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In this book Ben Lowe examines the developing language of peace in late medieval and Renaissance England. He challenges the popular assumption that this was simply an age of war during which ideas of peace exercised very little impact on society and government. He offers a close reading of English writers on peace, integrating this analysis with careful attention to the political context, particularly during times of war, when calls for peace were more vocal. Lowe traces the concept of peace from its early Christian usage up to the sixteenth century. He focuses on the long period of foreign wars (1349&–1560), often punctuated by domestic unrest, when theories of peace were increasingly discussed within the larger context of war and policymaking. Such practical concerns invariably led to a richer and more varied peace discourse. For instance, Lowe is able to show a shift in discussion away from platitudes&—such as the restoration of goodwill among Christians&—toward a more hard-headed set of foreign-policy problems, such as famine, inflation, disruption of trade, and the maintenance of the king's honor. He draws on an extraordinarily wide variety of sources, including theological and philosophical works, sermons, official prayers, moral treatises, commentaries, military handbooks, legal texts, state papers, chronicles, fiction, popular ballads, diaries, and personal letters. Imagining Peace will appeal to others beyond historians of late medieval and early modern England. Lowe applies methods from other disciplines, especially literary and cultural studies and political theory. His analysis takes into account the problems and limitations of reconstructing past thought and determining authorial intent. Nonetheless, the text remains surprisingly free of technical jargon, making this a timely book for anyone interested in the origins of pacifism.
When battlefield prowess and political manipulation are not enough to achieve peace through victory, we summon our best and brightest to negotiate an end; we celebrate peace settlements; and we give prizes, if not to victors, then to visionaries. We exalt peace as a human achievement, and justly so. But the reality of peace is flawed. The rewards of peace are elusive for the men and women who live in the post-conflict societies of our time. Why is it so difficult to make a good peace when it is so easy to imagine? That is the question behind Imagine: Reflections on Peace. In this stunning collection, photographic essays make grippingly palpable the stakes during war and peace. Samantha Power, former US Ambassador to the United Nations, Justice Richard Goldstone, and Jonathan Powell, chief negotiator for the Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement, are joined by world-renown writers in revealing the complexities of redemption and rebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Colombia, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and Rwanda. We hear first person accounts of survival and the search for inner peace, bringing the big picture to a personal level. With added insights from scholars and practitioners, the book offers a rare and fascinating glimpse into the unvarnished story of peace and a window into what it takes for societies and individuals to move forward after unspeakable brutality.
Sometimes playful but always passionate,Imagining Peace offers a glimpse into the private world of a quirky systems reformer.  The great-granddaughter of a social activist, Dawn Joyce invites us along as she challenges peace and justice issues at the personal, community and global level. We are introduced to a network of reformers who offer creative alternatives to a world in crisis.
"John Paul Lederach's work in the field of conciliation and mediation is internationally recognized. He has provided consultation, training and direct mediation in a range of situations from the Miskito/Sandinista conflict in Nicaragua to Somalia, Northern Ireland, Tajikistan, and the Philippines. His influential 1997 book Building Peace has become a classic in the discipline. In this book, Lederach poses the question, "How do we transcend the cycles of violence that bewitch our human community while still living in them?" Peacebuilding, in his view, is both a learned skill and an art. Finding this art, he says, requires a worldview shift. Conflict professionals must envision their work as a creative act-an exercise of what Lederach terms the "moral imagination." This imagination must, however, emerge from and speak to the hard realities of human affairs. The peacebuilder must have one foot in what is and one foot beyond what exists. The book is organized around four guiding stories that point to the moral imagination but are incomplete. Lederach seeks to understand what happened in these individual cases and how they are relevant to large-scale change. His purpose is not to propose a grand new theory. Instead he wishes to stay close to the "messiness" of real processes and change, and to recognize the serendipitous nature of the discoveries and insights that emerge along the way. overwhelmed the equally important creative process. Like most professional peacemakers, Lederach sees his work as a religious vocation. Lederach meditates on his own calling and on the spirituality that moves ordinary people to reject violence and seek reconciliation. Drawing on his twenty-five years of experience in the field he explores the evolution of his understanding of peacebuilding and points the way toward the future of the art." http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0616/2004011794-d.html.
Is war the opposite of peace, or its necessary accomplice? Exploring this question in relation to eighteenth-century Britain, Andrew Lincoln opens up complex, paradoxical and enduring issues and shows how ideas and methods were developed to provide the British public with moral insulation from violence both overseas and at home.
Following the Brexit vote, this book offers a timely historical assessment of the different ways that Britain’s economic future has been imagined and how British ideas have influenced global debates about market relationships over the past two centuries. The 2016 EU referendum hinged to a substantial degree on how competing visions of the UK should engage with foreign markets, which in turn were shaped by competing understandings of Britain’s economic past. The book considers the following inter-related questions: - What roles does economic imagination play in shaping people’s behaviour and how far can insights from behavioural economics be applied to historical issues of market selection? - How useful is the concept of the ‘official mind’ for explaining the development of market relationships? - What has been the relationship between expanding communications and the development of markets? - How and why have certain regions or groupings (e.g. the Commonwealth) been ‘unimagined’- losing their status as promising markets for the future?
European unity is a dream that has appealed to the imagination since the Middle Ages. Its motives have varied from a longing for peace to a deep-rooted abhorrence of diversity, as well as a yearning to maintain Europe's colonial dominance. This book offers a multifaceted history that takes in account the European imagination in a global context.
Imagining Resistance: Visual Culture and Activism in Canada offers two separate but interconnected strategies for reading alternative culture in Canada from the 1940s through to the present: first, a history of radical artistic practice in Canada and, second, a collection of eleven essays that focus on a range of institutions, artists, events, and actions. The history of radical practice is spread through the book in a series of short interventions, ranging from the Refus global to anarchist-inspired art, and from Aboriginal curatorial interventions to culture jamming. In each, the historical record is mined to rewrite and reverse Canadian art history—reworked here to illuminate the series of oppositional artistic endeavours that are often mentioned in discussions of Canadian art but rarely acknowledged as having an alternative history of their own. ?p Alongside, authors consider case studies as diverse as the anti-war work done by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in Montreal and Toronto, recent exhibitions of activist art in Canadian institutions, radical films, performance art, protests against the Olympics, interventions into anti-immigrant sentiment in Montreal, and work by Iroquois photographer Jeff Thomas. Taken together, the writings in Imagining Resistance touch on the local, the global, the national, and post-national to imagine a very different landscape of cultural practice in Canada.
A story of peace in a land of unending war. This is a story of hope and resilience in Afghanistan, a country constantly under siege from within and without. Refugee advocate, activist and acclaimed author Mark Isaacs takes us inside a remarkable and unlikely peace project established in one of the most war-torn, violent countries in the world, Afghanistan. After decades of war, few Afghans remember what it is like to live in peace, and many have never known a time without war. Yet, a group of Afghan youth, male and female, have come together – led by the charismatic and idealistic Insaan – to form a model community, a microcosm of how a new Afghanistan could be: a place of peaceful coexistence, a nation without violence and war that embraces the values of peace and humanity. Mark takes us on a journey to the streets of Kabul, where day-to-day life involves terror and extreme danger, and lives alongside these inspirational and courageous young people in 'The Community’. Mark reveals their personal stories of trauma and loss that ultimately lead them to defy the risks and stand up to demand peace, a seemingly impossible dream. He witnesses their acts of non-violent protest, their small steps in making life better, their setbacks and struggles, but mostly their bravery and hope for a future that shines with peace.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-SA 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. This book examines the role of imagination in initiating, contesting, and changing the pathways of global cooperation. Building on carefully contextualized empirical cases from diverse policy fields, regions, and historical periods, it highlights the agency of a wide range of actors in reflecting on past and present experiences and imagining future ways of collective problem solving.