoulding added weight to a more humanist reading of peace withher call for indigenous and integrative peace praxis.43 Notes ofcaution were also being sounded, however. Avruch and Black raisedthe question of culture and the sustainability of peace.44 As Leba-ron pointed out, culturally sensitive processes of conflict resolutionhave to mediate between difference social and normative systems.45

Additionally Volkan and Harris found that hidden meanings markall intercommunal interactions and that in such cases emotional

d b i d 46



10/29

peace and security, and provided a powerful counterweight to ide-alist conceptualizations.47 Hinsley examined early contributions tothis debate from within political theory and political philosophy.

Aron presented a conceptualization of three types of peace, rang-ing from equilibrium, hegemony, and empire, and provided a cri-tique of what he described as peace by terror, which dominatedthe Cold War environment he was writing in.48 Ceadal offered atypology of thinking about war and peace associated with mili-tarism, crusading, defensism, pacificism, and pacifism. Indeed,Ceadal illustrated how these approaches emphasized the close rela-tionship between war and peace: Militarism is associated with bothwar and a victors peace; crusading with the expansion of a specific

version of peace through war; defensism maintains that aggressioncan be met with force; pacificism, that war can be abolished butthat military force is potentially necessary to defend against aggres-sion; and pacifism, that war is always unacceptable.49 There havebeen many other texts from the field of IR theory, conflict man-agement and resolution, and peace research (as well as an enor-mous literature on democratic peace theory) but they tend alsoto focus on the problems that cause conflict rather than on devel-oping a sustained conception of how peace might be understood.

After the end of the Cold War, a certain optimism did set in,even in mainstream thinking. Holsti argued that peace lay in aprocess of the stabilization of state relations, and that an examina-tion of the major peace treaties and the periods that followed themin the West, from Westphalia to San Francisco, indicated eight pre-requisites for a peaceful order.50 These include a responsible sys-tem of governance, legitimacy, assimilation, deterrence, conflict res-olution procedures, consensus on the problem of war, proceduresfor peaceful change, and an ability to anticipate future issues. These

represented a classic liberal understanding of peace given new life,though he acknowledged significant failures in promoting peacefulchange, anticipation, and prevention of conflict.51 This optimismwas tempered by a growing realization of a hegemonic form ofpeace and its unintended consequences. Clark problematized theemerging notion of liberal peace, but tended to focus on its sys-temic qualities and implications, and mainly as a by-product of war.According to Clark, the liberal peace is multilateral, increasinglypropagated by western practices of humanitarian intervention and

by globalization, is both regulative and distribution, and is associ-ated with the use of force, human rights, and democratization.

Thi i l f h lib l f h d f h C ld



11/29

ecological disaster).53 Similarly, Ikenberry examined the implica-tions of postwar orders and peace settlements for states and insti-tutions. Indeed, Ikenberry made a now well-known argument that

understanding order benefits from an examination of the peacesettlements that emerge directly after the end of a wars. 54 Howardalso presented a critique of the contemporary notion of peace ina similar vein, indicating that the contemporary peace is a liberalinvention rather than an indigenous quality. Mandelbaum, thoughcritical of a tendency toward a blind faith in the liberal universalproject, was generally supportive of its ultimate goals. As a coun-terweight to liberal triumphalism perhaps one of the most insight-ful and critical contributions to this genre was made by Williams,

who documented how the lofty ideals of peace rapidly becamedistorted under the weight of self-interest, limited resources, anda lack of will, and the close relationship between liberal war and itssolution, reconstruction.55

All of these texts follow a similar path, opened up by Bealessearlier contribution, in which peace is a liberal ideal made possibleby correct forms of governance and institutionalisation, possiblyeven by war, and are a product of the practices and discourses ofthe post-Enlightenment development of an international commu-

nity. Perhaps in an attempt to redress some of the limitations ofthis approach, Rasmussen has recently attempted to directly open upthe construction of peace as a research agenda.56Where he makeshis most important contribution is his introduction of positive andnegative epistemological and ontological dimensions to this debate.This is lacking in much of what has gone before, and opens up thepossibility that peace is experienced and thought about in multipleand fluctuating ways, and therefore should not be subject to a total-izing conceptualization.

Beyond an Orthodoxy of Peace?

One of the key responses to the problem of peace in contemporaryliterature, which builds upon the works noted above and goes someway to dealing with the problems inherent in orthodox IR theory,can be found within critical security studies. In particular, despite itsassociation with the failed Marxist project, the question of eman-cipation has become a focus of this approach to security. Indeed, as

Booth has argued emancipation, theoretically, is security.57Though this literature does not directly deal with peace, it offers

i i i h i h i b i h h f



12/29

focuses upon an ethical requirement for political action to pro-duce emancipation. This is defined as the freeing of people (asindividuals and groups) from the physical and human constraints

which stop them carr ying out what they would freely choose todo.58 For Booth, emancipation produces security, and the type ofsecurity he envisages is a form of peace, which would be recogniz-able to idealists, utopian thinkers, and many liberal thinkers. Peaceas emancipation does indeed turn the discipline on its head froma theoretical perspective, though it is far less clear whether from anontological or epistemological perspective it is as important a stepas Booth argues. This is particularly so because it is so clearly asso-ciated with universalism,59 and in practice with various forms of dis-

ciplinary liberalism, which are predominantly driven by (neo)lib-eral governance in conflict zones around the world, valuingexternal governance, political rights, and in particular the marketover the individuals well-being or social justice in the transitionfrom conflict to the liberal peace. But, as Laclau has argued, a uni-versalism that recognizes that individuals create their worldor inthis case, peacemay well be a sufficient response to this problem,though of course, liberalism, neo or otherwise, constrains thisauthorship which should entail emancipations rather a singular

emancipation.60 If an emancipatory peace is grounded in a set ofuniversal values, this means it can be located at the radical end ofthe liberal spectrum, and though it focuses on the individual andassociated issues from the bottom up, it generally still relies on theneed for a hierarchical understanding of the international. Thisnecessitates the need for structures, actors, and frameworks thatboth protect the individual and enable her to operate freely with auniversally determined set of values. This of course means thatemancipatory notions of peace cannot escape the dangers of hier-

archy: that top-level actors will instill in the system their own biasesand interests, while arguing that they are constructing a universalsystem. Any universal peace system is therefore open to beinghijacked by hegemonic actors.

This is not to say that the alternativea critical and pluralistversion of peaceis without difficulties, especially given the re-quirement this raises for interactions between distinct cultural andsocial units. This implies a drawing and policing of boundaries,whether physical or normative, and also leads to the danger of

hegemonic hijack of the necessary structures and institutions, as isapparent in a communitarian-based international system. In fact,f hi i hi i i l i f l k i i



13/29

are rather more sensitive to the changing pattern of grassroots needsand objectives for peace, and in their radical forms might link withanarchism in the sense that they demand complete individual

agency untangled from hierarchical order-producing systems,which are perceived to be ponderously slow in responding to theserequirements even if they too are focused upon emancipation. Thisversion of peace, however, has the singular flaw that it probablycannot be organized because this would mean institutionalizationand the authorization of a hierarchy, again raising the problem ofhegemony. This raises the question of whether and how a pluralistform of peace can be negotiated while also negotiating a commonframework.

Other key contributions indicate that conflict is reinforced at asocial level by dominant discourses and institutions that are indica-tive of peace itself and its potential to regenerate conflict. Jabriargues, on the basis of Habermass concept of communicative action,for an approach that leads to political participation without thethreat of dominance, and for a politics of solidarity as a basis forpeace.61 Linklater likewise argues that dialogue must incorporatean engagement with the other through discourse ethics, whichimplies that there is a universal basis for such activities.62 Though

it is not clear whether this in itself might be a totalizing project, itis clear that Linklater has captured a key aspect of contemporaryliberal ambitions for peace. These dilemmas are underlined inDuffields work, which has developed a sustained critique of theliberal conceptualization of peace, specifically in the context ofgovernance.63 Such critical contributions offer an agenda for mul-tiple forms of peace that are intersubjective, and are indicative ofthe mutual construction of a global order by a broad range of offi-cial and unofficial actors. This focus on producing a balance

between order, justice, and legitimacy is a constant refrain of re-flective approaches to IR.64 They show how a reflexive engagementwith the concept of peace is constrained by the Westphalian sys-tem, which provides only a limited context for the sorts of changesrequired to facilitate reflexivity, emancipation, nonexclusionaryforms of community and mutual security as a basis for thinkingabout peace.65 This contains the seeds of an internal contradictionin that if peace is not based upon universal norms how can onecreate it for an other? This is the relativist trap, which though it

escapes from a sovereign and territorial praxis of peace, finds itselfunable to offer a method of the creation of peace for others that is

i i di i f li h li d d



14/29

of normative issues within our understanding of peace, and in par-ticular an elevation of the rights of individuals as agents within aframework of peace. This leads to the question of whether a struc-

ture of peace can be universal and benefit all individuals within itequally, or results in what Lyotard has called the differendthepresence of injustice despite everyones best efforts.66

Such questions indicate that one of the key challenges facingIR today is to open itself up to a greater variety of approaches, inorder to qualitatively improve the nature of peace that it implicitlypromotes,67 while also accepting that any presentation of peace ismerely representation.68 Yet, orthodox IR theory is more or lessunable to communicate with outside disciplines, is dominated by

anachronistic formulas, and seduced by bombs and bullets ratherthan peace and harmony. It is a decadent discipline69 oftenresistant to challenges and focused on formulaic rationalism asso-ciated with liberal state interests. What is more, it is obsessed withdefining and redefining itself, in relation to a narrow understand-ing of what is important and which actors are significant. It fails tocommunicate over disciplinary boundaries because of the energythat has been expended within the narrow realist-liberal debatesand their associated ontological, methodological, and epistemolog-

ical traditions. The endless rehashing of political theory and phi-losophy through a great text syndrome, though not in itself ob-jectionable, means that the context of IR is often lost, and blurredwith historical and ideational contexts that are relatively irrelevantto contemporary praxis in IR. This means that the orthodoxy isendlessly self-referential yet lacks an understanding of everyday lifeand its many marginalized actors. Recent developments in con-structivist thought, and mainly spurred by the critical and post-modern challenges that emerged in the 1990s, have moved some

way to changing this. But IR is bedeviled by the practice of theor yas ideology rather than simply as a reflective method of analysis. IRis mainly, as Sylvester has argued, a distant, elitist discipline that ig-nores the experience and lives of most of the worlds inhabitants.70

Because of these characteristics, orthodox IR theory perpetuateswhat Walker has described as its key binariesinside/outside,self/other, universal/particular, and civilized/barbarianuponwhich it constructs a hegemonic order in the interests of key lib-eral states and actors.71

If IR is continually theorized, peace often has not properlybeen contextualized, partly because of the hold historical theoret-i l i h h i di i l I i li d b



15/29

as in structuralism, or as a materially based abstract world, as in con-structivism, without much regard for its human, social, emotive, orcultural contexts. This is derived from the attractions or benefits of

speaking truth to power. This entails presenting intersubjectiveopinion as truth through orthodox IR theory so power can be exer-cised rationally through the coercive and bureaucratic administra-tion of human life in return for the benefits derived from contactwith the executors of power. This seductiveness promotes unreflec-tive rationalism, where norms and ethics are deemed to be singu-larly monoideational.

This means that much of orthodox IR theory is actually anti-peace. Its reduction and abstraction of human life within interna-

tional relations, instead made up of actors, anarchy, interdepen-dencies, threats, rationality, power, and interests leads to dangerousrational calculations that ultimately sacrifice human life.72 IR rep-resents its knowledge systems as universal, when in fact they arelocal to the West/North.73 Such representational habits and knowl-edge systems are prone to isolating themselves in order to maintaintheir belief in universality.74 For example, Sylvester has shown howWaltzian neorealism led to a form of IR in which, parsimoniousexplanatory power traded off the gender, class, race, language,

diversity, and cultural multiplicities of life.75Similarly, Watson has shown how an enormous percentage of

the worlds populationchildrenare surprisingly absent from IRfor similar reasons.76 Such omissions also relate to method andepistemology: Bleiker has called for an aesthetic approach to IR tocritique and complement the Enlightenment-derived logocentrism(and also for us to forget IR theory), to extend the postmodernturn of the 1980s,77 and to help recognize that the space betweenthe claimed representation and the represented is the very loca-

tion of politics78 wherein might be found intersubjective versionsof peace.

Another important body of work extends such a critique intoa development context, which aims to improve living standards andprosperity using Western knowledge and technology rather thanindigenous approaches. This has been heavily criticized not justfrom the point of view of being counterproductive, but also asbeing inherently violent and a way of monopolizing the develop-ing body and mind in order to homogenize polities within the

broader liberal community of states.79 This neocolonial/imperialcritique therefore requires that local knowledge and culture be

fi d i hi d i lib l b ildi



16/29

developed,80whereby their intersubjective existence is not valuedunless it corresponds to the liberal project. Thus bodies are man-aged and governed, and resistance is not tolerated. It is described

as terrorism or corruption, and those who then police the liberalsystem are counterdescribed as fascists.81 Even if a society aspires tothe liberal project, however, neoliberalism means bare life formany subjects. What appears to be developing as a result of the lib-eral peacebuilding project of the postCold War period followssimilar lines to the critique that Fanon adopted of the postcolonialstate. He argued such states were economically defunct, could notsupport social relations, and resorted to coercion to control unful-filled citizens.82 Similarly, liberal peacebuilders now create capac-

ity-less, virtually liberal postconflict states and governments. Theyidentify local politics as deviant and therefore construct democra-tic processes with almost immediate effect, but though, for exam-ple, they mark local economies as corrupt, they fail to provide wel-fare for local communities. Local communities are consigned to abare life of political rights without economic opportunities, anddeaths are put down to poverty or innate violence rather than inad-equate action by liberal peacebuilders.

This relates to another set of debates emanating from post-

colonial theory and other areas that see Western liberalism con-stantly juxtaposing itself with others who are identified as bar-baric again the liberal norm.83 For Said, of course, the culturalimplications of this denoted Orientalism through which liberalsdiscursively dominate and dehumanize the nonliberal, non-West-ern subject.84 The liberal modernization project clashes with thelocal where identity and cultural concerns defy rational progresstoward liberal governance. Indeed, some have argued, followingPolyani, that capitalism and its inculcation into multilateral devel-

opment institutions are indicative of a disciplinary approach inwhich social relations are dismembered if they impede neoliberal-ism.85 Polyani argued that fascism was the outcome of neoliberal-isms failure,86where civil societys resistance would be disciplinedby the state.

Despite the efforts outlined above, critical conceptualizations ofpeace remain to be extensively catalogued, conceptualized, and the-orized, especially within the context of the evolution of debates in IR.Perhaps this omission is telling in a discipline that has only recently

turned to rectifying oversights relating to gender, the environment,development, poverty, normativity, and so forth. What is also crucialh i h l k f l i i IR f l i h d l i d



17/29

nuanced understanding of everyday life during peace (perhapsusing ethnographic methods as Nordstrom has done).87

The most widely recognized conceptualization of peace, which

has now entered into the consciousness of policymakers and acad-emics, rests upon the various formulations of liberal-international-ist and liberal-institutionalist debates about governance. Thesehave emerged at different points of the realist-idealist axis, anddescribe an evolution of agreed regimes moderating the relation-ship of states and their populations. These debates on the liberalpeace assume that while the nature of war and conflict may be con-tested, the nature of peace is not. It is clearly understood to rest ondemocracy, marketization, human rights and the rule of law, and

development. These assumptions that the conceptualization ofpeace is uncomplicated and uncontested are rarely challenged.This is reflected in the role of the UN in various peacebuildingpractices.88 Such approaches to conflict imply that there is a priorunderstanding of what constitutes peace that needs to be defendedas well as constructed where it is not present. The implicit concep-tualization in these terms of peace is that any event, structure, ordynamic that occurs in the international system that does not con-form to this prior notion can therefore be addressed by a reaction

of the UN or other liberal organizations and states.The genre of conflict prevention indicates that an anticipated

threat to peace both requires and justifies a liberal organization orstate response. The identification of threats, such as terrorism,human rights abuses, threats to human security and developmentissues, or to the ethnie, therefore become key to the elucidationand creation of a specific version of peace. This is the terrain inwhich peace processes have increasingly come to be seen as oppor-tunities to establish new forms of governance. Around this con-

struction of the liberal peace, there has formed an epistemic com-munity focused upon the activities that are required to constructthe forms and institutions of governance now viewed as a sustain-able basis for the ending of conflict.89 Here, power and knowledgein terms of resources and expertise has been amassed in order toexport the liberal peace. Yet, it has been the very undertheoriza-tion of peace in IR that has allowed this specific version of peace toreceive a broad and unproblematic acceptance by many theoristsand policymakers, despite its troubling flaws.

Defining Peace



18/29

It is assumed to be universal, and so apparent as not to require seri-

ous debate. However, not only is it important to understand the

roots and conditions of conflict and peace, but it is also important

to start with an understanding of the essentially political, andtherefore subjective, nature of the act and project of defining peace.

The age-old myth that peace exists as an existential condition, nei-

ther temporal nor spatial, needs little thought before it is discred-

ited. Peace always has a time and a place, as well as representatives

and protagonists in diplomatic, military, or civilian guise, and

exists in multiple forms in overlapping spaces of influence. It

should never be assumed to be monolithic and universal in that

the ontology and methodology of peace vary according to cultural,

social, economic, and political conditions. Nor should it be seen asnecessarily totalizing if it does become universal, though one

should always be wary of this possibility. Yet, almost inevitably think-

ing on peace has also followed the Platonic notion of an ideal

form, which is partly why the concept is so often imbued with such

mystical legitimacy.

This raises important questions, which thus far remain unex-

plored relating to the ontological, epistemological, and normative

aspects of these debates and in particular of the nature of the now

dominant concept of peacethe liberal peace. Perhaps what ismore important is the attempt to open up a research agenda on

the various forms of peace, to negate its constant use as an ideal

form, to give room for the voices of dissent about its dominant

models to be heard, and to investigate the potential for alternative

or coexisting forms. Peace may have become a form of biopower

as described by Foucault, which involves interveners in conflicts

taking on the role of administering life. This requires the impor-

tation of expert knowledge into conflict zones, both on the many

tasks associated with humanitarianism and security, and to establishgovernmentality in which control is taken over most political,

social, economic, and identity functions of groups involved in con-

flict and in the construction of peace. Both the community and the

self are governed in order to allow external actors to create

peace.90 These practices and discourses have rapidly become a nor-

malized part of our understanding of the liberal peace.91 This is

the dominant approach to the construction of peace, through UN

peace operations, humanitarian intervention, and more recently

initiated by more or less unilateral uses of force. But what does thisform of peace entail? It is assumed that UN peace operations con-

ib h i f lib l i i l d d



19/29

more recently has endeavored to enhance it within a liberal inter-

national society. In practice this has proven to be highly ambitious,

often resulting in a virtual peace based upon contested attempts

to import liberal democratic models via military intervention, andpolitical, social, and economic institution building and reconstruc-

tion. However, political rights are heavily valued over social welfare

and justice, meaning that peace through governance reproduces

the empty shell of the state with only marginal qualitative impact

on the lives of its inhabitants.

It is clear that there are a number of common usages of the

concept of peace, ranging from spatial and temporal approaches, to

peace as an opposition to threats. Peace is also commonly thought

of as a victors peace, an inside-out peace or an outside-in peace, ora peace dependent upon a specific political, social, economic, cul-

tural, or identity logic or framework. Finally, a critical version of

peace is also developing, associated with different emancipatory

discourses. These conceptualizations sketch out an important re-

search agenda and point to the virtual qualities of the liberal

peace, problems with the peacebuilding consensus, and the notion

of peace as governance. This seems to undermine many assump-

tions common to the study of war, violence, conflict, and subse-

quent responses, derived from the separation of peace and war asdistinct conditions and conceptualizations. The focus on war,

force, and power, reinforced by rationalism and legal positivism,

may actually revive or justify the use of force or violence and

obstruct all but a nascent debate on the concepts of peace. This is

a radical position, but one that requires serious and sustained con-

templation by drawing on a broad and interdisciplinary literature,

and on a wide range of issues in order to examine the claim that

liberal peace entails a viable project incorporating the simultane-

ous pursuit of sovereignty, self-determination, democracy, develop-ment, and human rights within a global cartography in which ter-

ritorial states vie for limited resources.92 This is perhaps not very

new in its philosophical and normative dimensions, but the

processes, mechanisms, and institutions that have grown up

around it are without precedent, though they clearly lack a devel-

oped capacity for reflexivity, conditioned as they are by reactivity.

To paraphrase Coxs famous aphorism, one must take note of who

describes peace, and how, as well as who constructs it, and why. If

theory can be problem solving or emancipatory, and is alwaysladen with agendas related to actors interests and objectives, then

93



20/29

that can be applied to inform theory and so practice, together with

(2) a via mediabetween them. Finally, (3) a discussion of whether

there is, can be, or ought to be, a universal basis for peace (such

as the liberal peace) can then be explored. Recognition of theserequirements are crucial to counter the inherent tendency of

utopian, liberal, and even emancipatory institutional attempts to

create a single and hegemonic universal blue print for peace that

experience shows rarely succeeds.

Encountering Peace Through Conflict

This article has illustrated the development of thinking aboutpeace and the need for a concerted and critical research agenda

on different concepts of peace. A stronger connection between re-

search and policy on ending war, violence, and conflict, with these

concepts of peace is required. This should focus on opening the

way for more reflexive versions of peace and a necessary via media,

before validating any universal claims to know peace. This work has

already begun, though it is also clear that there is a danger that by

uncovering these discourses of peace, the critical researcher may

merely open further pathways for the peacebuilding consensus tomanipulate, reeducate, and engineer target populations. Is it bet-

ter, for example, not to make the argument that internationals

need to become more involved in cultural issues so that they can-

not justify and legitimate social engineering projects? The agents

of the peacebuilding consensus are internally divided about this.

Those running the top-down peacebuilding project tend to see

NGOs and agencies as attempting to usurp their prerogatives or as

open to manipulation, and for them social justice issues are of mar-

ginal significance in the short term. Fukuyama, for example, railsagainst the motley collection of actors involved in state building

and argues for a return to the strong, sovereign actor.94 In contrast,

those working on the bottom-up peacebuilding project tend to see

their counterparts as obsessed with power and status, and blind to

suffering and social justice.

Research into these complex areas constantly creates difficult

dilemmas, which theorizing and distant policymaking are often un-

aware of, or unable to engage with. For example, how does one re-

spond when, on a UN helicopter taking off after a meeting in arebel-held village in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a

i i k hild b d i i d



21/29

can receive a proper education with a prospect of a job afterwards?Or when a human rights advocate in Sri Lanka documents theabuses occurring at the hands of his own government?95 In these

instances the actual outcome was often the reverse of what onewould expect if anything more than a limited peace were to befully pursued. The child was taken off the helicopter in the DRCon the grounds that such a precedent could not be set. The gov-ernment official in East Timor acknowledged that there were otherpriorities in the political hierarchy, set by the World Bank andother agencies. The Sri Lankan human rights advocate acknowl-edged that some abuses may not be easily stopped because they arebuilt into institutions, such as the military. Such actors often rec-

ognize that pragmatism may not be the best course for a sustain-able peace and do try to respond to these apparent paradoxes.These and other dilemmas have been thrown up in the course ofmy own research, and neither IR, peace, nor conflict studies yetequips us with approaches to respond other than through prag-matic silence and even withdrawalwhile often feeling utter hor-ror and powerlessness. As shown above, many authors have con-cerned themselves with developing theoretical strategies to buildmore ambitious forms of peace, which have not yet filtered through

into the peacebuilding world in terms of the acceptance of collec-tive and individual responsibility to respond critically in such in-stances. They often know they will not be supported by their orga-nizations or academia, and they therefore disengage. This is thedirect result of the epistemological, methodological, and ontologi-cal marginalization of peace as a key concern in IR, resulting ininstitutional camouflage that provides protection from having toengage with the other, even if they are in the most terrible of cir-cumstances. For some, this is a necessary protection of difference,

or from interventionism, or the danger of mission creep. For oth-ers, this is an abrogation of responsibility to others, and in partic-ular the weak and defenseless at the grassroots level who remainhidden from the eye of orthodox IR theory and yet make up thebulk of the constituency of the discipline.

What can the pragmatic realist, the missionary liberal, thedogged and determined humanitarian or official, or the uncertainpoststructuralist, do in these circumstances? How does an ontologi-cal assumption of a minimalist peace, a liberal universal peace, or a

pluralist assumption of shifting and intersubjective concepts ofpeace assist or hinder? How can one reconcile the exploration ofd i d d i fli i h d i i



22/29

ones belief in a particular approach to peace, or to critique a par-

ticular orthodoxy of peace, and to arrive at a consensual agree-

ment between and within societies about what it constitutes? What

motivates a researcher, diplomat, official, or citizen to becomeinvolved in such murky issues in which surety can either protect or

undermine very easily? In the field (an orientalist description if

ever there was) there are many actors and agents who assume the

liberal peace without question: There are few who assume that

there is an unproblematic peacebuilding consensus. There are dis-

tant officials; career international workers who care for little more

than their next posting while going about their sometimes danger-

ous jobs; many frustrated NGO personnel and activists who think

the international organizations (IOs), regional organizations (ROs),and international financials institutions (IFIs) are needlessly waste-

ful, bureaucratic, and careless, but also have never really thought

about the legitimacy they have attained by bypassing officialdom

and its qualifying hurdlesthrough their incorporation into the

governmental or private peacebuilding sector. Rarely is there a

explicit connection between action and the end goal of a specific

type of peace, or a consideration of alternative discourses of peace

and via mediabetween them. The whole apparatus of peacebuild-

ing is sometimes colonial (and, perhaps, racist) in that it impliesthe transference of enlightened knowledge to those who lack the

capacity or morality to attain such knowledge themselves. Yet, the

alternative of complete nonengagement is far less palatable. This is

the most difficult dilemma inherent in the research of conflict and

peace: Researchers, NGO staff, policymakers, the military, and offi-

cials put themselves in this same position. Often after only a few

days in a country, or in archives or a library, blueprint models,

solutions, and suggestions are offered about situations not lived

through by these interveners.In Dili in East Timor and Bukavu in the DRC, among many

other locations, the many internationals live and work behind bar-

ricades and fortresses. Since 9/11 it has become the norm for in-

ternational premises to be fortified, and to endorse a clear division

between international and local actors. In Bukavu, the interna-

tionals live in beautiful colonial-era bungalows around Lake Kivu,

displacing and replacing the former colonial occupants them-

selves, while the general populace live in general poverty, the

lucky few grateful for menial jobs serving the internationals intheir homes and offices. In East Timor, human rights and liberal

dil d b i h d f d l



23/29

achieve these aims because of the approach of internationals who

set security and the creation of institutions above their daily expe-

rience of life. Well before the events of May 2006 in East Timor, it

was clear that poverty and unemployment might undermine thenew state.96 In the DRC, many rebel groups want social justice and

welfare but feel themselves to be excluded by the big man, neo-

patrimonial politics of the country, which are also replicated in,

and by, the peacebuilding process. The agencies, IOs, IFIs, and

NGOs involved are themselves merely the vanguard of the liberal

peace, but they are underresourced, understaffed, and subject to

massive pressure from the expectations of the international com-

munity. They have great difficulty communicating with local actors

in a meaningful way and responding to indigenous attempts torenegotiate the liberal peace, because they have to concur with

their own mandates and write reports that chart their progress to

its accountable finale. They operate according to distant blue-

prints, upon which their careers depend. Thus, a recognition of

the subtle or significant alternatives to the liberal peace in each

context is impeded, as is a mediation between them. In many such

contexts peace is a often little more than a chimera, a superficial

implant, camouflaging illiberalism, transplanted into a soil without

water, dependent upon foreign resources, and subject to uncer-tainty about the longevity of external commitment. It suffers from

both a cultural disconnection with its local hosts and offers little in

the way of direct and immediate socioeconomic support for indi-

viduals during that all important transition period while the liberal

peace is taking root. These flaws have arisen in the context of a dis-

cipline of IR that has paid little attention to peace.

This dynamic disguises a virtual peace, masking deeper cultural,

social, and economic patterns of violence. It is an expression of rel-

ative domination or hegemony by outsiders involved at its mostbasic level, reflecting the progressive and rational ontology of mar-

ket forces, institutionalism, and constitutionalism in which individ-

uals are simply represented by statistics and trends. Internationals

often believe in their work, and in the liberal peace, but they too

are touched by its contradictions. To reach an agreement between

officials, or to win a war, is one thing, but to change a social, polit-

ical, and economic landscape is another, especially through the

deployment of techniques that have not been developed in such

contexts. This project is telling of the international communitysdesire to pass on what it has learned peace; the minimal resources

id d b h f hi j i l lli Thi i f



24/29

Those working in conflict and postconflict zones know this; mostimportantly, those living and enduring in them are fully aware of ittoo. Simple comparisons between the financial costs of the peace

being constructed in a postconflict environment compared to thecost of conflict make this explicit.97 Bare life is the lot of the individ-ual while elites and officials wrestle over the relatively more abundantresources of the reformed or new state in postconflict situations.98

Yet, as the intellectual debates outlined in this article show,there are diverse opportunities to rethink the contemporary peaceproject, to go beyond the deficiencies of the liberal peace, and torecognize that an interdisciplinary renegotiation of multiple con-cepts of peace is necessary. The study of peace needs to be placed at

the center of IR to allow for a sensitive mapping of the versions ofpeace that arise out of different theoretical, ontological, andmethodological approaches in its many different contexts. Thisambitious move opens up a missing link in IR and might facilitatean escape from the incessant spirals of conflict, and failed peaceprojects, that international relations has so far been subject to.

Notes

This article was presented at a panel on Liberal Peace at the ISA conven-tion, San Diego, 2022 March 2006. Many thanks for comments to themembers of the panel and audience, including John Groom, John Macmil-lan, Farid Mirbagheri, Chandra Sriram, Ian Taylor, and Alison Watson.Thanks also to Roland Bleiker for his thoughtful comments, as well as tothe Carnegie Trust and the Leverhulme Trust, and the many individuals Ihave discussed these issues with in diverse locations over the last threeyears, from UN headquarters in New York, Pristina, Sarajevo, Dili, Bukavu,and Phnom Penh. I take responsibility for any errors.

1. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Etymology (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1996).2. Michael Howard, The Invention of Peace and War (London: Profile

Books, 2000), pp. 12. Here Howard is paraphrasing, on the flyleaf of hisbook, a famous quotation by Sir Henry Maine, International Law (NewYork: Henry Holt, 1888), p. 8. However, Kelly argues that where there iswar societies also have well developed strategies for peacemaking. Ray-mond C. Kelly, Warless Societies and the Origin of War(Ann Arbor: Univer-sity of Michigan Press, 2000).

3. Rudyard Kipling, The White Mans Burden, McClures Magazine12(February 1899).

4. George Orwell, 1984(London: Signet, 1969), p. 164. This was theparty slogan.

5. The Allegory of the Cave, The Republic of Plato, trans. Francis Mac-D ld C f d (O f d O f d U i i P 1941)



25/29

8. See, among others, Peter Wallensteen, ed., Peace Research: Achieve-ments and Challenges(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988); Johan Galtung,

Essays in Peace Research (Copenhagen: Christian Ejlers, 1975); John Burton,World Society(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972); John Macmil-

lan, Whose Democracy, Which Peace, paper presented at ECPR (Mar-burg, 1821 September 2003); Mark Duffield, Global Governance and theNew Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (London: Zed Books,2001); Vivienne Jabri,Discourses on Violence(Manchester: Manchester Uni-versity Press, 1996); Richard Falk, On Humane Governance(University Park:Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995). J. Lederach, Building Peace: Sus-tainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies(Tokyo: United Nations UniversityPress, 1997).

9. It must be pointed out here that this study essentially only dealswith this rich Westernized discourse which alludes to the nature of peace,if only indirectly.

10. See here the very important contribution made by Rasmussen onthe question of Western constructions of peace. Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen,The West, Civil Society, and the Construction of Peace (London: Palgrave,2003), esp. p. 13.

11. Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations(London: Transaction, 2003 [1966]), p. 151.

12. Saint Augustine, City of God, XIX, 13, 1, (London: Penguin Clas-sics, 1991).

13. Pope Paul VI, The Fostering Of Peace And The Promotion Of ACommunity Of Nations, Pastoral Constitution On The Church In The Modern

World, Gaudium Et Spes(Chapter V, 78, 7 December 1965), para. 4.14. For more on this see Tzetvan Todorov, Right to Intervene or Dutyto Assist, in Nicolas Owen, ed., Human Rights, Human Wrongs(Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 30.

15. Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Cam-bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. xi.

16. Ibid., pp. 5759.17. David Barash, Approaches to Peace(Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2000), p. 63.18. See Edward W. Said, Orientalism(London: Routledge, 1978), esp.

Introduction.

19. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writ-ings 19721977 (New York: Pantheon, 1980), p. 30: Michel Foucault, TheArchaeology of Knowledge(London: Tavistock Publications, 1972), p. 205.

20. By this I mean post-Gramscian plural hegemonies. Quintin Hoareand Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, eds., Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Anto-nio Gramsci(London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), pp. 5659.

21. See among others, Jabri, note 8; R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside:International Relations as Political Theory(Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1993). J. Lederach, note 8, Hiekki Patomaki and Teivo Teivainen, APossible World(London: Zed Books, 2004); Roland Bleiker, The AestheticTurn in International Political Theory, Millennium 30, no. 3 (2001); Car-

olyn Nordstrom, Fieldwork Under Fire (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1996).

22 See in particular Tim Dunne Inventing International Society (Lon



26/29

24. Ibid., p. v.25. Ibid., p. 334.26. See Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse, and Hugh Miall, Con-

temporary Conflict Resolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Polity Press, 2005), pp.

3254.27. See Quincy Wright, The Study of War(University of Chicago Press,

1964), esp. pp. xiv, 266.28. David Mitrany, A Working Peace System in his The Functional The-

ory of Politics(London: Martin Robertson, 1975), p. 132.29. Galtung, note 8, p. 29.30. Cited in Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, and Miall, note 26, p. 40. See

also Kenneth W. Boulding, Stable Peace(Austin: University of Texas Press,1978).

31. John Dollard, Leonardo W. Doob, Neal E. Miller, O. H. Mowrer,and Robert R. Sears,Frustration and Aggression(New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1939).

32. Morton Deutsch, The Resolution of Conflict: Constructive and Destruc-tive Processes(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), p. 17.

33. For the latest version of his argument see, Johan Galtung, Peace ByPeaceful Means Peace And Conflict, Development And Civilization (London:Sage, 1996), p. viii. See also Roland Paris, note 7, p. 58.

34. Galtung, Peace by Peaceful Means, note 33.35. Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality(New York: Harper,

1954).36. Edward E. Azar, The Management of Protracted Social Conflict(Hamp-

shire, UK: Dartmouth Publishing, 1990), pp. 1012.37. Ibid., p. 9.38. Ibid., p. 155.39. Johan Galtung, International Development in Human Perspec-

tive, in John Burton, ed., Conflict: Human Needs Theory(New York: St. Mar-tins Press, 1990), p. 311; John Burton, Resolving Deep Rooted Conflict: AHandbook(Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), p. 23.

40. See A. Rapoport, The Origins of Violence(New York: Paragon House,1989).

41. J. Burton and F. Dukes, eds., Conflict: Readings in Management andResolution(London: Macmillan, 1990), p. 2.

42. A. Curle, Another Way: Positive Response to Contemporary Conflict(Oxford: John Carpenter, 1994); Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, Miall, note26, p. 52.

43. Elise Boulding, Peace Praxis: The Craft and Skills of DoingPeace, Building a Global Civic Culture: Educating for an Interdependent World(New York: Columbia Teachers College Press, 1990), pp. 140159.

44. See Kevin Avruch, Peter W. Black, and Joseph A. Scimecca, eds.,Conflict Resolution: Cross-Cultural Perspectives(London: Greenwood Press,1991).

45. M. Lebaron, Mediation and Multicultural Reality, Peace and Con-flict Studies5, no. 1 (1998): 43.

46. Vamik Volkan and Mark Harris, Negotiating a Peaceful Separa-tion, Mind and Human Interaction4, no. 1 (1992): 2039.

47 E H Carr The Twenty Years Crisis (London: Macmillan 1939) p 10



27/29

50. K. Holsti, Peace and War(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1991), esp. Chapter 13. See also Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, and Miall,note 26, pp. 3637.

51. Holsti, note 50, p. 347.

52. Ian Clark, The PostCold War Order (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2001): G. John Ikenberry, After Victory(Princeton, N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2001), pp. 216241.

53. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London:Penguin, 1992).

54. Ikenberry, note 52, p. xiii.55. Andrew Williams,Failed Imagination? New World Orders of the Twen-

tieth Century(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); Liberalismand War: The Victors and the Vanquished(London: Routledge, 2005).

56. Rasmussen, note 10.57. Ken Booth, ed., Critical Security Studies and World Politics(Boulder,

Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2005).58. Ibid.59. Ernesto Laclau,Emancipation(s) (London: Verso, 1996), p. 122.60. Ibid., p. 122.61. Jabri, note 8, p. 150. See also her forthcoming book, War and the

Transformation of Global Politics(London: Palgrave, 2006).62. Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community, (Co-

lumbia: University of South Carolina Press), p. 16. See also ChristopherFarrands, Language and the Possibility of Inter-community Understand-ing, Global Society1, no. 1 (2000).

63. Duffield, note 8.64. See, for example, Linklater, note 62; David Held,Democracy and theGlobal Order(Cambridge, Mass.: Polity Press 1995); Steve Smith, Ken Booth,and Marysia Zalewski, International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press 1996); Mervyn Frost,Ethics in Interna-tional Relations A Constitutive Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1996); Oliver P. Richmond, Maintaining Order, Making Peace(Lon-don: Palgrave, 2002).

65. Jabri, note 8, p. 4.66. Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute(Minneapo-

lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), p. xi.

67. For more on this challenge see Roland Bleiker, Art After 9/11,Alternatives31, no. 1 (2006), pp. 7799.68. Bleiker, note 21, p. 150.69. This phrase echoes the Nazi appellation of decadent art, but not

by design.70. Christine Sylvester,Feminist Theory and IR in a Postmodern Era(Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).71. Walker, note 21.72. For a fascinating exposition of this insight into abstraction see Chris-

tine Sylvester, Art, Abstraction, and IR, Millennium 30, no. 3 (2001): 540.73. Ibid., p. 541. See also Sandra Harding, Is Science Multicultural?

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).74. Paul Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance(Chicago: University of

Chicago Press 2001) pp 223 224 cited in Sylvester note 72 p 541



28/29

77. See Roland Bleiker, Forget IR Theory, Alternatives 22, no. 1(1997): 5785; David Cambell, Writing Security(Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1992); James Der Derian, On Diplomacy(Oxford: Black-well, 1987).

78. Bleiker, The Aesthetic Turn, note 21, p. 510.79. See, among others, Christine Sylvester, Bare Life as Develop-

ment/ Post-Colonial Problematic, The Geographical Journal 172, no. 1(2006): 6677: J. Briggs and J. Sharp, Indigenous Knowledge and Devel-opment, Third World Quarterly 25 (2004): 661676; Mark Duffield, SocialReconstruction and the Radicalisation of Development,Development andChange33 (2002): 10491071.

80. See Sylvester, note 79, p. 67. She draws upon Giorgio Agamben,Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer-sity Press, 1998).

81. Rajeev Patel and Philip McMichael, Third Worldism and the Lin-eages of Global Fascism, Third World Quarterly25, no.1 (2004): 231254.

82. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth(London: Penguin, 1967),pp. 132138.

83. See Stephen Chan, Peter Mandaville, and Roland Bleiker, The Zenof IR(London: Palgrave, 2001).

84. Said, note 18, p. 291.85. Patel and McMichael, note 81, p. 235.86. Cited in ibid., p. 239.87. See Carolyn Nordstrom, Shadows of War (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 2004).

88. Boutros Boutros Ghali, Agenda for Peace(New York: United Nations,1992). High Level Panel Report, www.un.org./secureworld/, 2004: Interna-tional Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility toProtect, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001.

89. John Ruggie, Collective Goods and Future International Collab-oration, American Political Science Review66 (September 1972): 874893.

90. Michel Foucault, Governmentality, in Graham Burchell, ColinGordon, and Peter Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmental-ity(Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 87104.

91. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 (London: Penguin,1990 [1976]).

92. For a critique, see Stanley Hoffman, World Disorders(Lanham, Md.:Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. 61.93. Robert Cox, Postscript 1985, in Robert Keohane, ed., Neorealism

and Its Critics(New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 242.94. Francis Fukuyama, State Building: Governance and Order in the Twenty

First Century(London: Profile, 2004), p. 141.95. All of these scenarios were witnessed during the course of field-

work and consultations conducted during 20032005.96. See Oliver P. Richmond, The Transformation of Peace(London: Pal-

grave), Chapter 5. See also UN Secretary Generals Report on Timor-Leste pur-suant to Security Council Resolution 1690, 8 August 2006, esp. paras. 3435.

97. See the comparison in House of Commons International Devel-opment Committee, Conflict and Development: Peacebuilding and PostconflictReconstruction Sixth Report of Session 2005 06 (London: House of Com



29/29

Critical Research Agenda for Peace

Documents