Description
Book SynopsisLong considered a subfield of international relations and political science, Peace Studies has solidified its place as an interdisciplinary field in its own right with a canon, degree programs, journals, conferences, and courses taught on the subject. Internationally renowned centers offering programs on Peace and Conflict Studies can be found on every continent. Almost all of the scholars working in the field, however, are united by an aspiration: attaining Peace, whether “positive” or “negative.” The telos of peace, however, itself remains undefined and elusive, notwithstanding the violence committed in its name. This edited volume critically interrogates the field of peace studies, considering its assumptions, teleologies, canons, influence, enmeshments with power structures, biases, and normative ends. We highlight four interrelated tendencies in peace studies: hypostasis (strong essentializing tendencies), teleology (its imagined “end”), normativity (the set of often utopian and Eurocentric discourses that guide it), and enterprise (the attempt to undertake large projects, often ones of social engineering to attain this end). The chapters in this volume reveal these tendencies while offering new paths to escape them. Visit http://www.rethinkingpeacestudies.com/ for further details on the Rethinking Peace Studies project.
Trade ReviewRethinking Peace is a path-breaking book in Peace Studies. Brilliantly exposing the field’s recessive underside, it offers radically new avenues of reflection, engagement, and analysis. The volume is likely to emerge as an indispensable resource for innovative research and pedagogy. -- Mustapha Kamal Pasha, Chair in International Politics, Aberystwyth University
This important volume puts into practice Ashis Nandy's admonition not simply to reject Peace Studies for its entanglements with liberal modernity, including the state, but to work to recover resources for peace from spaces and voices that are generally invisible or even exiled from our studies and practices. Though what Nandy calls "undomesticated" voices can be hard to hear from our positions in the Academy or international/transnational institutions, Rethinking Peace wisely makes issues of translation and the challenges and possibilities of dialogue central to its call for rethinking. I recommend that anyone drawn to Peace Studies first read this book as both a cautionary tale and a source of hope. -- David Blaney, Professor of Political Science, Macalester College, USA
Moving beyond traditional criticisms of the liberal peace and binary approaches to critical peace research, Rethinking Peace offers to push us into other directions and disciplines to question the emancipation project itself. This edited volume brings together erudite scholars that form the core of peace studies rooted in IR, as well as those that bring insights from development studies and human rights, to work toward a new agenda for the field based on more interdisciplinary foundations. A thought-provoking read that will be interesting for scholars and students, inside and outside the mainstream of peace studies. -- Pamina Firchow, Author of Reclaiming Everyday Peace: Local Voices in Measurement and Evaluation After War
Table of ContentsPreface Paul Hastings (Japan International Christian University Foundation) Introduction: Rethinking Peace Studies Alexander Laban Hinton, Giorgio Shani, and Jay Alberg I. DISCOURSE Rethinking Peace: Discourse Giorgio Shani (Politics and International Studies, International Christian University [ICU] Japan) 1. The Inner Battles of Peace Studies: The Limits and Possibilities Ashis Nandy (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, India) 2. Sovereignty, Interference, and Crisis Stephen Eric Bronner (Political Science and Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers, US) 3. Towards A Peace with Global Justice Oliver Richmond (Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Manchester, UK) 4. Saving Liberal Peacebuilding: From the “Local Turn” to a Post-Western Peace Giorgio Shani (Politics and International Studies, ICU, Japan) II. MEMORY & TEMPORALITY Rethinking Peace: Memory & Temporality Jay Alberg (Philosophy, ICU, Japan) 5. Cultural Memory in the Wake of Violence: Exceptionalism, Vulnerability, and the Grievable Life Marita Sturken (Media, Culture and Communication, New York University, US) 6. Justice in the Land of Memory: Reflecting on the Temporality of Truth and Survival in Argentina Natasha Zaretsky (Center for Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers, US) 7. Negotiating Difference and Empathy: Cinematic Representations of Passing and Exchanged Identities in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Yael Zerubavel (Bildner Center, Rutgers, US) 8. Silence and Memory Politics Leigh A. Payne (Political Science, University of Oxford, UK) II. TRANSLATION Rethinking Peace: Translation Jay Alberg (Philosophy and Religion, ICU, Japan) 9. A Translational Comics Text and its Translation: Maus in Japanese Beverly Curran (Society, Culture, and Media, ICU, Japan) 10. To Arrive Where We Started: Peace Studies and the Logos Jeremiah Alberg (Philosophy and Religion, ICU, Japan) 11. The Crisis of Japan’s Constitutional Pacifism: The Abe Administration’s Belated Counter-Revolution Shin Chiba (Politics and International Studies, ICU, Japan) IV. DIALOGUE Rethinking Peace: Dialogue (Fetish) Alexander Laban Hinton (Anthropology and Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers, US) 12. Peace-in-Difference: Peace through Dialogue about and across Difference(s) Hartmut Behr (International Relations, Newcastle University, UK) 13. From Substantialist to Relational Difference in Peace and Conflict Studies Morgan Brigg (Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Queensland, Australia) 14. Zona Intervenida: Performance as Memory, Transforming Contested Spaces Nitin Sawhney (Media Studies, The New School, US) AFTERWORD Look Again – Aleppo: The Last Lesson on Prevention Alexander Laban Hinton (Anthropology and Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers, US)
