{"id":2421,"date":"2009-06-08T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2009\/06\/what-peace-research-would-be-like-if-founded-today\/"},"modified":"2016-02-24T18:39:37","modified_gmt":"2016-02-24T18:39:37","slug":"what-peace-research-would-be-like-if-founded-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2009\/06\/what-peace-research-would-be-like-if-founded-today\/","title":{"rendered":"What Peace Research Would Be Like If Founded Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the occasion of the Peace Research Institute, Oslo-PRIO 50 Years – Oslo City Hall, 5 June 2009<\/em><\/p>\n

Lord Mayor, friends: Incredible all that happened only 50 years ago!\u00a0 Like PRIO, the institute we are celebrating today, In the English name there are four letters.\u00a0 There was some thinking behind all of them, not only the hint at priority.\u00a0 Let me start there.<\/p>\n

The “O” stands for Oslo<\/em>.\u00a0 There is more than an address in the message.\u00a0 The absence of Norway-Norwegian was intended.\u00a0 It was a no to seeing the system of 200 states and 2,000 nations as the only arena for war and peace. The 2 million or so municipal systems, without armies, looked more promising.\u00a0 But there was also a private reason: my beloved father was deputy mayor of Oslo in the 1920s, for H\u00f6ire with i, at times functioning as mayor.\u00a0 And the seed funds came from private sources, Sigurd Rinde, not from a state government whose Arbeiderparti education official said “peace–what a horrible word”.\u00a0 Thanks, Oslo!<\/p>\n

The “I” stands for Institute<\/em>.\u00a0 Our ambition went beyond a section of the pioneer Institute for Social Research where we were gestating and kindly nurtured by Erik Rinde; the spiritual father figures being Anders Bratholm, Torstein Eckhoff and Arne N\u00e6ss from Norway, and above all Otto Klineberg, from the world.<\/p>\n

The “R” stands for Research<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Basically social science research, but naively unaware of how they were shaped by the Westphalia nation-state system and by a Western history episode known as “Enlightenment”, now fading out with globalization.<\/p>\n

And the “P” stands for Peace<\/em>, with health studies as model. We came up against Western peace, that hobbesian structural violence pyramid with the West on top, and Rule of Law binding on the bottom but not on the top, with military intervention to handle the unruly, with security paranoia, pax romana<\/em> etc. up to pax americana<\/em>.\u00a0 Only that we called it imperialism, not peace.<\/p>\n

Our idea was research with peace policy implications<\/em>, not just fundable research projects, RIO.\u00a0 The idea was empirically and theoretically good peace proposals<\/em>, not just “security”.\u00a0 And cooperation East-West, not just studying East as a problem.\u00a0 The reception in Norwegian media and politics was hostile– except for some very interesting inner circles–and included secret police surveillance.\u00a0 As expected in a US client country.<\/p>\n

So, what would I have done today, 50 years later? <\/em><\/p>\n

Well, I would not have started in Oslo, in Norway, or in any other country that–like Faust–has sold its soul, its worldview, to a superpower bent on running the world as an empire.\u00a0 That empire is now falling, hopefully with Obama whimpers rather than Obama producing more Bush bangs.\u00a0 But it will take time to recover a soul from the ashes of those failed policies.<\/p>\n

So, rather than fighting Norwegian windmills like a Don Quijote de la Noruega, with a wonderful Dulcinea, a handful of fine Sancho Panzas, and a motorbike as Rosinante, should I have worked it out at the center of the US Empire?\u00a0 I got tenure at a leading university in 1960, but said “thank you, but no thank you, my task is peace research, and in my little home country”.<\/p>\n

Or, should I have gone to some neutral-nonaligned country; to India with what was left of Gandhi, to the buddhism of sukha-dukkha<\/em>, or to the China of daoism, Mo Tzu, the books 1421, 1434<\/em>?<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0No<\/em>.\u00a0 The alternative to one country is not some other country but all of the above,<\/em> by going transnational.\u00a0 The alternative to an institute is a network.\u00a0 The alternative to governmental and private funding with strings attached, is to earn one’s way, not by selling mediation-conciliation that should be free for those seeing no in or out, but funding the network through training, education, information, books.
\n
\nAs to research<\/em>: to search, again and again, re-re, adding to Western empiricist research critical and constructive peace insights from all corners of the world.\u00a0 And letting theory and practice grow hand in hand, not stopping at diagnosis-prognosis in the name of Weberian value neutrality, leaving practice to foreign office amateurs who jump from one disastrous failure to the next, like from Middle East to Sri Lanka to whatever. Peace faculties, like for health, and six years training, might help.<\/p>\n

As to peace: an admirable peace created inside EU does not imply that the world is theirs.\u00a0 But panch shila<\/em> economics for mutual and equal benefit; creative conflict transformation, not aggression; negotiation-dialogue, not dictation; civilization dialogue for equity-diversity-symbiosis help. Peace is possible<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I have just described TRANSCEND: A Peace, Development and Environment Network; also to be judged on merits and demerits.\u00a0 The program includes positive peace, how come that humanity by and large hangs together.\u00a0 And SABONA, from Zulu I see you<\/em>, peace in family, school and at work and how it can be taught at school, with major experiences from two Norwegian schools.\u00a0 And Generals for Peace.\u00a0 And conflict sensitive development, running the Millennium Development Goals so that not all is lost in violent conflict.\u00a0 And Weltinnenpolitik<\/em>, from national interest foreign policy to world interest domestic policy.\u00a0 And economic alternatives to the hypercapitalism that failed, &c.\u00a0 Hard work<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For me it started in 1951 as a calling to do fredsforskning p\u00e5 norsk, i Norge<\/em>.\u00a0 I am most grateful for the PRIO phase from January 1959 when we got the first grant, and for the world’s first Chair at the University of Oslo till I left in 1977, tired of police surveillance. 18 years. 16 years around the world, and from 1993, 16 TRANSCEND years.\u00a0 A wonderful life<\/em>, in gratitude.<\/p>\n

PRIO was a fine start.\u00a0 Since then PRIO and I have traveled different roads, also diverging, as it should be.\u00a0 No founding father or family has a right to tie children and grand-children.\u00a0 Smart people those who invested some money 50 years ago: they got two, PRIO and TRANSCEND, for the price of one!<\/p>\n

I wish PRIO a future with more P for Peace, looking forward to the 60th anniversary.\u00a0 And bid farewell, not in the language of the Empire:<\/p>\n

Danke und Auf wiedersehen, liebe Freund-Innen;
\nau revoir et mille mercis, amies et amis;
\narrivivederci e tante buone cose, amiche ed amici;
\nhasta pronto, amigas y amigos;
\nbolshoi spasiba, druzhba, dazvidanje;
\nobrigado e at\u00e9 logo, amigas e amigos;
\ndomo arigato, sayonara;
\nxie xie, zaijian;
\ntusen takk alle sammen, og p\u00e5 snarlig gjensyn!<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the occasion of the Peace Research Institute, Oslo-PRIO 50 Years – Oslo City Hall, 5 June 2009 Lord Mayor, friends: Incredible all that happened only 50 years ago!\u00a0 Like PRIO, the institute we are celebrating today, In the English name there are four letters.\u00a0 There was some thinking behind all of them, not only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}