Introduces the Everyday Peace Indicators as a measurement, diagnostic and evaluation tool and makes an argument for its utility in conflict affected contexts.

This encyclopaedia provides a comprehensive overview of major theories and approaches to the study of peace and conflict across different humanities and social sciences disciplines. Peace and conflict studies (PCS) is one of the major sub-disciplines of international studies (including political science and international relations), and has emerged from a need to understand war, related systems and concepts and how to respond to it afterward. As a living reference work, easily discoverable and searchable, the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies offers solid material for understanding the foundational, historical, and contemporary themes, concepts, theories, events, organisations, and frameworks concerning peace, conflict, security, rights, institutions and development. The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Peace and Conflict Studies brings together leading and emerging scholars from different disciplines to provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date resource on peace and conflict studies ever produced.

This Handbook explores the ways in which religion among the African people has been applied in situations of conflict and violence to contribute to sustainable peace and development. It analyzes how peacebuilding inspired and enabled by religion serves as the foundation for sustainable development in Africa, while also acknowledging that religion can also be a tool of destruction, and can be used to fuel violence and underdevelopment. Contributors to this volume offer theoretical discussions from existing literature, as well as experiences of practitioners, to deepen the readers’ understanding on the role of religion and religious institutions in peacebuilding and development in Africa. The Handbook provides reflections on possible future developments as well, thereby aligning with the goals of SDG 16.

In The Frontlines of Peace, Severine Autesserre, award-winning researcher and peacebuilder, examines the well-intentioned but systematically flawed peace industry. The author sheds light on how typical aid interveners have been getting it wrong, and, more importantly, how a few of them have been getting it right. With real-life examples drawn from across the globe, Autesserre reveals that peace can grow in the most unlikely circumstances, with the help ofthe most unlikely heroes. She makes the compelling case that we must radically change our approach if we hope to build lasting peace around us--no matter where we live.

How do local communities effectively build peace and reconciliation before, during and after open violence? This trailblazing book gives practical examples, from the Global North, the former Soviet bloc and Global South, on communities addressing conflict in divided and contested societies. The book draws on a range of critical perspectives and practitioner analyses. The diverse case studies demonstrate the considerable knowledge, skills, commitment, courage and relationships within local communities that a critical community development approach can support and encourage. Concluding with activists’ perspectives on working with the challenges of violence, the book offers insights for both an understanding of the root causes of conflict and for bottom-up peacebuilding.

This book illustrates the diversity of current geographies, ontologies, engagements, and epistemologies of peace and conflict. It emphasizes how agencies of peace and conflict occur in geographic settings, and how those settings shape processes of peace and conflict. The essence of the book’s logic is that war and peace are manifestations of the intertwined construction of geographies and politics. Indeed, peace is never completely distinct from war. Each chapter in the book will demonstrate understandings of how the myriad spaces of war and peace are forged by multiple agencies, some possibly contradictory. The goals of these agents vary as peace and war are relational, place-specific processes. The reader will understand the mutual construction of spaces and processes of peace and conflict through engagement with the concepts of agency, the mutual construction of politics and space, geographic scales, multiple geographies, the twin dynamics of empathy/othering and inclusivity/partitioning, and resistance/militarism. The book discusses the intertwined nature of peace and conflict, including reference to the environment, global climate change, borders, technology, and postcolonialism. This book is valuable for instructors teaching a variety of senior level human geography courses, including graduate-level classes. It will appeal to those working in political geography, historical geography, sociology of geographic knowledge, feminist geography, cultural and economic geography, political science, and international relations.

This handbook provides a comprehensive review of research in conflict and peace communication and offers readers a range of insights into foundational, ongoing, and emerging discussions in this field. The volume brings together peace studies, conflict studies, and communication studies to acknowledge the power of communication—both cooperative, solidarizing, and integrative as well as destructive and divisive—in constituting social relations. It features a multiplicity of authors, including academics and practitioners from all corners of the globe and from across the communicative spectrum. The handbook is divided into four parts: (1) Meta-theoretical, theoretical, and methodological approaches in conflict and peace communication research; (2) Conflict communication; (3) Peace communication; and (4) Cross-cutting and emergent themes. This handbook is essential reading for scholars, research-driven practitioners, graduate-level students, and upper-level undergraduate students in conflict and peace communication within disciplines such as communication studies, political science, international relations, security studies, and human rights.

In addition to being a major area of research within International Relations, peacebuilding and statebuilding is a major policy area within the UN and other international and regional organizations. It is also a concern of international financial institutions, including the World Bank, and a significant factor in the foreign and security policies of many established and emerging democracies. Peacebuilding and statebuilding are among the main approaches for preventing, managing, and mitigating global insecurities; dealing with the humanitarian consequences of civil wars; and expanding democracy and neoliberal economic regimes. Peace formation is a relatively new concept, addressing how local actors work in parallel to international and national projects, and helps shape the legitimacy of peace processes and state reform. The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation serves as an essential guide to this vast intellectual and policy landscape. It offers a systematic overview of conceptual foundations, political implications, and tensions at the global, regional, and local levels, as well as key policies, practices, examples, and discourses underlining all segments of peacebuilding and statebuilding praxis. Approaching peacebuilding from disciplinary perspectives across the social sciences, the Handbook is organized around four major thematic sections. Section one explores how peacebuilding, statebuilding, and peace formation is conceived by different disciplines and IR approaches, thus offering an overview of the conceptual bedrock of major theories and approaches. Section two situates these approaches among other major global issues, including globalization, civil society, terrorism, and technology to illustrate their global, regional, and local resonance. Section three looks at key themes in the field, including peace agreements, democratization, security reform, human rights, environment, and culture. Finally, section four looks at key features of everyday and civil society peace formation processes, both in theory and in practice.

Most recent works about the efforts of local communities caught up in a civil war have focused on their efforts to remain places of security and safety from the violence that surrounds them—neutral peace communities or zones. This book, in contrast, focuses on local peace communities facing new challenges and opportunities once a peace agreement has been signed at the national level, such as those in South Africa, the Philippines, Burundi, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and the present peace process in Colombia between the FARC and the Colombian Government. The communities’ task is to make a stable and durable peace in the aftermath of a violent civil war and a deal on which local people have usually had little or no influence. Such agreements seek to involve them in both short and longer term peace-building, and expect local communities to cope with problems of armed ex-combatants, IDPs and refugees, law and order in the absence of much state presence, high unemployment and the need for widespread and massive reconstruction of physical infrastructure damaged or destroyed during the war. How local communities have coped with the demands of “peace” is thus the theme that runs through each of these individual chapters, written by authors with direct experience of grassroots communities struggling with such “problems of peace.” ​