| Review of: | The First Fifty Years of Peace Research: A Survey and Interpretation by David J. Dunn |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Charles Chatfield |
| Reviewed in: | Peace & Change |
| Date accepted online: | 02/11/2007 |
| Published in print: | Volume 32, Issue 03, Pages 435-462 |
Book Reviews
This book consists of reflections on the emergence of peace research as a recognized field of study over the past half century. An avowedly personal "impression," David J. Dunn's account is informed by the history of the field and by his own governing assumptions as a peace researcher at Keele University, Stafford, England, who has taught international relations and strategic studies over four decades.
His thesis is that peace research, understood as a way of thinking, alone offers an alternative to the current global paradigm that is state-centric, grounds peace in order and conflict-management, and is "locked into a politics of zero sum," as it is epitomized in international relations and strategic studies. The force of that "conventional wisdom" prevents society from coming to grips with the accelerating change and complexity that is tearing apart social orders and even the natural environment. In contrast, peace research as developed over the past fifty years is grounded in independent, innovative, and systemic thinking that advances adaptive, cooperative social processes toward the end of peace understood as just and empowering culture.
This thesis structures the volume. Initially Dunn sets the "context" of peace research in a compilation of fifty years of changes and crises that cumulatively have made the problems of military and social security ever more complex, thereby complicating the agenda for peace. Wedded to the conventional paradigm of power politics, he argues, world leadership has encountered a paralyzing "crisis of thought." Peace research has responded by challenging the concept of "state" as too limited for a planetary era and the notion of peace as "order" as too rigid for an age driven by demands for change and justice.
In his second chapter, Dunn rephrases this line of thought in terms of international studies, seen as the academic carrier of the conventional wisdom. He argues that the limitations of the state-centric paradigm of power, even when modified in the light of "interdependence" and non-state actors, elicited rejection and challenge from peace research. There is some ambiguity here. Overall, Dunn interprets international studies and peace research (and "negative" and "positive" peace) as either-or modes of thought, but in at least one instance (p. 84) he acknowledges merit in Kenneth Boulding's suggestion of "creative tension" between the two.
Dunn's three central chapters focus on peace research as it emerged in the 1950s, gradually achieved professional and institutional recognition and wrestled with a defining agenda (the overall process is well summarized on p. 77). They form the core of the volume.
Chapter 3, a historical survey, recounts the early days of peace research in Britain (most detailed), Scandinavia, and Germany, with a note on American peace research (larger in scale than the others), half of which is about the creation of a National Institute of Peace. The account neglects the organizational development of links and networks like the International Peace Research Association, nor does it assay the current field as a social system.
Dunn then offers a cursory but useful chapter on the professional journals that have given the field both internal coherence and professional recognition. There still is room for research on the substantive and methodological issues that distinguished the respective journals and professional associations and defined the subfields and transnational connections of peace research.
In Chapter 5 Dunn interprets the agenda that has defined the field. There were methodological questions such as what constitutes "science" in a field striving for scientific credibility, and what constitutes authenticity, given internal diversity and outside skepticism. The agenda also has included topical problems: armaments (which first engaged systematic peace researchers); conflict per se on all social levels; conflict resolution; and peace as a process aimed at human empowerment within multiple social systems from the local to the planetary levels.
This leads the author to two chapters in which he returns to his own agenda for the future of peace research as a field of study and as it applies in the world. Chapter 6 sharpens the distinctiveness and mission of peace research. The last chapter constitutes an impassioned appeal to abandon the prevailing "culture of violence" and the conventional paradigm that supports it. That way of thinking must be replaced by the peace research paradigm: "where [conflict is] resolved, not merely suppressed or settled, soon to re-emerge. ...[and where the peace process] is dedicated to the fulfillment of human needs" (p. 132). If that sounds unscientific, well, Dunn justifies "exhortation in difficult times" (p. viii).
Dunn's work deserves to have been proofread and edited more thoroughly by its publisher. There remain numerous instances of redundant or omitted words, misspellings ("war" for "way," "emanate" for "animate"), capricious commas, and unhelpfully complex sentence structure. Even allowing for differences in American and British grammar and style, the book is not yet ready for the "broad student market" that it addresses.
Dunn backs up his work with a bibliography of over a hundred books and articles, although not with archival citations. There are, however, some surprising omissions, such as the relevant work of Juergin Dedring and Carolyn Stephenson's seminal analysis,
Thus, too, both the Conference on Peace Research, Education, and Development (COPRED) and the Conference on Peace History (precursor to the Peace History Society) are mentioned only cursorily in connection with their sponsorship of the journal
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