This study outlines the emerging cultural turn in Peace Studies and provides a critical understanding of the cultural dimension of reconciliation. Taking an anthropological view on decentralization and peacebuilding in Indonesia, it sets new standards for an interdisciplinary research field.

The Language of Peace: Communicating to Create Harmony offers practical insights for educators, students, researchers, peace activists, and all others interested in communication for peace. This book is a perfect text for courses in peace education, communications, media, culture, and other fields. Individuals concerned about violence, war, and peace will find this volume both crucial and informative. This book sheds light on peaceful versus destructive ways we use words, body language, and the language of visual images. Noted author and educator Rebecca L. Oxford guides us to use all these forms of language more positively and effectively, thereby generating greater possibilities for peace. Peace has many dimensions: inner, interpersonal, intergroup, international, intercultural, and ecological. The language of peace helps us resolve conflicts, avoid violence, and reduce bullying, misogyny, war, terrorism, genocide, circus journalism, political deception, cultural misunderstanding, and social and ecological injustice. Peace language, along with positive intention, enables us to find harmony inside ourselves and with people around us, attain greater peace in the wider world, and halt environmental destruction. This insightful book reveals why and how.

Peace-makers, experts in conflict resolution, researchers and teachers are among the contributors here focused on ethnic and cultural conflict around the world. The volume first addresses elements such as identity and difference, both conceptually and historically. Text that follows describes issues and experiences associated with conflict and war in countries including Africa, China, Iran, Israel, Palestine, and New Zealand. The role of immigration, three major cultures (Islamic, Christian, and Confucian) are examined. Finally, innovative programs and strategies to prevent and manage ethnic conflict and violence are offered by practitioners. This book will interest professors and students of cross-cultural psychology, social psychology, ethnic and cultural relations, international relations, anthropology and political science.

Thirty-four outstanding scholars write about the etymological meaning and the religious, legal and political connotations of the concept of 'peace'. They provide firm evidence to show how adopting a multi-faceted approach to 'peace' could ultimately contribute to the search for a more authentic understanding of 'peace' across the world stage.

This broad-ranging book examines the creation, through the arts and culture, of societies that enjoy sustainable, positive peace. It begins with a critique of the pervasive nature of militarism and violence embedded deep in the cultural fabric of many societies, influencing the language and discourses we use, the films we watch, our museums and histories, our journalism, and our education systems. It also examines the roots of violence in our parenting styles, gender roles, and spiritual practices. It contrasts this with an examination of a number of peaceful societies that already exist, drawing useful lessons from their cultures. It critiques discrepancies in history education with regard to war and peace and examines artistic and cultural processes, institutions, and artifacts designed to create peace, such as peace museums and parks, peace journalism, peace education, and resistance to violence through cultural means, such as film-making, fine arts, satirical theatre, and protest music. Solutions-oriented, it examines the efficacy of these attempts and suggests positive ways forward. It also explores the role of gender in creating cultures of peace and the impacts on peacebuilding of cultivating peace within.

Through this volume, UNESCO aims to further reflection on the major changes facing the international community today: how to replace the existing culture of violence with a culture of peace. The text presents contributions by eminent peace researchers, philosophers, jurists and educators on the multiple facets of a culture of peace. The contributors underline the universal nature of a culture of peace - some delve into its very concept, others analyze the manner in which it is achieved, while others concentrate on the global endeavour to which UNESCO is dedicated.

An evidence-based analysis of governance focusing on the institutional capacities and qualities that reduce the risk of armed conflict.