Product Description

This updated edition of "Searching For Peace" analyses the reasons for conflict prevention and peacekeeping failures, and presents the lessons that can be learned from the TRANSCEND approach, now adopted as a UN training guide. Analyses of recent conflicts are followed by studies of contemporary conflict dynamics that, if not resolved, threaten even more catastrophic violence. This text maps the conditions and path to sustainable peace.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #631445 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 344 pages

Review
'Impressive and moving, and very saddening as well ... A particular pleasure to read something not only sensible but even hopeful on methods of moving towards some decent outcome under what appears to be almost hopeless situations.' --Noam Chomsky 'Fascinating! This highly condensed and powerful overview opens up major new ways to think about the seemingly intractable problems of state nation interface ... this book is a must for scholars, practitioners and policy makers and peace activists.' --Elise Boulding, Professor Emeritus, Dartmouth College 'Galtung's writing always provides succinct and important insights ... The book has appropriate and important targets: it seeks to uncover the general truth among the particular complications; it does not draw back from proposing courses of action; it confronts serious tasks.' --EthnicConflict Research Digest

Elise Boulding Professor Emeritus, Dartmouth College
'Fascinating! ... This book is a must for scholars, practitioners and policy makers and peace activists.'

Ethnic Conflict Research Digest
'Galtung's writing always provides succinct and important insights ... [The book] does not draw back from proposing courses of action.'

Customer Reviews

an indispensable guide for "peace workers"
"Searching for Peace: the Road to TRANSCEND" is an indispensable guide for peace workers. It combines theory (e.g. "On the Psychology of the TRANSCEND Approach") with concrete examples of 40 conflicts from around the world, based on 40 years of practical experience in helping conflict parties find nonviolent solutions. Instead of seeking to bring the conflict parties to the negotiating table from the beginning, which can often result in a stream of mutual accusations that exacerbates the conflict, this approach first holds extensive dialogues separately with each conflict party, to gain their trust and to better understand their grievances and fears, needs and hopes. By presenting to the parties a richer repertoire of possible approaches, and by showing them how similar conflicts have been solved successfully elsewhere, this often helps them see a way out of a seemingly intractable situation in which they feel trapped. Johan Galtung, who founded the academic discipline of peace research, and has always applied his insights to help people suffering from conflict, like a good doctor, has joined forces with Carl Jacobsen, Finn Tschudi and Kai Frithjof Brand-Jacobsen to share with us his rich experience. This book ought to be required reading for all international relations scholars, practitioners, policy makers and peace activists.

I wish to mention only one example of Galtung's approach: In 1995, he had an opportunity to meet with the newly elected President of Ecuador before he took office, and in a long dialogue suggested to make the contested territory, over which Peru and Ecuador had fought four wars since 1941, into a jointly administered "bi-national zone with a natural park." The president was at first skeptical, but did propose it to Peru, which accepted it with minor modifications. This led to the peace treaty of 1998. The costs of such a peace initiative are negligible compared to a military intervention. Most of all, it can save many lives. This book is full of ideas on how to transcend conflicts nonviolently by taking such original approaches.