"The chapters in this book [posit] that humans clearly have the capacity to make war, but since war is absent in some cultures, it cannot be viewed as a human universal. And counter to frequent presumption, the actual archaeological record reveals the recent emergence of war. It does not typify the ancestral type of human society, the nomadic forager band, and contrary to widespread assumptions, there is little support for the idea that war is ancient or an evolved adaptation. Views of human nature as inherently warlike stem not from the facts but from cultural views embedded in Western thinking"--Amazon.com.

A collection of essays from leading academics about the nature of war and the capacity for peace as applied to human nature.

This book is about religion, pacifism, and the nonviolence that informs pacifism in its most coherent form. Pacifism is one religious approach to war and violence. Another is embodied in just war theories, and both pacifism and just war thinking are critically examined. Although moral support for pacifism is presented, a main focus of the book is on religious support for pacifism, found in various religious traditions. A crucial distinction for pacifism is that between force and violence. Pacifism informed by nonviolence excludes violence, but, the book argues, allows forms of force. Peacekeeping is an activity that on the face of it seems compatible with pacifism, and several different forms of peacekeeping are examined. The implications of nonviolence for the treatment of nonhuman animals are also examined. Two models for attaining the conditions required for a world without war have been proposed. Both are treated and one, the model of a biological human family, is developed. The book concludes with reflections on the role of pacifism in each of five possible futurescapes.

John Howard Yoder was one of the most important thinkers on just war and pacifism in the late twentieth century. This newly compiled collection of Yoder's lectures and writings on these issues describes, analyzes, and evaluates various patterns of thought and practice in Western Christian history. The volume, now made widely available for the first time, makes Yoder's stimulating insights more accessible to a broader audience and substantially contributes to ongoing discussions concerning the history, theology, and ethics of war and peace. Theologians and ethicists, students of Yoder's thought, and all readers seeking a better understanding of war and pacifism will value this work.

Nurturing Our Humanity offers a new perspective on our personal and social options in today's world, showing how to structure our environments--from family and gender relations to politics and economics--to support our great capacities for consciousness, caring, and creativity. It examines where societies fall on the partnership-domination scale, and how this impacts equity, sustainability, peace, and how our brains develop. Combining cutting-edge findings from biological and social science, it explains regressions to strongman rule and other dangerous trends; re-examines our past (including societies that for millennia oriented toward partnership); and outlines actions to move us in this life-sustaining and enhancing direction.

A Cultural History of Peace presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. The set of six volumes covers over 2500 years of history, charting the evolving nature and role of peace throughout history. This volume, A Cultural History of Peace in the Modern Age, explores peace in the period from 1920 to the present. As with all the volumes in the illustrated Cultural History of Peace set, this volume presents essays on the meaning of peace, peace movements, maintaining peace, peace in relation to gender, religion and war and representations of peace. A Cultural History of Peace in the Modern Age is the most authoritative and comprehensive survey available on peace in the twentieth and twentieth century.

A Cultural History of Peace presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. The set of six volumes covers over 2500 years of history, charting the evolving nature and role of peace throughout history. This volume, A Cultural History of Peace in Antiquity, explores peace in the period from 500 BC to 800 AD. As with all the volumes in the illustrated Cultural History of Peace set, this volume presents essays on the meaning of peace, peace movements, maintaining peace, peace in relation to gender, religion and war and representations of peace. A Cultural History of Peace in Antiquity is the most authoritative and comprehensive survey available on peace in the classical era.

Why, when we have been largely socialized into good behavior, are there more laws that govern our behavior than ever before? Levels of violent crime have been in a steady decline for centuries--for millennia, even. Over the past five hundred years, homicide rates have decreased a hundred-fold. We live in a time that is more orderly and peaceful than ever before in human history. Why, then, does fear of crime dominate modern politics? Why, when we have been largely socialized into good behavior, are there more laws that govern our behavior than ever before? In Command and Persuade, Peter Baldwin examines the evolution of the state's role in crime and punishment over three thousand years. Baldwin explains that the involvement of the state in law enforcement and crime prevention is relatively recent. In ancient Greece, those struck by lightning were assumed to have been punished by Zeus. In the Hebrew Bible, God was judge, jury, and prosecutor when Cain killed Abel. As the state’s power as lawgiver grew, more laws governed behavior than ever before; the sum total of prohibited behavior has grown continuously. At the same time, as family, community, and church exerted their influences, we have become better behaved and more law-abiding. Even as the state stands as the socializer of last resort, it also defines through law the terrain on which we are schooled into acceptable behavior.

This book is the author's attempt to translate his knowledge of peace studies into the language of sociology, so that the former can be grasped as a more complete whole. It aims to increase interest among sociologists in issues of war and peace because they provide food for sociological thought.

First Published in 2015. Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) was a contemporary of John Dewey and C.S. Peirce and ranks as one of the seminal minds of his generation of American thinkers in economics and sociology. He was a caustic critic of American business culture and his prose being peppered with Latin vocabulary might have made his ideas difficult to comprehend to the layperson. This collection of his writings looks at Veblen's works, main concepts and enables the reader to sample the broad spectrum of his thought and to reach his or her own conclusions regarding its present relevance.