- CC 325 B - Peace and Conflict Resolution
- 3 or 4 Credits
TR 11:50 am-1:05 pm - Professor Western
Peace: everybody wants it (well, most of us want it). Yet the story of humankind is the story of a species that, in one way or another, keeps slipping in and out of the peace we crave – ensuring it here but losing it there, achieving it in one generation but losing it in the next. For millennia, philosophers, politicians, diplomats, economists, activists, soldiers, theologians and numerous others have thought hard about the great riddles of peace: how do we achieve peace? how do we keep it once we have it? Yet no single, clear-cut, well understood, easily implemented answer to these riddles has been found. That is to say, we do have a number of answers proposed as to how to end conflict – and when we seek peace in the world today our efforts are generally guided by those answers. But those answers are numerous, varied and sometimes conflicting; and none have been so successful that they comfortably elide further scrutiny.
In this class, students will learn about and critically evaluate prominent approaches to peace and conflict resolution, organized into four categories: 1) approaches that seek peace through the use and management of power; 2) approaches that look to root peace in the shared interests of combatants; 3) approaches that seek peace through liberal democratic institutions, and; 4) approaches that seek peace through empathy and a culture of peace. In studying these four approaches students will: a) critically analyze the underlying assumptions involved in each of the approaches (for example, assumptions regarding human nature, or the practical possibility of peace itself); b) learn contemporary techniques and policies for conflict resolution and for building social peace; c) learn that there is more than one way to envision “peace,” and each approach lends itself to a different vision, and; d) evaluate the approaches themselves, making decisions about which approach, or blend of approaches, ought to be adopted in our quest for peace in the world.
The course begins with students reading classic articulators of the four main approaches (Hobbes, Kant, Sharp and Gandhi). But the bulk of the course will focus on contemporary understandings of these approaches and case studies in peacemaking and conflict resolution. Assignments for the class will consist of short papers, a role-play scenario where we simulate peace negotiations, and one assignment where students research a case study of their choosing. This case study assignment will involve two components: 1) a group study and in-class group presentation, and; 2) an individual research essay that digs further into themes addressed in your group presentation.
Texts include:
Roland Paris. At War’s End
Newman, Paris and Richmond (eds.). New Perspectives in Liberal Peacebuilding
