Studying Peace and Studying Conflict: Complementary or Competing Projects?

Abstract

‘Peace’ and (violent) ‘conflict’ are often seen as conceptual mirror images of one another; peace is the absence of conflict, and conflict is the absence of peace. Given this conceptual interdependence, some scholars see that the study of war/making and the study of peace/making are complementary – or even functionally identical – academic projects. Others, however, see that studies of violence and warmaking are antithetic to studies of peace and peacemaking. The six contributions to this JoGSS Forum explore these contrasting perspectives, with a view to assessing the ‘state of the discipline’ of peace and conflict studies (and cognate disciplines, such as security studies). The introduction offers provocations for debate. The two contributions that follow consider connections and disconnections between the study of conflict and studies of post-conflict peacebuilding and transitional justice, respectively. The next two contributions focus on areas of investigation that do not fit neatly into either the ‘peace’ or ‘conflict’ categories – Gender, and Nonviolence – and the authors explore how studies of these topics might create bridges between scholarship on peace and studies of violent conflict. The concluding contribution argues that ‘mainstream’ peace and conflict research has come to be dominated by positivist treatments of war and violence, and it draws attention to alternate approaches that have the potential to transform and ameliorate social relations.