Whither Peace Studies? Fragmentation to a New Integration?
In spite of the surface appearance of flourishing, peace studies now faces a crisis of dilution and fragmentation though concerned voices have long warned against it. The root of the crisis is traced back to the years around 1970, when Johan Galtung proposed the theory of structural violence. At that time, there were heated debates about whether to broaden the research agenda to include poverty and underdevelopment or not. It is shown that, though it was a great contribution to peace studies, the theory of structural violence also brought about the excessive expansion of the research agenda of the discipline, because, according to the theory, every important social problem could be a legitimate research subject of peace studies. More than two decades after the debates, however, there have appeared several symptoms which show the reorientation of the discipline toward the original narrower focus on war and conflict. Since a simple return to the past is impossible, it is suggested that, by focusing on the issues of war and conflict, peace studies should try to eliminate one of the major obstacles to the final goal of peace in the broadest sense of the word. To complicate the matter, however, there have recently been debates between the narrower and wider agendas in security studies. The wider agenda in security studies tends to broaden peace studies as well because an issue or problem like environmental degradation is claimed to be a peace studies issue on the ground that it is a security issue. Thus, peace studies will have to tackle with the same problem for some time to come.
Wars of Ten Years (1967-1976)
1. Introductory remarks This article is, in a sense, a continuation of the paper entitled 'Twenty-Five Years of Local Wars', published in the No. 1, 1971, issue of the Journal of Peace Research. The aim of the present article is to investigate the durability and correctness of the conclusions drawn in the previous article; whether there have been in the last 10 years any substantial changes compared to the 25 years 19451969; and, finally, to survey the development, trend, and nature of the wars in the 32-year period 1945-1976.
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1