Peace and Conflict Studies

Front Cover
SAGE Publications, Mar 19, 2002 - History - 571 pages

"I teach an introductory course on this topic and can think of no other useful text in the field...I like the organization and scope of this volume—beginning with the nature and causes of war, then proceeding to 'negative' peace, and then 'positive' peace. I also liked the extensive use of literary fragments—my students would relate to that....There's a need for it and I think the authors are on the right track."

-Michael Klare

Hampshire College

This core textbook comprehensively introduces students to the relatively young interdisciplinary field of peace and conflict studies. This field is unabashedly value-oriented, and although the authors are up front about their own values and opinions, they attempt to present all sides of complex debates to assist students in forming personal and social opinions, insisting only that those opinions be informed by serious intellectual effort. A hallmark of the book is an effort to encourage independent and critical thinking among student readers.

About the author (2002)

David P. Barash (PhD, University of Wisconsin) is a professor of psychology emeritus at the University of Washington. His studies span animal behavior, evolution, and social psychology, with concentrations in sociobiology, psychological aspects of the arms race and nuclear war, and peace studies. A prolific author and researcher, he has written more than 270 technical articles and 40 books ranging from monographs to college textbooks to popular trade titles. His book Introduction to Peace Studies (1991) was the first comprehensive undergraduate textbook in the field of Peace Studies. His book Threats: Intimidation and its Discontents (2020, Oxford University Press), is especially concerned with debunking nuclear deterrence. Charles P. Webel (PhD, University of California, Berkeley) is presently a professor of international relations and philosophy at the University of New York in Prague. He previously held the Delp- Wilkinson Chair in Peace Studies at Chapman University. A five-time Fulbright Scholar and graduate of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, he has conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University, the Max Planck Institute, and the Universities of Paris, Frankfurt, and Heidelberg. He has also taught in the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Berkeley, the Honors College of University of South Florida, and at Harvard College. He is the author or editor of many articles and nine books, including the forthcoming The Fate of this World and the Future of Humanity.