New Book: Building Peace: Practical Reflections from the Field

Posted by on April 20, 2009

NEW BOOK BUILDING PEACE PRACTICAL REFLECTIONS FROM THE FIELD
http://www.styluspub.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=208798

Edited by Craig Zelizer , Robert A. Rubinstein

“This volume provides an enlightening, encouraging, and fascinating set of reports about effective peacebuilding endeavors. These accounts and assessments were written by persons directly engaged in each undertaking and yield valuable lessons. Certainly, these highly diverse actions deserve widespread attention and frequent emulation.”
— Louis Kriesberg, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Maxwell Professor Emeritus of Social Conflict Studies, Syracuse University

“Building Peace presents a rich set of case studies of courage in peacebuilding that should inspire another generation of peacemakers. The authors provide a great variety of blueprints for communities, nations and multi-cultural groups dealing with the aftermath or reduction of ongoing and often violent conflicts. That the case studies come from such diverse areas demonstrates that having multiple approaches and processes in our peacemaking toolkit makes peacebuilding possible in widely divergent cultural and geopolitical settings. There is much to be learned here for practitioners, students and teachers of peace. It will make a great contribution to courses on conflict resolution, prevention and handling and on post-conflict peacebuilding analysis and practice.”
— Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Professor of Law, Dispute Resolution and Civil Procedure, Georgetown University Law Center and author of Dispute Resolution: Beyond the Adversarial Model

“This book neatly brings together various methodologies, an impressive range of local and international settings and a number of time frames to give a powerful response to a real “demand” on peacebuilding today: How do we assess the successes (and failures) of what we do? Bravo to Drs. Craig Zelizer, Robert Rubinstein, their colleagues — and to the Alliance for Peacebuilding in supporting this initiative.”
— William R. Headley, Dean, Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, University of San Diego

Even though international peacebuilding has rapidly expanded in the last two decades to respond to more multi-faceted and complex conflicts, the field has lagged behind in documenting the impact and success of projects. To help address this gap, the Alliance for Peacebuilding, one of the leading networks in the field, has brought together 13 stories of innovative peacebuilding practices from around the world in Building Peace.

While the projects covered are diverse in nature, together they demonstrate the significant impact of peacebuilding work. Contributors created new institutions to prevent and manage conflicts at the local or national levels, helped restore relationships in conflict-affected communities, and empowered citizens to work for positive change in their societies across ethnic, religious, and political divides.

It’s clear that there is no quick fix for violence but this volume will go a long way in providing inspiration and practical tools for policymakers, academics and practitioners who seek to make significant and valuable contributions towards achieving peace.

Craig Zelizer is the Associate Director of the Master of Arts in Conflict Resolution Program within the Department of Government at Georgetown University and a Senior Partner with the Alliance for Conflict Transformation. He has over 15 years experience in peacebuilding activities around the world, including assessment, training, dialogue, capacity building and evaluation work. He has published several articles on trauma and peacebuilding, arts and peacebuilding, and careers in international peace and conflict resolution. He is also the founder of the Peace and Collaborative Development Network, a leading online platform to bring together scholars and practitioners working on international conflict. He holds a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University.

Robert A. Rubinstein is professor of anthropology and international relations at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, where from 1994-2005 he directed the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts. He earned his Ph.D. in anthropology from the State University of New York at Binghamton, and his Ms.P.H. from the University of Illinois School of Public Health. His research focuses on cultural aspects of dispute settlement, international health, and the anthropological study of peacekeeping. He is a founding member and current Co-Chair of the Commission on Peace and Human Rights of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. He has published more than 85 journal articles and book chapters and is author or editor of 7 books, most recently Peacekeeping Under Fire: Culture and Intervention.

CONTENTS

1) Introduction: Peacebuilding: Creating Structure and Capacity for Peace – Craig Zelizer and Robert A. Rubinstein;

2) Taming the Beast: Interethnic Conflict and Accord in Post – Communist Europe – Allen H. Kassof;

3) The Institution as Innovator: Laying the Foundation for Peaceful Change – Beth Glick and Laina Reynolds Levy;

4) An 85 Percent Settlement Rate and a 91 Percent Compliance Rate: But what Happened to the Rest and Why? – William F. Lincoln, Alexander Karpenko, Lena Ivanova, Olga Allahverdova, Polly Davis, Dawn Hooper with Seth Kane and Terra D. M. Evans;

5) Designing Dispute Resolution Systems for Settling Land and Property Disputes in Post-Conflict and Post-Crisis Societies – Christopher Moore and Gary Brown;

6) Recasting Reconciliation through Culture and the Arts: Strengthening Peace-building Capacity through The Brandeis International Fellowship Program – Cynthia Cohen;

7) Partners in Peacebuilding in Lesotho – John Davies, Wubalem Fekade, `Mamphekeleli Hoohlo, Edy Kaufman, and Mamochaki Shale;

8) Combining Empathy with Problem Solving: The Tamra Model of Facilitation in Israel – Eileen F. Babbitt and Pamela Pomerance Steiner with Jabir Asaqla, Chassia Chomsky-Porat and Shirli Kirschner;

9) Health Bridges for Peace: The Medical Network for Social Reconstruction in the Former Yugoslavia – Paula Gutlove;

10) Gender Mainstreaming in Peacebuilding: A Case Study of Grupo EKOLELO in Angola – Heather Kulp;

11) Management of Multi-cultural Communities in Crimea – Karina Korostelina;

12) Building Peace in Thin Air: The Case of Search for Common Ground’s Talking Drum Studio in Sierra Leone – Marco Konings & Ambrose James;

13) The Dynamism of Shared Success in Abkhaz: Georgian Peacebuilding – Paula Garb and Susan Allen Nan;

14) Promoting Ethnic Tolerance and Cultural Inclusion in Macedonia: The Tetovo Educators Project – Paula Green and Olivia Stokes Dreier

320 pp., 6″ x 9″, May 2009

Published by Kumarian Press

http://www.styluspub.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=208798