xxMagazine: Peace & Change, July, 1995 ^xx xxSection: Teaching Note Oxx xx xxx xx UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT "PEACE" xxx xx qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq xxx xx xxx xx xxx xx A Search for Common Ground xxx xx xxx xxFrom the premise that how we make peace is determined by how we define xxx xxpeace, this article attempts to add some clarity to the xxx xxconceptualizations of peace and thereby to peace research and practice. xxx xxIt identifies two basic orientations or paradigms of peace and elements xxx xxof the worldviews that underlie each paradigm, drawing on contemporary xxx xxconceptualizations and on philosophical and historical works. The two ^xx xxparadigms are contrasted with each other, and they are viewed as Oxx xxlocations on a continuum of peace understanding that shows a way for xxx xxpeace researchers, practitioners, activists, and educators to xxx xxcommunicate about peace. This article attempts to establish some common xxx xxconceptual ground to enable all those concerned about peace to work xxx xxtogether more effectively. xxx xx xxx xxIn the spring of 1988, as a graduate student, I began teaching the xxx xxsociology of peacemaking at the University of Colorado. After the usual xxx xxintroductory description of the course, I moved the class into a xxx xxdiscussion to define peace. "After all," I reasoned, "how we make peace xxx xxcan be reasonably assumed to follow from what we think peace is." With xxx xxall of my mediation, facilitation, and arbitration training and xxx xxexperience, I was confident in my ability to lead a class discussion ^xx xxtoward a definition of peace that would serve as a baseline to guide our xxx xxstudies for the semester. I had read Kenneth Boulding, Anatol Rapoport, Oxx xxJohan Galtung, and others. I knew that the leading thinkers generally xxx xxsaw peace in terms of the resolution or absence of war, violence, or xxx xxconflict, or at least as conflict management. "Certainly," I thought, xxx xx"an upper division class of undergraduates, interested in peacemaking xxx xxwould, when pushed, land in the same 'ball park' as our leading peace xxx xxthinkers." I expected the discussion to take one class period, most of xxx xxwhich would be students presenting their individual definitions and xxx xxworking toward agreement. xxx xx xxx But I was wrong. After two classes of my best facilitation and communication efforts, there was no agreement in sight. Indeed, it seemed clear that there were at least two very different and seemingly irreconcilable notions of peace among the class. Some were in the "ball park" with Boulding and Galtung, viewing peace as the absence of war, violence, conflict (or at least as conflict management) and peacemaking in terms of international relations. Others were in an altogether different place, seeing peace in terms of harmony within the individual, or between individuals, and peace-making as a mode of relating to others based on some unarticulated internal emotional or cognitive state. As a result I became convinced that there are concepts of peace "in society" that are not adequately addressed in the mainstream scholarly literature on peace.[1] I became concerned, as a consequence, that our peacemaking efforts, to the extent that they are informed by our peace intellectuals, may be limited, even impoverished, and perhaps doomed to failure by their own built-in limitations. It seems that we do not know what peace is or what it can be yet, although I believe we can know.[2] Is peace merely the absence of war, violence in its many forms, or conflict? Gray Cox argues in The Ways of Peace that such absence definitions (1) do not tell us what to do, but what to avoid; (2) violate a basic rule of logic that prohibits defining something by what it is not; and (3) lead us to see peace in terms of annihilation, which naturally lowers our desire for it. If peace is the absence of conflict--war and violence being consequences of conflict--and if human beings are seen as fundamentally violent, aggressive, and conflictual, then peace in a complete sense is the annihilation of humanity. Alternatively, is peace personal tranquility or social harmony? Cox says that such notions have been ignored. But harmony concepts may also mislead us. Viewing peace as social harmony can repress not only disadvantaged groups but also efforts to make needed social change (e.g., the well-known Japanese saying, "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down"). Further, as Cox also points out, "Harmony, unity, and concord can often amount to little more than a lack of difference, a lack of zest, and a lack of vital life processes and growth. Such tranquility may really be little more than the grave but empty peace in which the dead are said to rest."[3] If peace is tranquility and tranquility is death, we are left with the same undesirable peace as the absence definitions yield. With concepts of "peace" that reduce to "death," it is little wonder that we have such difficulty finding and preserving peace. We are afraid of or misunderstand such concepts. In addition, there seem to be whole sets of hidden assumptions that underlie our concepts of peace that have not been, to my knowledge, adequately discussed. These assumptions, more properly called beliefs, include notions about human nature, the origin and nature of the world and of reality (at least social reality), and, too often in my opinion, the assumption that others share these same core beliefs.[4] For example, portraying human nature as being violent and fundamentally self-interested (or even social, where society is seen as fundamentally conflictful) supports the image of peace as the absence of war, violence, or conflict. Yet clearly not everyone shares such views. It is not the purpose of this article to promote a "better" concept of peace, one that does not lead us to see peace as death or annihilation. Instead, the purpose of this article is to look for possible common factors among concepts of peace and different approaches to peace that might lead to some broader agreement on goals. Also, this article attempts to grapple with the contradictions, implicit assumptions, and limitations in our current concepts of peace with the aim not only of better understanding what peace is or can be, but also of finding more successful ways to achieve it. With these issues and problems in mind, I began my study of works on conceptualizing peace. I found two different directions in the literature (similar to those of my students) and have subsequently classified peace concepts into two paradigms: the Popular and the Numinar. Popular paradigm conceptions include the absence definitions mentioned above. This paradigm is truly popular in the sense of being common and widespread. It is these Popular paradigm peace concepts that presidents, prime ministers, secretaries-general, kings, and television anchorpeople use when they speak of peace in the Middle East, for example. On the other hand, the Numinar paradigm includes peace as harmony and peace as oneness with nature, others, or God. This paradigm derives its unusual name from the numinous (i.e., spiritual, holy, supernatural) individuals who seem to have articulated it best: Lao Tzu, Buddha, and Jesus to name only the best known. These two paradigms cannot be reduced to one another, nor should the Numinar be ignored.[5] THE PARADIGMS When I began my study, I wanted to see how others treated the variety of peace meanings. I cannot claim that my search was exhaustive, but I believe it is representative.[6] Inevitably, my effort to understand the variety of peace meanings broadened. Much of our historical texts and most of our leading thinkers and mystics have dealt with peace either directly or indirectly in the contexts of war, preservation of the social order, and proper conduct of social and political life.[7] It seems that peace has truly been one of humanity's chief interests throughout history. Yet as Betty Reardon has pointed out, "The search for a new paradigm of peace to replace our present paradigm of war . . . is the great intellectual adventure of our time."[8] What I found in the literature were really the same two general approaches to peace that I found in my class, each based on somewhat different sets of often vague and implicit assumptions. I refer to these two different approaches and their underlying assumptions as paradigms in the Kuhnian sense of a whole tradition--a model based on correspondingly paradigmatic worldviews in the sense of an "organizing principle which can govern perception itself."[9] These paradigms are ideal types or abstract descriptions. As such, it is difficult to find peace concepts that fit the criteria of the paradigm exactly (i.e., no pure types). Also, an author's concept of peace may change over time. There are a number of typologies that focus on one paradigm (the Popular) while often suggesting the other (the Numinar).[10] A few authors provide typologies that more or less focus on the Numinar paradigm, using the Popular to contrast and illustrate.[11] THE POPULAR PARADIGM Popular paradigm peace concepts are largely materialistic, international, and external. Peace is materialistic in the sense that it is associated with a level of prosperity threatened by war and violence. Peace is international in that the appropriate starting point for peacemaking is at the level of relations between nations. Peace is external in the sense that peace, if it is possible, must exist outside the individual or his or her relationship to others and society; peace is more the product of social systems (i.e., institutions) than of interactional patterns or subjective states. The problem of obtaining peace is the problem of controlling war or violence, both physical and structural. Here the Popular paradigm is divided into two "camps": those who see peace in "negative" terms as the abolition of war and those who see peace in "positive" terms as the creation of social justice.[12] The negative camp sees peace "not in terms of any attributes of its own but in terms of what is taken to be its opposite, war. When newspaper accounts report on prospects for a Middle East 'peace settlement' they are referring to the termination of hostilities and the withdrawal of troops."[13] On the other hand, the positive camp sees peace as a product of underlying social and political factors. Structural violence is seen as more pervasive than the physical violence (which concerns the negative camp). According to Johan Galtung, structural violence influences human beings "so that their actual somatic and mental realizations are below their potential realizations."[14] For example, social systems that keep women uneducated, economically and politically suppress ethnic groups, or prohibit adequate health care to anyone (i.e., deny health insurance), where it is possible not to do so, are structurally violent. Peace then is the drive for social justice, although this is still an absence definition of peace, as Cox points out in The Ways of Peace. Whereas the negative camp is clearly materialistic, international, and external in its views of peace, the positive camp is less clearly so. Galtung allows that structural violence may include "violence that works on the soul . . . [including] lies, brainwashing, indoctrination of various kinds, threats, etc. that serve to decrease mental potentialities."[15] Galtung is promoting a notion of peace in which structural barriers to human potential are removed. This is not materialistic, but it focuses on macro-social structures and thereby can be classified as international and external. The problem is not war but structural violence. However, war is one of the major institutions that needs to be dismantled to allow for greater social justice. Both camps take a macro-social approach to peace. To make peace, government and economic institutions must be restructured to deinstitutionalize war and our dependence on the military-industrial complex. It is presumed that this will free resources to governments for domestic reform programs and creating healthier economies, which will make life for individuals more peaceful and prosperous. This is a "trickle-down" peace dividend. Yet the perception is that this deinstitutionalization of war and structural violence must be done cautiously because of a hostile international environment littered with aggressive nations. Popular worldviews. The Popular paradigm seems to be fear based, viewing human nature as aggressive, conflictual, and competitive. Anatol Rapoport sees "peace through strength" (a Popular paradigm, negative camp concept) as based on the perception of threat and consequent anxiety.[16] The positive camp of the Popular paradigm is also responding to threat, but one that includes the oppressive character of unjust social structures. Galtung writes, "Structural violence seems to be more 'natural' than structural peace."[17] He implies that human nature is fundamentally a drive for full realization of mental and spiritual potential. But human nature is also social, and thus we have created structures that suppress our potential. This too is an anxiety-ridden worldview; it fears the monster of oppressive social structures that we create in spite of our potential. Yet it seems to hold faith, however weakly, in our eventual ability to transform the monster, to create just social structures. Popular paradigm worldviews appear more commonly as "pessimistic pragmatism" than as overtly fearful. The reality of terrorists, murderers, and brutally repressive regimes is combined with a sort of Hobbesian[18] view of humanity as motivated primarily by self-interest, devolving into a pessimism to which we must pragmatically respond with a defensive capability of our own. This worldview dominated the foreign policy of the superpowers and theft allies throughout the cold war era. THE NUMINAR PARADIGM The Numinar paradigm includes concepts of peace that are more idealistic, intra- and interpersonal, both internal and external. Peace is idealistic in that nonmaterial goals and processes are valued. Peace is not necessarily related to economic prosperity. In addition, peace is idealistic in that it is constructed and maintained through social processes that can be progressively revised. Peace is intra- and interpersonal in that the best level at which to begin peacemaking is internal. Peace must first exist within the individual in his or her relationship to others; peace is more the product of interactional patterns or subjective states than of social structures. Yet external concepts of peace are not excluded. Social systems must also be changed. The problem of peace is the problem of the internal, but shared, subjective states of people: the manner in which we interpret each other's actions and the value preferences that underlie our own actions. Cox comments, "To make peace with people, we need to understand them. To understand them, we need to engage in a holistic and participatory research which treats social reality as structured in purposive, value-laden, institutional and non-axiomizable ways."[19] A few peace concepts will help illustrate this paradigm. First, in The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace (1987), M. Scott Peck sees peace as the by-product of a group becoming and operating as a community characterized by inclusiveness, consensus, commitment, and realism, as well as being a safe place for personal growth, being a group of all leaders, and so forth. This view includes the Popular concepts of not doing violence (physical, structural, or psychological) to others, yet goes beyond them to include a whole range of social relations that contribute to peace. Second, in The Concept of Peace (1973), John Macquarrie defines peace as "healing fractures." This is a process of bringing people together by reducing the estrangement, alienation, bitter division, and war that exists within us as indecision, conflicting emotion, and mental illness--or between us when people pursue their own self-interest unresponsive to the will of others. Macquarrie's concept requires focus on the intra-and interpersonal level but also acknowledges the importance of healing fractures at all levels of society, including the international. His concept is also both internal and external in that the healing begins within each of us as we interact with others, yet social structures will also have to be changed to facilitate a more widespread and meaningful transformation. Finally, a class of peace concepts such as "oneness," "harmony," and "tranquility" will help illustrate the Numinar paradigm. Such concepts embrace the nature of relations between an individual and a larger "other" (i.e., God, Society, Nature, the Cosmos). The consequence of developing this relationship is tranquility, either within the individual or between individuals (in society) or both, with tranquility meaning a range of things from the near elimination of disagreement to the merging of wills and identity between the individual and the Other. As examples of Numinar peacemaking, Peck's and especially Macquarrie's approaches are shown in mediations where previously antagonistic parties are able to hear and understand each other, resolve their disagreement, and leave making plans for friendly get-togethers. I have seen this happen. The social distances among people are reduced; peace is built. Harmony/oneness/tranquility approaches are used, for example, by devotees of various religions who focus their efforts on prayer and meditation to merge their wills with that of God, or to relinquish desire. They seek a deep yet lasting peace that not only affects their dealings with others but preserves this path for any who seek it. They also constitute a reservoir of knowledge and skill that is poorly recognized and underutilized. These sons of Numinar peace occur in everyday life but are generally not recognized as peacemaking. The Numinar paradigm takes a micro-social approach to peace. As more individuals develop and maintain internal tranquility, they are better able to interact in nonjudgmental, more harmonious ways with others, and they are presumed increasingly to value shared interests. As more people develop peaceful relations, society is gradually reconstructed, moving upward to the level of the nation-state and its international relations. Peace begins at the grass roots, and social systems are transformed as a critical mass is reached in terms of new interpersonal relations.[20] Social reality is literally reconstructed. However, there are two problems here. It is difficult to know how intentionally to cultivate more harmonious, nonjudgmental interactions. The difficulty is in thinking and relating to others in unfamiliar ways. Also, it is difficult to recognize what "critical mass" is needed for social transformation. A certain amount of faith is required. Numinar worldviews. In this paradigm, peace concepts seem to come out of worldviews that are based relatively more on faith than on fear.[21] The goal of peace as some sort of ultimate existential end is assumed. Faith, which is sometimes based on transcendental experience, not only underlies the grass-roots approach to social transformation but also plays a role in the resilience of Numinar views of human nature and of how the world works against the compelling, ubiquitous onslaught of pessimistic pragmatism. As Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann point out, "The reality of everyday life [which includes dominant worldviews] is taken for granted as reality. . . . Other realities [i.e., nondominant worldviews] appear as finite provinces of meaning, enclaves within the paramount reality marked by circumscribed meanings and modes of experience."[22] To say that such worldviews are faith-based is also to say that someone who holds them believes in something other than the taken-for-granted, dominant reality that appears as fact. Elements of fear may still be present in the Numinar paradigm, but fear is not the basic orientation. Consequently, human nature is not seen as fundamentally aggressive and conflictual, and the world need not necessarily be a threatening, competitive, and hostile environment. The world is seen more as a place of opportunity for growth, and human nature is seen as more cooperative than aggressive and competitive. David Ray Griffin presents an essentially Numinar view of peace when he states that "the fundamental relationships of life [are] noncoercive, and . . . that cooperation is more basic in the nature of things than competition. Coercive relations and competition do exist, but they are derivative, secondary."[23] Numinar wordviews can be characterized as "optimistic humanism." There is a fundamental good in humanity that we are constrained from expressing. Yet, optimistically, we will overcome those constraints. Other considerations. There is a gray area between these paradigms. As perhaps with any ideal types, there are some common concepts of peace that do not fit well into either paradigm. Peace as "conflict resolution" is the best example. It is both interpersonal (alternative dispute resolution) and international (Middle East peace talks).[24] This kind of peace implies resolving conflict for mutual gain and therefore appears materialistic. Conflict resolution does not usually involve any internal (to the individual) focus, but there is a sense of transforming social systems. Because peace as conflict resolution is fairly common, the assumptions supporting it can be expected to be fairly compatible with the dominant worldviews. Indeed, conflict resolution theory holds that conflict is a necessary and ubiquitous part of social life.[25] Michael Banks expresses the pessimistic pragmatism of the Popular worldview that underlies conflict resolution: "Why is there a felt need for programs in international conflict resolution? The reason, I suggest, is that it is a very nasty world out there. It contains murderous terrorists, brutally invading armies and gigantic famines which are largely man made. It contains great numbers of dreadful things called, variously, SS and MX missile systems. It contains rioting mobs, kidnapped businessmen and diplomats and political prisoners."[26] Although I have shown two paradigms that fairly well categorize most of our concepts of peace, it is helpful to see these as more of a continuum that can be divided into the paradigms for analytic purposes. For example, Galtung and Gandhi represent the fuzzy area in between the peace paradigms. Galtung's social justice concept suggests the creation of intra- and interpersonal peace by changing the social structures that prohibit the possibility of such peace. Here the ends appear Numinar, but the means are clearly Popular. Further, I have argued in this article that the worldview hidden beneath this concept remains fear based while containing some degree of faith in human potential. The Gandhian approach to peace is a more Numinar one with its emphasis on the high moral development of the individual that is required by satyagraha, which would be the basis for a new, just world order. Gandhi wrote, "War will never be terminated by any agency until men and nations become more spiritual and adopt the principle of brotherhood and concord rather than antagonism, competition and brute force."[27] I see Gandhi's thoughts as consistent with the grass-roots approach of the Numinar paradigm. Gandhi called first for personal transformation, yet his approach seems based on the pragmatic need to change society now (as opposed to waiting for the evolution of human nature) and the need to address macro-social systems such as British colonialism. Still, Gandhi's view seems grounded in a vision of what humanity can become. I see this as suggestive of the optimistic humanism of the Numinar worldview, yet retaining a strong element of the Popular pessimistic pragmatism. In a more general sense, the peace-concept continuum is one of impulses to remove successively deeper layers of barriers to peace. The "not war" notion focuses on the removal of a potentially cataclysmic social system that prohibits material well-being. It looks for an international peace. The "social justice" approach focuses on removing structures that constrain "somatic and mental realizations." It perhaps looks for a more intranational peace. Gandhi focused on the removal of the moral barriers to peace. His approach looks for a more interpersonal peace. The "harmony-oneness" drive (of the spiritual variety rather than the social variety) focuses on the removal of spiritual barriers that perpetuate the alienated self and search for an intrapersonal peace. In short, all our peace concepts are approaching merely different aspects of the same ideal (i.e., peace as some sort of ultimate existential end to suffering). This is an important element common to our various ideas and approaches to peace. I will return to this point below. Even though I have used some opposing terms to contrast the Popular and the Numinar paradigms, they do not appear to be dialectically related as polar opposites. Rather, the Numinar appears to integrate yet go beyond the Popular in some key ways. First, although the emphasis on peacemaking in the Numinar view is on the intra- and interpersonal level, the need for structural change is accepted. Peace is found through the integration of both internal and external processes. Second, the idealistic peace of the Numinar is not the antithesis of the materialistic peace of the Popular. Rather, it subsumes the material aspects of social reality in the larger process of the reconstruction of that reality. I think it is important for peace research to consider the Numinar paradigm more thoroughly. As William Foote Whyte has noted, "Social research is not simply a matter of applying a good orienting theory, using good research methods, and then analyzing our data. Pursuing well-accepted methods and theories, we may be imprisoned unwittingly within a currently popular view of the world. As long as we remain within that world view, refinements in methods and theory will leave us in the same old rut. To get out of that rut, we need from time to time to look beyond particular elements of method and theory in order to reexamine the fundamental bases of our thinking."[28] IMPLICATIONS FOR PEACE AND SOCIAL CONFLICT RESEARCH I think that the Numinar is the alternative paradigm called for by Betty Reardon.[29] First, I think researchers need to recognize the limitations of the Popular approaches to peace. Such limitations include (1) ambiguous and limited definitions of peace that lead to obvious difficulties in making peace, such as the difficulty in determining what kind of peace (e.g., a cease-fire, return of occupied lands) and for whom (e.g., Bosnian Serbs or Muslims, Palestinians or Israelis), and (2) an overemphasis on macro systems. Strategies to create a more peaceful society need to be implemented at all levels of social aggregation to be successful. The second implication for peace and conflict research is that better peacemaking may be possible from a fuller understanding of what "peace" can be. The two paradigms represent a wide range of approaches that must be better understood and articulated. I believe that this process will enrich our scholarship and our activism. The third implication is that researchers should make greater efforts to state clearly what they mean by "peace" and not acquiesce to the difficulties of defining it. Also, researchers should explicitly state the underlying assumptions behind their studies. The paradigms as I see them are ideal types that embody a wide range of peace concepts and worldviews. These may be used as reference points. Improved clarity can only improve our peace theory and education. Fourth, the two paradigms suggest a basis for communication and cooperation among all peace theorists and workers. All approaches to peace can be seen as focused, useful, and complementary efforts to remove progressively deeper and more subtle barriers. All are working at different points along the peace continuum toward the same goal, even though we poorly understand (at this time) what that goal is or can be. On the basis of this common ground, peace researchers, thinkers, activists, and professionals can build a constructive and sustained interaction that respects differences yet is effective in human betterment. IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING After my initial encounter with the two peace paradigms in the classroom, I developed a more conceptual approach for the Sociology of Peacemaking course. I begin, as I have in this article, with the Popular paradigm ("peace is not war," "peace is social justice") and move through conflict resolution and nonviolence to the Numinar paradigm. For those interested in adopting this approach, here are a few suggestions. The Popular paradigm, especially the "not war" approach, is fairly easy to teach with a number of scholarly and popular materials from which to draw. I start by having students read John Hershey's little book Hiroshima, and I show an episode from Gwynne Dyer's "War" video series entitled "Road to Total War." These materials illustrate the reasons for the concern with war among peace scholars and activists. I also review the intellectual history of the "not war" approach to peace that begins with the ancient Greeks and ends with Quincy Wright, although other modem thinkers could also be included. I ask students to decide if we are more peaceful now, at the level of international relations, than we were 100 years ago, or 50, or 10, and to give their evidence. In teaching the social justice approach to peace, I focus on Galtung's (1969) article, "Violence, Peace and Peace Research." I ask the students to prepare a critique of both the strengths and the weaknesses of his argument. In teaching the conflict resolution approach, I use Roger Fisher and William Ury's Getting to Yes, and I present the external peacemaking skills of negotiation and communication. Through role-playing, the students practice the communication skills of active listening and acknowledgment. Although nonviolence is more of a technique for peacemaking than a concept of peace, I invite local nonviolence scholars and activists to present their ideas. Then I move into the Numinar paradigm using Cox's The Ways of Peace and Peck's The Different Drum. I focus on Cox's distinction between eristic and maieutic reasoning, his emphasis on the need for critical participatory research, and his view of peace as a process of cultivating understanding between people. Peck's work offers a technique of peacemaking through community-building that allows people to be more fully human. Because these approaches to peace are more personal, I have students keep journals of their efforts to apply what they are studying. I finish the course with a presentation of the internal peacemaking skills of trust, honesty, tolerance, gentleness, defenselessness, humility, and open-mindedness from the "Text" of The Course in Miracles. Students also practice these skills via role plays, and I invite speakers from local Buddhist or Krishna temples into the classroom. CONCLUSION The paradigms presented in this article organize the various concepts of peace that inform peacemaking and show differences and similarities among them. This effort attempts to further the development of peace theory by adding some conceptual clarity and by examining the beliefs or worldviews that underlie our concepts. As a result, those engaged in the effort to make this a more peaceful world can find some basis for better understanding each other and for more effectively working together. In addition, peace educators can present the range of peace efforts to their students in a conceptual way. NOTES 1. See, for example, Johan Galtung, "Social Cosmology and the Concept of Peace," Journal of Peace Research 18, No. 2 (1981): 183-99; Gunnar L. Johnson, Conflicting Concepts of Peace in Contemporary Peace Studies (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1976); Gray Cox, The Ways of Peace: A Philosophy of Peace as Action (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1986); John Macquarrie, The Concept of Peace (London: SCM Press, 1973); Takeshi Ishida, "Beyond the Traditional Concepts of Peace in Different Cultures," Journal of Peace Research 2, No. 2 (1969): 133-45. 2. The word peace is used to represent different types of things. We often refer to peace as if it were a tangible, concrete goal, an end state. For example, peace is achieved when (1) we eliminate nuclear weapons, (2) end all wars, or (3) realize our oneness with God. Peace is also referred to as a process, "a dynamic state of affairs in which the essential properties arise from how we do things, not what we do"; Michael Banks, "Four Conceptions of Peace," in Conflict Management and Problem Solving: Interpersonal to International Applications, ed. Dennis J. D. Sandole and Ingrid Sandole-Staroste (New York: New York University Press, 1987), 259-74. In The Ways of Peace, Cox defines peace as the process of reaching and maintaining agreement over time as the circumstances affecting that agreement change. In this process view, peace is found (and perhaps lost and rediscovered) in the effort toward some goal, not necessarily in the final achievement of the goal (the goal may or may not be viewed as unachievable). Also, the notion of big "P" peace as some sort of ultimate, existential end to suffering seems to be the orienting notion behind both end state and process views of peace. It is this Peace that is ultimately aspired to in end state concepts and this Peace that is the direction toward which process definitions are aimed (see Kenneth Boulding, Stable Peace [Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978], 3-6). 3. Cox, The Ways of Peace, 16. 4. Other terms for worldview are (1) Weltanschauung, meaning systems (Robert Wuthnow, The Consciousness Reformation [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976], 3-5); (2) frames (Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974]; David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, "Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization," in International Social Movement Research, ed. Bert Klandermans, Hanspeter Kriegi, and Sidney Tarrow [Greenwich, CT: JAI, 1988], vol. 1); (3) explanatory modes (Richard A. Apostle et al., The Anatomy of Racial Attitudes [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983], 23-32); (4) reality structures (Charles Y. Glock and Thomas Piazza, "Explaining Reality Structures," in In Gods We Trust: New Patterns of Religious Pluralism in America, ed. Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony [New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1983]); and (5) assumptions about the way the world works (Charles Y. Glock, "The Way the World Works," Sociological Analysis 49 [Summer 1988]: 93-103). 5. Several readers have commented that they dislike the neologism numinar that I have used for the paradigm that stands in contrast to the popular. Although this unusual name may distract the reader at first, it is appropriate, and the neologism is necessary. It reflects the differing social origins of the two paradigms. The Popular paradigm has its social origins in the common everyday life usages and experiences of the masses. The Numinar paradigm also has social origins but of a very different type. It originates in the unusual experiences of people described as spiritual, luminous, transcendent, mystic, divine, epiphanic, even supernatural. The word numinar refers to the aspect of existence that is numinous, that surpasses ordinary comprehension or understanding, just as the word popular refers to the aspect of existence that is common or ordinary among a large group. Existence entails both. Yet they are experienced as vastly different. The key difference between these paradigms lies in the difference between ordinary and extraordinary experience that the terms popular and numinar capture well. 6. My method consisted of computerized and manual database searches for books and articles on peace concepts and conceptual schemes. This approach uses search terms such as peace and concepts. Items are retrieved when both terms are found in the title or the abstract. However, a portion of those retrieved are not relevant (e.g., they deal with both peace and concepts but not with concepts of peace). In addition, I scanned the bibliographies of relevant items (i.e., "snowballing") for other possible works on conceptualizations of peace. All the relevant items that I found by this method or by serendipity were included in my study. This included leading thinkers such as Galtung and Rapoport who have grappled with conceptualizing peace. However, this method has a limitation. Of the body of peace, war, and conflict literature, some may deal in passing or implicitly with conceptualizing peace, but few items do so expressly. Therefore, some relevant literature would not he retrieved by my method. Conceptual schemes of related terms such as conflict and security were not included in my research. 7. This literature was used as reference to help me develop my understanding of the paradigms. For historical works, see K. Satchidananda Murty and A. C. Bouquet, Studies in the Problems of Peace (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1960); Gerardo Zampaglione, The Idea of Peace in Antiquity, trans. Richard Dunn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973); Istvan Kende, "The History of Peace: Concept and Organizations from the Late Middle Ages to the 1870's," Journal of Peace Research 26 (August 1989): 233-47; F. S. Northedge, "Peace, War, and Philosophy," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan & Free Press, 1967), vol. 6; F. S. Marvin, The Evolution of World Peace (London'. Oxford University Press, 1921); Quincy Wright, A Study of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942); Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought: An Interpretation of American Literature from the Beginnings to 1920 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1930); Robert F. Randle, The Origins of Peace: A Study of Peacemaking and the Structure of Peace Settlements (New York: Free Press, 1973); John Ferguson, War and Peace in the World's Religions (London: Oxford University Press, 1978); Mohandas K. Gandhi, Gandhi's Autobiography (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1960); Louis Fisher, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (New York: Harper & Row, 1950); Rashmi-Sudha Puri, Gandhi on War and Peace (New York: Praeger, 1987). For philosophical works, see Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace, trans. Benjamine F. Trueblood (Boston: American Peace Society, 1897); W. B. Gallic, Philosophies of Peace and War: Kant, Clausewitz, Marx, Engels and Tolstoy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Frederich W. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Common (New York: Bonnie and Liveright, 1917); Saint Augustine, The City of God, ed. Vernon J. Bourke (Garden City, NJ: Image, 1958); Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, trans. A. C. Campbell (New York: M. W. Dunne, 1901); Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945); Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (New York: Harper, 1945); Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience, ed. Owen Thomes (New York: Norton, 1966). 8. Betty Reardon, "Toward a Paradigm of Peace," in Peace: Meanings, Politics, Strategies, ed. Linda Rennie Forcey (New York: Praeger, 1989), 15. 9. Margaret Masterman, "The Nature of a Paradigm," in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Irma Lakatos and Alan Musgrove (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 65. 10. The following authors provide Popular paradigm typologies of peace: Anatol Rapoport, "Traditional Goals of International Cooperation," in The Peace Keeping Role of International Cooperation and Its Limitations (Unpublished, 1988); Rudolph J. Rummel, Understanding Conflict and War, vol. 5, The Just Peace (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1981); Johnson, Conflicting Concepts of Peace in Contemporary Peace Studies; Boulding, Stable Peace; Galtung, "Violence, Peace and Peace Research," Journal of Peace Research 18, No. 3 (1969): 167-191; Geoffrey Darnton, "The Concept of Peace," (in Proceedings of the International Peace Research Association Fourth General Conference, IPRA Secretariat, Oslo, 1973), 167-191; Alfred Bonisch, "Elements of the Modem Concept of Peace" Journal of Peace Research 18, No. 2 (1981): 165-73; Yuri Bagsegov and Rustem Khairov, "A Study of the Problems of Peace," Co-existence 10 (March 1973): 12-11. 11. Banks, "Four Conceptions of Peace"; David Ray Griffith, "Peace and the Postmodern Paradigm," in Spirituality and Society: Postmodern Visions, ed. David Ray Griffith (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988); Cox, The Ways of Peace; and Macquarrie, The Concept of Peace. Ishida, "Beyond Traditional Concepts of Peace in Different Cultures"; Galtung, "Social Cosmology and the Concept of Peace"; and Rummel, Just Peace, provide examples of an etymological approach to analyzing concepts of peace where the root meaning of the word for peace in different cultures is examined. Such approaches do not examine the range of meanings of peace in a culture but rather reduce peace to one meaning. I am interested in the range of meanings in a search for common elements among them. 12. Boulding, Stable Peace, and Rapoport, "Traditional Goals of International Cooperation," are examples of the "negative" camp, whereas Galtung, "Violence, Peace, and Peace Research," is the clear leader of the "positive" camp. There are other divisions within this paradigm as well, but the negative/positive distinction seems to he the most widely used. Johnson, Conflicting Concepts of Peace in Contemporary Peace Studies, creates a theoretical way to categorize peace concepts along two dimensions, either (1) according to "form" or "content," or (2) the social-scientific, ethical, or political elements. 13. Johnson, Conflicting Concepts of Peace in Contemporary Peace Studies, 5. 14. Galtung, "Violence, Peace and Peace Research," 168. 15. Ibid., 169. 16. Rapoport, "Traditional Goals of International Cooperation," sees fear as an emotional response to some objective property of the external environment. Drawing on developmental structuralism, I adopt the view that worldviews precede and shape our perceptions of the world; see Ken Wilber, Up from Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution (Boston: New Science Library, 1981); idem, A Sociable God: Toward a New Understanding of Religion (Boulder, CO: New Science Library, 1983); idem, The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development (Wheaton, IL: Quest, 1980); idem, "The Spectrum of Development" in Transformations of Consciousness, ed. Ken Wilber, Jack Engler, Daniel Brown (Boston: Shambala, 1986); and idem, Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm expanded ed. (Boston: Shambala, 1990). Rapoport's emotional response of fear is a response to the perception of threat. In my view, the perception of threat is largely predetermined by a deeper series of assumptions and beliefs called worldviews that in this case are oriented in a fearful way (e.g., the Hobbesian image of war of all against all) that interpret "some objective properties of the external environment" as threat. 17. Galtung, "Violence, Peace and Peace Research," 179. 18. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. M. Oakeshatt (New York: Dutton, 1950). 19. Cox, The Ways of Peace, 94. 20. See Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980's (Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1980), for a sociological elaboration of these transformation processes; see also Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982). Ken Keyes, The Hundredth Monkey (Coos Bay, OR: Vision Books, 1981), provides "the hundredth monkey" metaphor of critical social mass resulting in social transformation. While Keyes's story was discredited when monkeys were observed swimming between islands, thus providing a physical means of communicating the food-washing behavior, the metaphor of a gestalt or critical mass of social transformation still persists. However, not all Numinar paradigm thinkers accept this metaphor. Some believe we cannot walt for a critical mass to form but must compel social transformation now. The important point is that peace thinkers who can otherwise be classified in the Numinar paradigm also seem to subscribe to soma notion of social transformation. 21. Popular worldviews can be seen as also involving faith but in a more negative and conflictful human nature than Numinar worldviews. Both involve faith, as one reviewer correctly pointed out. However, Popular worldviews involve relatively more fear than faith, just as Numinar worldviews involve relatively more faith than fear. It is a difference of degree. Further, worldviews are complex and hidden and are not well understood. Faith is not the only basis for accepting Numinar peace concepts or embracing Numinar worldviews. Other elements of worldview may also be involved, but faith is one important aspect to Numinar worldviews that I have emphasized. 22. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 23-25. 23. Griffin, "Peace and the Post-Modem Paradigm," 146. 24. See Roger Fisher and William Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), and C. E. Osgood, An Alternative to War or Surrender (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962), and C. E. Osgood, "The GRIT Strategy," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 36 (May 1980): 58-60. 25. A number of authors have expressed this view. Some of the better known are Georg Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations, trans. Kurt H. Wolf and Reinhard Bendix (New York: Free Press, 1955); Lewis A. Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1956); and Louis Kriesberg, Sociology of Social Conflicts (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973). 26. Banks, "Four Conceptions of Peace," 259. 27. As quoted in Puri, Gandhi on War and Peace, 173. Puff describes Gandhi's approach to peace through satyagraha and nonviolence as more of a technique for peace rather than a concept of peace. The concept beneath it seems to be "peace is freedom," with freedom ideally linked to enlightenment. As Gandhi said (as quoted in Puff, Gandhi on War and Peace, 220), "Perfect peace comes when mind and heart are pure." 28. William Foote Whyte, Learning from the Field (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1984), 261. 29. Reardon, "Toward a Paradigm of Peace." ~~~~~~~~ By Milton Rinehart Copyright of Peace & Change is the property of SAGE Publications, Inc. and text may not be copied without their express written permission except for the print or download capabilities of the retrieval software used for access. This text is intended solely for the use of the individual user. Source: Peace & Change, Jul95, Vol. 20 Issue 3, p379, 18p. Item Number: 9507106005