International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   Peace research can be considered either as a part of the field of international relations or as providing an alternative to international relations paradigms. If one looks at the original purposes of many early international relations theorists, one finds that contributing to international peace was a primary value. But many would argue that international relations lost its focus on peace over the course of time. Thus peace research was founded to reestablish the primacy of the goal of research contributing to peace itself, originally through the study of war. Peace research focuses on the causes of war and violence and the conditions of peace. Peace research in the US is generally seen as a part of peace studies, along with peace education, while in British systems peace studies usually means university-level peace research and education, with the term peace education more often reserved for elementary and secondary levels. Peace research has tended to focus not only on the international or global level, but on analysis of all levels from the individual to the group, societal, state, and international system levels, at its best integrating systemic analysis at all of these levels. Since this essay is written as part of a compendium on international relations, it will focus on those aspects of peace research which can be regarded as a part of, or intersect ... log in or subscribe to read full text