Beyond War and Men: Reconceptualizing Peace in Relation to the Everyday and Women

Abstract

I draw on the experiences of two Chinese women and one group of women among the one thousand nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the 1000 PeaceWomen for the Nobel Peace Prize project to demonstrate how peace work is deeply rooted in the everyday and the lives of women. Among the three cases, environmental protection and sustainable livelihood emerge as common themes. The reasons for choosing these themes are twofold. First, environmental and livelihood issues are very prominent in China, especially in the mainland, and the contribution of women to environmental protection and the improvement of livelihood has been outstanding. By contextualizing their work in their respective political, social, and economic systems in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China, respectively, we will see that peace work at the individual level does have an impact on eliminating structural and cultural violence embedded in government policies, profit-driven economic development, discrimination, and so on. Second, the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Wangari Maathai in 2004, Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank in 2006, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore in 2007 is a good demonstration of the changing conceptualization of peace toward environment and livelihood issues at the global level. It is worth contributing the Chinese experience to the debates.