Peace Movement Research Articles

Weg die bommen, godverdomme!

Stop the madness (marching against annihilation) What happened to the peace movement? The question often arises these days, and almost always refers back to the 1980s, when European capitals were flooded by demonstrations against nuclear missiles. In this essay, Gie Goris argues against the nostalgic undertones of this comparison and makes the case for a more sober analysis, taking into account what it takes to build a movement, the importance of immediate danger, the relation of peace with dominant discourses and the role of civil society today.

Comparative Study of the Contributions of Lala Lajpat Rai and Lala Har Dayal: Direction and Impact on the Indian Freedom Struggle

This research paper presents a comparative study of the contributions of Lala Lajpat Rai and Lala Har Dayal, analyzing their perspectives and strategies. Lala Lajpat Rai viewed the Indian freedom struggle as a constitutional and peaceful movement. He inspired Indians to organize constitutionally against the British Empire and played a significant role in spreading education, social reform, and political awareness. Conversely, Lala Har Dayal adopted a more revolutionary approach. He founded the Ghadar Party and presented the Indian freedom struggle as an armed conflict and a global movement. He believed that the struggle should not be confined to India alone but must be expanded internationally. The contributions of both leaders were immensely important for the Indian freedom struggle, yet their perspectives and methods of operation were distinct. Lala Lajpat Rai advocated a path of peaceful and constitutional struggle, while Lala Har Dayal prioritized armed conflict and a global perspective. Their differing viewpoints profoundly impacted the direction and effect of the Indian freedom struggle.

The paradox of youth engagement: the role of young people in historical and contemporary Southeast Asian peace

Young people have been at the forefront of independence and peace movements across Southeast Asia. However, little scholarship has focused on their significant role and contribution to the region’s past and contemporary peace. They are often overlooked as political actors and agents of peace leading to their exclusion in consultations, decision-making and overall work in building and sustaining peace. In paying attention to and connecting historic events and contemporary context, a ‘paradox of youth engagement’ emerges. That is, the intriguing incongruity of institutional representatives who were once youth activists themselves who then grapple with the complexities of their past activism and the current limited spaces for youth engagement in institutional processes. Drawing on interviews with representatives from institutional regional peace and security mechanisms who were previously youth leaders in Southeast Asia we argue that understanding regional peace and security can be enhanced through attending to the overlooked role of youth and shifting relationships between youth and institutions. A recognition of the roles of young people historically can reveal their complexities and contradictions, highlighting the nuances of young people shifting positions within power hierarchies and systems. Such an analysis provides a deeper insight into ongoing struggles and the nature of institutionalisation of peace and security in the region.

The Politics of Grief and Mourning: Calls to Action and Processing Emotions

Using data from an ethnographic study of U.S. antiwar activism during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this article draws lessons for reinvigorating the anti-nuclear movement and making it successful. By examining the roles of emotions in the military peace movement, this work illuminates their power to mobilize and maintain activism in movements more broadly. Grief, particularly when displayed in culturally expected ways, offers an important call to action and can provide publicity for antiwar or other oppositional framing of policy. The community building within collective action helps individuals heal and facilitate resilience for managing negative emotions brought on by political (including nuclear) anxiety and the very real consequences of policies; by intentionally creating rituals and spaces for consciousness-raising movements facilitate movement maintenance.

Moral Witness and Political Pragmatism in U.S. Peace Movements

Peace movements have relied on two strategic approaches to achieve their goals. These include political pragmatism —whereby movement activities are a complement to institutional politics—and moral witness , in which movements use symbolic tactics to highlight moral issues. While we have knowledge of the conditions that enhance political pragmatism, we know little about what makes moral witness effective. In this article, I use case study methods to analyze the factors that strengthen moral witness campaigns and to assess the consequences of relying predominantly on one strategy. I examine two cases: (1) the strategic choices of Bayard Rustin, an influential leader in the U.S. civil rights and peace movements; and (2) the Catholic Left, which mobilized against the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race. In these cases, movement leaders initially employed both strategies. Eventually, however, Rustin shifted toward political pragmatism, while the Catholic Left shifted toward exclusive moral witness. Deriving lessons from these cases, I find that moral witness is most effective when movements use provocative tactics and understandable symbolism that is visible to a wide audience. I also find that abandoning moral witness for institutional politics can lead to a loss of moral credibility, making it difficult to mobilize people, while abandoning political pragmatism can lead movements to become largely theatrical, which will have limited impact if their audience is small.

Lessons From Recent Peace Movements

The author reviews and analyzes organizing experiences in peace campaigns from more than 50 years of personal organizing. The article identifies examples of conflicts within movements about strategies and tactics for attention and influence, arguing that there is no single best approach for affecting policy. Crucial to sustained activism is cooperation within a broad coalition that includes participation of religious communities. The article explains how activism on peace issues works, when it works, by influencing conduct within political institutions, generating reforms that are, at best, a fraction of what activists demand, but still extremely significant.

Conflict and Factionalism in Peace Movements

Social movements in the United States are carried by broad coalitions of organizations with different goals, methods, and constituencies. Factionalism and conflict are inevitable, and effective movements must find ways to manage rivalries and conflict. The history of the peace movement reveals conflicts among organizations operating with some shared purposes, sometimes precipitated by internal factors, and sometimes precipitated by external shocks. Groups compete for resources, including attention, but must find ways to cooperate on matters of policy. Effective organizers must focus on managing the consequences of conflict rather than ending conflicts, keeping in mind common purposes and tolerating a diversity of approaches.

Engaging in and with complexity: local actors, Mayors for Peace and the global nuclear order

The global nuclear order is dominated by national security concerns, even if many other actors are affected. This article examines how local and subnational actors engage with the nuclear order and its complexity, particularly focusing on cities and the international city network ‘Mayors for Peace’. Based on norm research, the article first outlines the relationship between norms and global order and how actors contribute to and challenge order. In the second step, the article examines how cities are particularly affected by violence, warfare, and the nuclear order. Following that, the article shows how cities’ local activities, international representation and global networking aimed to change the nuclear order. As the article shows, the contestation of the existing nuclear order cannot be reduced to local resistance, but it is also linked to both high-level diplomacy and a global movement for peace and nuclear disarmament. All in all, the complexity of the nuclear order is reflected in the different ways local actors engage with it, but they also contribute to it.

Fighting Stigma, Advocating for Peace: Ainun Jamilah's Effort in Changing Society's View of Veiled Women Through the Digital Peace Movement

This study aims to explore the role of Ainun Jamilah and the Cadar Garis Lucu community in combating the negative stigma against veiled women in Indonesia, as well as to analyze the impact of the peace movement promoted through social media. The research adopts a mixed-methods approach (quantitative-qualitative) through the collection of survey data, in-depth interviews, and online observation, particularly focusing on the Cadar Garis Lucu Instagram account (@cadargarislucu). The study found a contradiction in public perceptions; where although many still view veiled women with a negative stigma, they also support the peace efforts carried out by veiled women via digital platforms. Through the Cadar Garis Lucu movement, Ainun Jamilah plays a key role in redefining the image of veiled women by promoting the values of religious moderation and peace. Through various educational content and interfaith dialogues, she facilitates, Ainun has successfully introduced a new face of veiled women as open, inclusive, and tolerant despite still facing negative stigma related to their appearance. This research contributes to the understanding of how social media can be used to advocate for peace and reduce stigma against marginalized groups. The contribution of this study lies in the application of religious moderation theory in the digital context and the use of social media to promote inclusivity and intergroup dialogue.

“Aggression in Felt Slippers:” Bahr, Kissinger, and the Geopolitics of Ostpolitik, 1962–2022

Abstract The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine plunged Germany's Ostpolitik (Eastern Policy) into crisis. Whereas Ostpolitik had commonly been seen to have brought about system change in the Soviet Bloc, it now appeared as the root of Germany's doomed approach towards Putin's Russia. This essay examines the vision that drove Ostpolitik's architect Egon Bahr, a man who continued to guide social democrat security policy as a party grandee and elder statesman until his death in 2015. I spotlight Bahr's close personal and political relationship with the American statesman and geopolitician Henry Kissinger, an affiliation from which Bahr drew much legitimacy. Drawing on an analysis of Bahr's published works and press interviews, documents from his personal estate, and interviews with contemporaries of his, I show that his most lasting achievement was to anchor a neo-Bismarckian brand of realism within social democrat security policy. These findings shed light not only on the evolution of social democratic thought and the idiosyncratic nature of German geopolitics but also on an unexpected intersection of political realism and the peace movement.

“PEACE CAN ONLY COME WRAPPED IN THE ISRAELI FLAG:” NAVIGATING MULTIPLE FRAMES IN AN INTERSECTIONAL WOMEN’S PEACE MOVEMENT

This study delves into the intricate process of integrating intersectional practices within social movements, focusing on the challenges of balancing multiple frames in the context of women’s activism. Based on the case study of the Israeli women-led peace movement Women Wage Peace (WWP) and using semistructured interviews within an ethnographic approach, this research explores WWP’s evolving framing strategy. This study critically examines whether and how two frames, namely peace and intersectionality, can be aligned within one movement’s framing strategy. In the case of WWP, this attempt resulted in the emergence of identity hierarchies and shifts in movement goals, which ultimately led to abandoning the intersectional frame in favor of conventional motherhood tropes, a traditionally homogenous membership base, and a focus on crossborder cooperation. This shift underscores the complex dynamics at play when women’s movements and social movements at large attempt to incorporate intersectionality into their framing strategies.

The Women’s Movement for Peace: South African Instructional, Informational, and Activist Antiracist Documents

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the Women’s Movement for Peace (WMP), a grassroots organization in South Africa founded in 1976 to oppose the violent forces of apartheid. The group’s work reveals the hope that can emerge from the archives, and my analysis found that they produced three types of documents: instructional, informational, and activist. This article seeks to bolster what we know about women’s technical communication practices and examine the antiracist work of the WMP’s documentation.

Gandhi the Organiser: How he shaped a nationwide rebellion: India 1915-1922 - Book review

Review of Gandhi the Organiser: How he shaped a nationwide rebellion: India 1915-1922 by Bob Over. Excerpt: "I first came across Bob Overy through a letter he had written to Peace News (of which he had been editor), published in September 1971. There he made the important point many in the peace movement tended to overlook: we are often concerned with the point of conflict rather than the source of conflict."

Miguel Otero Silva in the USSR: Late Success of a Former Communist

Despite a biography full of episodes of struggle against dictatorship, revolutionary fervor of his early works, membership in the Communist Party, participation in the international peace movement, friendship with the major writers of his generation and “fellow travelers” of the Soviet Union (P. Neruda, R. Alberti, and others), and, finally, a desire to establish contact with the Soviet Writers’ Union, the Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva (1908—1985) remained unknown in this country for a long time. This article reconstructs the relationship between Otero Silva and Soviet literature from the first attempts at rapprochement in the mid-1930s to the peak of the writer’s popularity in the Soviet Union in the 1960s — 1980s. The paper explains why the Communist writer’s panegyric to Stalin in 1948 did not bring him the desired attention from Moscow, while the benevolent criticism of Soviet achievements by the renegade Marxist in the 1960s made him a “true friend” of the USSR. As a result of the study, the author concluded that during the Stalinist years Otero Silva lacked intermediaries who would “promote” him in the country, and, moreover, the publication of his works was impossible due to their plot features. In the 1960s, the Venezuelan’s sudden popularity in the Soviet Union was boosted by the fashion for Latin American literature combined with his own willingness to cooperate. Drawing on archival sources and the Soviet press, the circumstances of Otero Silva’s visits to the country in 1965, 1967, 1973, and 1980 are reconstructed. The author also shows how, as the Venezuelan’s fame grew in the USSR, his biography, created by Soviet literary critics, became formulaic and “appropriate” for a Lenin Peace Prize laureate.

Interrelationship of Tourism and Indigenous Knowledge, Skill, and Technology: A Study of Gurung, Magar, and Tharu (GMT) Homestays in Gandaki Province

Since this decade, tourism has become the world’s biggest industry in terms of people’s peaceful movement, income generation, and employment creation. The desires of Nepal are to focus on tourism due to its ‘low investment, high return’ attribute. Tourism, being a strong agent of change, transformation, promotion, and conservation of nature, culture, and the economy, is the priority sector of the central and provincial governments of Nepal. Tourism seems to be favored both people and state, mostly due to its economic derivatives. Its non-economic progenies are mostly obscure and latent. Therefore, this paper investigates and analyzes the interrelationships between tourism and indigenous knowledge, skills, and technology. Data from both primary sources and secondary literature was used to support the arguments. Qualitative methods were used to gather the information. Sixty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted: 25 with the Gurung community, 15 with the Magar community, and 25 with the Tharu homestay. The finding revealed that these ethnic communities used their peculiar indigenous knowledge, skills, and technology to entertain tourists in a home-friendly environment with their customs and traditions. Additionally, these communities helped revitalize their obsolete traditions while practicing homestay entrepreneurship.

Nuevas ideas para la paz y el Premio Internacional de la Paz Johan Galtung

Excepting the Nobel Peace Prize, most of the international peace prizes are little known; some are not even regularly awarded; and a number of these, including the Nobel Peace Prize, shows little appreciation for the role of peace educators and researchers in promoting peace and building peace in different parts of the world. The denial of Noble Peace Prize to peace academics like Richard Falk, Elise Boulding and Johan Galtung and several others is a reflection of its bias against peace thinkers, peace educators and peace researchers. Such a show of disrespect to the weavers of peace ideas, peace seeders, peace planters, and fosterers of peace movements negatively impacts the creation, flow and flourishing of new peace ideas. Emphasizing the need to build a fearless peace perspective on Gaza and on other conflicting issues, the present paper highlights the importance of new peace ideas in these dangerous times. In addition, it calls for an energetic role of the peace visionaries, peace educators and peace researchers in dealing with the challenges arising especially after the genocide in Gaza. In this context, it suggests the creation of a new peace prize, as prestigious as the Nobel Peace Prize, but more impactful. It further suggests that this prize should be named Johan Galtung International Peace Prize to memorialize Galtung’s contribution as a brilliant peace thinker and prolific peace scholar and to keep the succeeding generations informed about the grave injustice done to him by the Nobel Peace Prize, which denied this award to one of the most deserving candidates. This paper, which includes a brief appraisal of a few, indeed very few, international peace prizes currently being awarded, attempts to explore the prospects for the institution of a new international peace prize and seeks answer to questions like why should such a prize be called the Johan Galtung International Peace Prize, how can such a prize be instituted and how can this prize induce the peace educators and peace researchers to come out with new peace ideas in these tormenting times.

Far-right movement-party activism as strategy: Germany’s ‘peace movement’ during Russia’s war against Ukraine

This article studies the strategic considerations behind far-right movement-partyism in the context of ‘new’ issues such as Russia’s war against Ukraine. The question of military support to Ukraine, high energy prices, and the reception of war refugees soon became salient issues in many European states. In Germany, the government, dominated by the centre-left, moved towards greater military support. The loudest opponents of arms supply and sanctions were found within the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD). Perhaps paradoxically, many AfD politicians, together with a variety of far-right social movement groups and prominent activists, even went to the streets, portraying themselves as new ‘peace movement’. The article asks: What are the far rights’ motives behind going to the streets? What should these efforts organizationally achieve? And what does street mobilization in the context of war teach us about the state of far-right movement-partyism more generally? The article highlights the following strategic motives of the far right: (1) the long-term aim of strengthening of organizational structures beyond the electoral arena and (2) the attraction of (former) left-wingers through ‘Querfront’ (‘cross-front’) strategies. The article also studies (3) far-right activists’ ambivalent self-assessments of their success. Further analysing these strategic considerations, the article provides important contributions to debates on the far right's mainstreaming and normalization efforts, their own intellectual reflection of strategy, and the impact of their efforts.

The quest for legitimacy: Discussing the rational myth inherent in ‘Sport for development and peace’

During the twenty-first century, the sport for development and peace (SDP) movement has emerged, which conceptualizes sport’s contribution to international development. As of today, there are hundreds of programs worldwide where sports are used to obtain different development and peace objectives. The SDP movement has subsequently turned into a recognized and legitimate component of the global development sector. In this respect, it has evolved into an institution, not least given the social construction of sport as a vehicle to bring about development and peace. In this article, two Scandinavian SDP programs serve as examples: LdB FC for Life in South Africa (sport and HIV/AIDS prevention) and Open Fun Football Schools in Moldova (sport and peace building). Drawing on a case study methodology, representatives (i.e., initiators, sponsors/donors and local personnel affiliated with the two programs) have been interviewed. Furthermore, observations in South Africa and Moldova have been made targeting the practical implementation of each endeavor. Finally, websites and additional written documentation about current programs have been analyzed to see if the proclaimed objectives match the practical outcome. Consequently, the aim of the article is to analyze the relationship between rhetoric and practice surrounding both projects. Even if both programs have good intentions, the result in this article shows it can be hard to align the proclaimed objectives with the practical implementation. Drawing on neo-institutional theory, this relationship is further investigated using the concepts of rational myths, decoupling, organizational hypocrisy, mimetic isomorphism, and moral legitimacy. On this basis, the findings suggest that the presumed positive notion of sport as a means for different societal outcomes can be both praised and criticized.

“Peace Is Dangerous”: Toward a Du Boisian Theory of Colonial Post-fascism

This article asks: “How was the rhetoric of post or anti-fascism used to develop colonial projects in the inter and postwar period?” Through investigating the Du Bois archive, I answer this through producing a Du Boisian theory of colonial post-fascism. While many have written about the connections between European fascism and colonialism in theories of “colonial fascism,” a Du Boisian approach leads us to the concept of colonial post-fascism, demonstrating the array of colonial practices which were instigated in the name of world peace in the inter and postwar era. Colonial post-fascism is characterized by three processes that Du Bois wrote about. First, colonial post-fascism involves a bifurcation between colonial violence and peace, such that Western powers in the inter and postwar period could make commitments to world peace without interrogating the actions of their empires. Second, colonial post-fascism involves the process by which empires developed their imperial practices to rebuild from the effects of the war against fascism. Finally, colonial post-fascism involves the U.S. empire increasing its militarization, which developed in the fight against fascism, to secure colonial power under the rhetoric of maintaining world peace. This article makes several contributions. First, instead of highlighting the link between European fascism and colonialism, I demonstrate how colonialism shaped European post-fascism. Second, I contribute toward the project of undoing bifurcated histories of the West which elide discussions of colonial violence. Finally, I highlight how Du Bois’s involvement in the peace movement was not just activism, but also generative to social theory.

Melodies of empowerment: Unearthing ideological themes in Maguindanaon's protest songs through stylistic analysis

This qualitative study employing stylistic analysis probed the stylistic architecture of Bangsamoro protest songs concerning semantics levels of language and investigated how this stylistic architecture foregrounds the embedded ideologies of protest songs. Fifty-one protest songs written in the Maguindanaon language served as the research material. The findings of the study showed that semantics devices such as allegory, apostrophe, climax, euphemism, hyperbole, visual imagery, irony, metaphor, personification, satire, simile, symbol, proverb, and idiom were manifested. Additionally, the civil rights movement, peace movement, anti-war movement, and anti-authoritarian movement ideologies were identified as the embedded ideologies foregrounded by the stylistic architectures found in the Bangsamoro protest songs. Therefore, analyzing and reflecting on the message of protest songs helps listeners understand social and political issues.