The first known peace studies course in higher education was offered at Swarthmore College in 1888. These were student-originated discussion groups, not formal courses included in college curricula. Similar movements appeared in Sweden in the last years of the 19th century, as elsewhere soon after.
American student interest in what we today think of as peace studies first appeared in the form of campus clubs at United States colleges in the years immediately following the American Civil War. Peace and conflict studies entails understanding the concept of peace which is defined as political condition that ensures justice and social stability through formal and informal institutions, practices, and norms.Īcademics and students in the world's oldest universities have long been motivated by an interest in peace. Peace and conflict studies is both a pedagogical activity, in which teachers transmit knowledge to students and a research activity, in which researchers create new knowledge about the sources of conflict. Relevant sub-disciplines of such fields, such as peace economics, may be regarded as belonging to peace and conflict studies also. Disciplines involved may include philosophy, political science, geography, economics, psychology, sociology, international relations, history, anthropology, religious studies, and gender studies, as well as a variety of others.
This social science is in contrast to military studies, which has as its aim on the efficient attainment of victory in conflicts, primarily by violent means to the satisfaction of one or more, but not all, parties involved. A variation on this, peace studies ( irenology), is an interdisciplinary effort aiming at the prevention, de-escalation, and solution of conflicts by peaceful means, thereby seeking "victory" for all parties involved in the conflict. Peace and conflict studies is a social science field that identifies and analyzes violent and nonviolent behaviours as well as the structural mechanisms attending conflicts (including social conflicts), with a view towards understanding those processes which lead to a more desirable human condition. Copy of the sculpture Reconciliation by Josefina de Vasconcellos (1977), initially presented to the Bradford University Department of Peace Studies, located in front of the Chapel of Reconciliation at the former site of the Berlin Wall
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