Peace Activists Research Articles

Non-Combatants and Other Peace Activists: “Everyday” disability in a time of war

While depictions of war-related disability would come to dominate the novels of male combatants in the decades following the First World War, congenital disability continued to be represented in the works of female novelists who were advocating peace. Even as the figure of the disabled veteran became hypervisible in Britain, civilians with disabilities frequently came to be overlooked where charitable aid, vocational training, and governmental assistance were concerned. We can chart a similar movement in the literature of the period, as representations of the war maimed came to eclipse "civilian" or congenital disability. In Rose Macaulay’s Non-Combatants and Others (1916) and Rose Allatini’s Despised and Rejected (1918), characters with physical disabilities become outspoken activists for the anti-war movement as they openly combat the illogic of the war and continue to labor as artists and intellectuals. Besides making these disabled bodies visible again, Allatini and Macaulay draw attention to what fitness means in sexual, intellectual, and physical terms, and encourage readers to consider what it means for the “unfit” to reject a war that has already rejected them. Keywords: First World War; Congenital disability; War disability; Women writers

Feminism and the critique of violence: negotiating feminist political agency

The acute sensitivity of feminism to violence, in its many different forms and contexts, makes it a particularly interesting case for the examination of the relationship between politics and violence in theory and practice. Our purpose in this paper is not to adjudicate the normative question of whether feminism implies a commitment to pacifism or to the use of non-violence. Rather, we are interested in examining how the relation between feminist politics and violence is construed as feminists struggle to develop a politics in which opposition to patriarchal violence is central. We begin with the feminist critique of violence, and move to examine how particular articulations of that critique shape and are shaped by practices of feminist political agency in specific contestation over the goals and strategies of feminism. We use the well-known case of feminist debates over the Greenham Common Peace Camp in the UK in the 1980s to demonstrate how negotiating women's political agency in relation to opposition to male violence poses problems, both for feminists who embrace non-violence and prioritize the opposition to war, and for feminists who are suspicious of non-violence and of the association of feminism with peace activism. In both cases, the debates over Greenham demonstrate the fundamentally political character of the ways in which the relation and distinction between violence and politics are conceptually and practically negotiated.

Feminist Activism as Interfaith Dialogue: A Lesson from Gangjeong Village of Jeju Island, Korea

How do the religious engage with one another in Gangjeong village, Jeju when faced with the perceived threat to peace and human security presented by the construction of a naval base in the village? How do their religious teachings and spiritual practices motivate them to actively participate in peace activism? Exploring women’s roles in peace activism at Gangjeong, this essay suggests the dialogue of peacemaking activism informed by feminist activism as a desirable model for interfaith dialogue in Korea. Feminist activism is understood as a way of constructing shared power relations in every part of human society. Considering Korea’s particular geopolitics (i.e. ideological division and excessive militarization of Asia Pacific), this essay argues that first, the Korean religious should pay attention to the role of patriarchal masculinity in militarism and interfaith dialogue; second that a Korean model of dialogue in peace activism should incorporate gender perspectives by seriously considering women’s day-to-day activities as forms of spiritual practice; and third, that those who participate in the dialogue of peace activism should seek out practical ways of creating shared power relations among all living beings and liberate themselves from the fear fed by militarism.

My Promised Land

My Promised Land

The Role of Sufism in the Identity Construction, Mobilization and Political Activism of the Barelwi Movement in Pakistan

This article intends to analyze the forms of political activism of the Barelwi movement, one specific Sufism oriented religious movement rooted in the 19th century, which has gradually politicized through Pakistani history. It has played a widely ignored role in the politics of Pakistan, may it be in party politics, social movements, or through the islamization of society. There are today about forty Barelwi or-ganizations differently located on a scale of politicization, protest and radicalization. These “neo Sufi or-ders” have constructed a distinct Sufi identity and evolved different strategies to defend their version of Islam and fight for an Islamic State, an endeavor which they call the system of the Prophet (Nizam-e Mus-tafa). The organizational form they adopted is a mixture of a Sufi order, an activist association and for some, a political party. In the framework of the “War against terror”, mainly targeting their more reformist doctrinal challengers, the Barelwi presence in the public sphere has increased. The different groups of the movement have organized many conferences and demonstrations aiming both at denouncing the “talibanization” of Pakistan and at reasserting the role of Sufis in the promotion of an Islam of “peace, love and tolerance” in contemporary Pakistan. Paradoxically, this movement has also undergone a process of radicalization, thus blurring the lines between peaceful activism and violent direct action.

Dansk støtte til dissidenterne i Østblokken under den kolde krig

Bent Boel: Danish support for dissidents in the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War
 Recent Cold War historiography has demonstrated an increased interest for the many ways in which the Iron Curtain was perforated long before the fall of the Berlin Wall. This article looks at Denmark’s role in this process and constitutes a first attempt to examine Danish assistance to Soviet Bloc dissidents. Its relevancy is heightened by the ongoing Danish controversies concerning the Cold War and, in particular, disagreements about the role played by different groups which supported dissidents in the Soviet Bloc. Indeed, without documented knowledge in this field we will have to settle for a debate rich in passions and certitudes but rather disconnected from the complicated reality of the Cold War. Based on available written and oral sources, this article makes a number of claims about Danish support for the dissidents. For instance, the support was, mostly, a non–governmental endeavor. Although there are examples of official or semi–official contacts with dissidents, in the main dissident–helpers were a tiny minority comprising marginal fringe groups or individuals (exiled Soviet bloc dissidents, Bible smugglers, peace activists, leftwing activists) acting on their own initiative rather than mandated by some larger group. Only during the 1980s, and in particular the second half of the 1980s, did other actors – and more prominent individuals – enter the fray. This minority was politically extremely diverse: practical support for the dissidence could be found in many different political quarters, and it could be motivated by extremely diverse motives. In some cases it had at least as much to do with domestic politics as it had with the dissidents themselves. Among those supporting the dissidents were far right–wing activists as well as Maoists and Trotskyists or liberals. But the overwhelming majority of those involved in subversive tourism to the Soviet Bloc were from the left (broadly understood). The reasons for this overrepresentation are diverse. One of them was the perceived need to actively show that Soviet–style socialism was quite different from the kind of socialism to which the majority of the Danish left aspired.

John Woolman's Path to the Peaceful Kingdom: A Quaker In the British Empire. By Geoffrey Plank. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. viii + 296 pp. $39.95 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)John Woolman's Path to the Peaceful Kingdom: A Quaker In the British Empire . By Geoffrey Plank . Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press , 2012. viii + 296 pp. $39.95 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesSince his death in 1772, the life and work of John Woolman (1720-1772) has been interpreted and defined by subsequent writers in the context of abolitionists, social reformers, peace activists, mystics, and great spiritual thinkers; his on-going influence is part of the lasting power of a carefully crafted life story by both friends and admirers. Yet during his lifetime, Woolman's actions and message often confused and bewildered many of his contemporaries, in spite of his apparent sensitivities to the attitudes of his listeners. His life was his message and he carefully (and prayerfully) ordered it both to reflect his values and to provide object lessons. From refusing to wear dyed clothes, which he saw as a symbol of exploitation, luxury, and waste, through to avoiding sugar, manner of speech, and careful oversight of his diet, Woolman sought to make practical statements about implicit evils. Unfortunately much of his life proved incomprehensible to distant observers who did not have access to the inner thoughts that motivated him. Only with the posthumous publication (and editing on both sides of the Atlantic) of his journal were the two brought together. Even then, many American Friends initially admired his piety rather than his stance against slave holding, though both were clearly noted in his journal.As with many reformers and visionaries, Woolman was as much a product of his age as a transformer of it. As Geoffrey Plank asserts in his introduction we cannot understand Woolman's career without examining the community he was born into and the religious society that shaped (9). Working within the administrative structures of the Society of Friends, Woolman along with other reformers coordinated pastoral responses to the wider needs and perceived evils of both North American and Colonial society. Previous works on Woolman have sought to identify the uniqueness of his contribution, but Plank in a well referenced and clearly written narrative has placed him back in the context of his contemporaries, giving the reader a perceptive insight into the historical figure. He is able to do this by a careful revisiting of primary sources ranging from the journal, the extensive correspondence of Woolman and his acquaintances, and the records of local Friends Meetings. Through this mass of material (meticulously referenced) the reader is carefully guided into a very intimate encounter with Woolman the man and introduced afresh to the sheer humanity and visionary character of this inspirational, if singular, Quaker.The volume works extremely well, because instead of marshalling the sources into a standard biography they are arranged thematically, introducing the reader in a loose chronological framework to the significant influences and the contemporary issues that animated Woolman. Each theme takes up a chapter and they include, Woolman's analysis of the course of history, his understanding of discernment, his lifelong fidelity to Quaker discipline, and chapters on his views on work, slavery, and warfare. …

PACIFISM IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE AUSTRIA: THE POLITICS AND LIMITS OF PEACE ACTIVISM

ABSTRACTThe late Habsburg Monarchy produced two of the most renowned peace activists of their day: Bertha von Suttner and Alfred Fried. In comparison to these two Nobel Peace laureates, the main association of Austro-pacifism – theÖsterreichische Friedensgesellschaft(ÖFG) – is less well known. The article concentrates on this organization, which had been founded in 1891, and it draws attention to the political and intellectual environment in which it operated. The ÖFG originated in the milieu of Austro-German liberalism, but had an ambivalent rapport with liberal politics. The Austro-pacifists’ focus on supranational principles and dynastic loyalty sat uneasily with the national dimensions of Cisleithanian politics. The obstacles encountered by the ÖFG illustrate wider aspects of the political culture of fin-de-siècle Austria, ranging from the question of militarism in Austrian society to the challenges created by socialist and nationalist movements. As a whole, the article highlights the inherent limitations of Austro-pacifism, as reflected in its quest for respectability and its acceptance of the social and political order.

Beginnings of my journey

My career as a peace and constructive conflict scholar and a sometimes peace activist derives from personal inclinations, world conditions and intellectual understandings as a boy and young man.1 I...

Transformative Reconciliation

Transformative Reconciliation

Guiding Settler Jerusalem: Voice and the Transpositions of History in Religious Zionist Pilgrimage

This article examines how Elad, a religious Zionist settler group, attempts to reanimate biblical tales by transposing biblical text as part of tours for Jewish visitors to the City of David archaeological site in East Jerusalem. Since the early 1990s, Elad has created controversy by settling in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, provoking criticism from Israeli archaeologists and peace activists. In an effort to avoid 'politics' during tours, the group emphasizes a now globalized historicist reading of the Bible, an interpretation popularized by archaeology over the last century and a half. The article considers how transposition from this historicist reading into the here and now is a rhetorical device used to create a biblical realism that does not yet exist in the contested landscape. However, rather than producing an erasure of the Palestinian presence, and in contradiction to the professed desire to refrain from politics, I show that the very communicative situation and multiple framings for producing this biblical realism inevitably remind visitors of the contemporary context.

Listening to the World: Engagement with Those Who Suffer

Listening to the World:Engagement with Those Who Suffer Ouyporn Khuankaew Before talking about listening to the world I would like to review what brought us to the need to listen. Riane Eisler, a thinker and peace activist who authored the book The Power of Partnership, summarizes the main characteristics of dominant culture as authoritarian, men over women, masculinity valued over femininity, hierarchical and centralized power of a few privileged groups, and violence institutionalized and normalized. The culture that we are working toward is partnership, which is about a practice of power sharing, a flat structure for society and institutions that support decentralization, gender equality, justice for all, nonviolence, and love. To work and live in partnership cultures we need to shift, to unlearn, the world-view, skills, and behavior we have internalized from the dominant culture. Dominant culture Partnership culture Preaching or teaching Learning together Telling the answer Listening with an open heart Knowing Having a beginner’s mind Helping Working together Fixing Being a witness, being present with the suffering Offering solutions Asking questions: Let people touch their wisdom Click for larger view View full resolution The work of International Women’s Partnership for Peace and Justice (IWP) is to train social activists in South and Southeast Asia to deconstruct their worldview, attitude, and behaviors internalized from the dominant culture, to envision and practice skills and behaviors of a partnership culture. The main skill that we practice throughout our five-day to six-week workshops is deep listening with an open heart. Compassionate or mindful listening alone combines all the partnership values, concept, skills, and behavior mentioned above, and even beyond. When we use it with [End Page 59] Buddhists, we recognize deep listening as meditation in action. When we work with Christians, we acknowledge it as a practice of love. And we call deep listening a spiritual practice when we work with people who do not want to identify with religious institutions. Deep listening with an open heart is a way to crack open our numbness, internalized from the dominant culture that trains us to listen with our head. Listening with our head means we listen with a readiness to make comment, to judge, to ask for more information for our curiosity, to give solutions, or to share our stories. We all know this well when our parents, teachers, or persons with authority do this to us. And when we become adults, we automatically do the same thing that we used to oppose. When we listen with our heart open it means we are being present to hear the stories, the emotions, the hope, the joy, and the pains of people who simply only need a witness to their own existence, particularly when working with marginalized people whose power within has been taken away and their voices are not heard in the dominant cultures. Offering deep listening to the suffering of someone or a group of people is the first step to engage with their realities and to create opportunities for people to speak their truths. Often in our ten-day workshop we will have someone who has been living or working with an abusive partner, parents, or boss for many years. Our job as a workshop facilitator is to create a safe environment for such a person to talk about her suffering. We model and encourage other participants to be present without judgment, questions, or suggestions when the person is talking. This is very hard for the first few days because most participants are trained, as a result of the dominant culture, to want to tell the person what to do, or they simply act uncomfortable with the situation by writing a note, going to the toilet, or looking away. This is because they do not know how to be with the suffering of others or do not know how to engaged in the suffering itself. We suggest that participants use the breath and the awareness of their body sitting on a floor to help anchor their mind, which is trying to run away from the unpleasant situation. We share with them that when we can be present without fixing the problem or running...

Antiwar Dissent and Peace Activism in World War I America; A Documentary Reader. Edited and with an Introduction by Scott H. Bennett and Charles F. Howlett

Antiwar Dissent and Peace Activism in World War I America; A Documentary Reader. Edited and with an Introduction by Scott H. Bennett and Charles F. Howlett

Responsibility and Peace Activism

Responsibility and Peace Activism

The Classroom as a Peace Incubator: A US-Gaza Case Study

This paper describes the design, implementation, and lessons from a case study in transforming two university classrooms into what we call an international “peace incubator.” In the besieged Gaza Strip, opportunities for normalization of relations with Israel are almost non-existent, and there is very limited desire or personal capacity among the student population of Gaza to do the work of peace-building. A semester-long videoconference class linking IUPUI and Gaza University students sought to address this deficit by developing a model for building ties of friendship and cooperation. West Bank peace activist Juliano Mer Khamis once spoke of a coming Third Palestinian Intifada (or uprising) that would be mounted through art, music, poetry and film. Inspired by his dedication to long term peacebuilding, we set about opening a channel of communication through our classroom experiment to allow the students to see beyond the negative stereotypes and allow friendship and understanding to flourish. Our experiment was designed to not only promote trust between US and Palestinian faculty and students, but to also creatively endorse Mer Khamis’ strategy for peace-building, and giving voice to those struggling to be heard.

Magik on the Mounds: The (Re) Enchanted Spaces of the House on the Rock

To explore the intersection of magic, imagination, and place as a buttress against continued disenchantment furthered by an over reliance on rational thought, we turn to the (re)enchanted rhetoric of Starhawk, an eco-feminist peace activist and witch, to analyze the House on the Rock. We focused on the ways in which some rhetorical spaces challenge the postmodern idea of the disenchanting overemphasis on moral perfection, logic, and technological rationalization. Intertwined with cultural and political institutions, disenchanted rhetoric ensnares individuals in stultified existence that eliminates diversity, reifies hierarchy, dismisses creativity, and limits individuality. In positioning the House on the Rock as a rhetorical text we suggest that liminal spaces liberate individuals from the fetters of societal expectations, hierarchies, and institutions, offer a safe vantage point by which to examine conflicting viewpoints, and ultimately blur the distinction between entrenched understandings and new ways of knowing and seeing.

Brief Amici Curiae of Experts in the History of Executive Surveillance: James Bamford, Loch Johnson, and Peter Fenn in First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. National Security Agency

This case presents pressing questions regarding the executive's power to collect, store, and use Americans' telephony and other personal data for the purposes of conducting surveillance operations. In the wake of recent disclosures revealing National Security Agency data collection programs, the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles and 21 other membership and political advocacy organizations filed this lawsuit to challenge the NSA's collection of telephony data as an infringement of their members' First and Fourth Amendment rights.In this amicus brief, experts in the history of American surveillance -- James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace; Peter Fenn, who served as Washington Chief of Staff for Senator Frank Church and as a staff member to the Senate Intelligence Committee; and Dr. Loch Johnson, who served as special assistant to the Church Committee chair and as staff director of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence Oversight -- explain the historical parallels between the executive surveillance programs that are presently coming to light and the development of abusive surveillance practices from the 1940s to the 1970s. All amici were directly involved in the comprehensive review of twentieth-century American intelligence operations completed by the Church Committee in the 1970s, giving them a uniquely thorough understanding of these parallels.Drawing from the experts’ extensive knowledge, the brief explains the clear parallels between the development and growth of the abusive practices of the mid-twentieth century -- when American intelligence agencies helped conduct politically motivated surveillance of Americans ranging from ordinary teachers, journalists and peace activists to civil rights leaders, members of Congress, and a Supreme Court justice -- and today’s vast surveillance programs. History shows that abusive surveillance does not require bad actors to grow and flourish: instead, it is the natural outgrowth of too much secrecy and too little oversight by other branches of government. In light of this clear historical pattern, the brief argues that the court should carefully apply existing legal limits on the government’s surveillance powers to address the risks posed by the executive branch and the intelligence agencies’ claims to expansive power to determine the limits of their own activities.

The Temple of Peace. The Hague Peace Conferences, Andrew Carnegie and the Building of the Peace Palace (1898-1913)

The 19th-century international peace movement sprang from the reaction against the devastation and horror the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812 had wrought. It had its roots in Anglo-American nonconformist protestant circles, but quickly spread over the globe and became more pluralist and then secular. All through the century and beyond, British and American peace activists dominated the movement and set its agenda. During the later quarter of the century, the peace movement gained more political influence thanks to its alliance with the emerging discipline of international law. This was, again, particularly true for Britain, and most of all, the United States. Two major points stood out on the agenda of the ‘peace through law’ movement: disarmament and arbitration. Whereas the movement could attain very little to nothing in relation to disarmament in the years before the Great War, the movement found allies in political circles to foster the cause of arbitration. In the United States, Britain and the Latin-American Republics, arbitration moved up the agenda of foreign policy makers and diplomats after the successful Alabama Award in 1872. The Alabama Case had shown arbitration to be an appropriate instrument to manage tactical disputes among States which wanted to avoid strategic clashes. In 1899, the cause of ‘peace through law’ scored an unexpected success. The Hague Conference, which first had been called by the Russian government for reasons of high power politics, had – to a large extent thanks to the endeavours of the Russian international lawyer Fyodor Martens – been highjacked for the ‘peace through law’ agenda when these reasons dissipated. One of the main outcomes was the establishment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. In 1903, the American industrialist turned philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, made a lavish gift to build a ‘Temple of Peace’ for the Court at The Hague. It can be said, with the benefit of hindsight, that this set the destiny of The Hague as legal capital of the world in stone.

The Challenge for Peace within South Vietnam's Catholic Community: A History of Peace Activism

Beyond the common vision of Vietnamese Catholics as a group who supported the defense of South Vietnam at all costs, this article brings to light the thinking of those who contemplated the end of the war and its significance in terms of reconciliation. The history of this Catholic engagement for peace is the story of activism at the crossroads of religious and political spheres during the period 1962–1975. This group was particularly productive through an impressive number of publications, which offer a large corpus of texts over 15 years. Confronted by many challenges (religious, economic, political), this progressive wing endeavored to produce an analytic reflection based on Vatican II values, on the Vietnamese situation, and to participate in the building of a political alternative for their country.

Aristophanes'Lysistrata, the Liberian ‘sex strike’, and the Politics of Reception

In October 2011 the Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless campaign to end violence in Liberia. Part of her campaign involved a so-called ‘sex strike’. Gbowee is said to have organized women protestors to solicit their husbands' cooperation by withdrawing sex until the men, too, made peace a priority. The Western media, both through official reporting in newspapers and through the less formal commentating in blogs, have repeatedly reported the women's political action by drawing comparisons with the ‘sex strike’ dramatized in Aristophanes' playLysistrata, and between Leymah Gbowee and the character Lysistrata. In a review in theHuffington Post, Jericho Parms wrote: ‘Employing the strength of Lysistrata, and Aristophanes’ heroines of the Peloponnesian War, they withheld sex from their men'. R. Weinrich commented inGossip Central, ‘Self-assured and instinctively political, Gbowee is a modern day Lysistrata, as in the ancient Greek satirist Aristophanes’ play'. A report in theDaily Telegraphwent even further, and suggested a causal relationship betweenLysistrataand the resistance in Liberia: ‘perhaps her [Gbowee's] most famous moment came in 2002, when she persuaded many Liberian women to withhold sex from their warring menfolk unless they came to the negotiating table, a devastatingly successful campaign inspired by the Aristophanes’ Lysistrata [sic], who used the same strategy during the Peloponnesian War'. Reports in the Liberian press, to the best of my knowledge, do not mention Aristophanes'Lysistrata.