Peacebuilding &conflict transformation A ... - Peaceworkafrica

4.1.2 Peace as a research activity▶ Although individual thinkers had long recognized the centrality of peace, itwas not until the 1950s and 1960s that peace studies began to emerge as an academicdiscipline with its own research tools, a specialized set of concepts andforums for discussion such as journals and conferences.▶ Beginning in 1959, with the founding of the Peace Research Institute Oslo –PRIO (associated with Johan Galtung), a number of research institutes beganto appear.▶ In 1964, the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) was formed.The IPRA holds a biennial conference. Research presented at its conferencesand in its publications typically focuses on institutional and historical ap -proaches.▶ In 1973, the Peace Science Society was established — its website hosts thesecond edition of the ‘Correlates of War’, one of the most well known collectionsof data on international conflict. The society holds an annual conference,which is attended by scholars from all over the world, and publishes the journals‘Journal of Conflict Resolution’ and ‘Conflict Management and Peace Science’.▶ In 2001, the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) was formed withmembers from around the world. The PJSA publishes a regular newsletter(The Peace Chronicle), and holds annual conferences on themes related to theorganization’s mission ‘to create a just and peaceful world’ through research,scholarship, pedagogy, and activism.▶ Agendas relating to positive peace in European academic contexts werealready widely debated in the 1960s. By the mid‐1990s peace studies curriculain the US had shifted from negative peace and the ending of violence, to positivepeace and the conditions that eliminate the causes of violence. As a resultthe topics had broadened enormously. Already by 1994 the course offerings inpeace studies included topics such as “north‐south relations”; “development,debt and global poverty”; “the environment, population growth and resourcescarcity” and “feminist perspectives on peace, militarism and political violence.”▶ For some years, there has been debate about how realistic it is to use anapproach that targets a win-win outcome for all the parties to a conflict. Especiallyin circumstances involving genocide, this question looms large anddemands new approaches.4 . P e a c e & c o n f l i c t s t u d i e s 45