Elise and Ken Boulding
“The Dialects and Economics of Peace”
George Mason University, 1990
The Peaceableness Project is a student-driven project intended to highlight the pervasiveness of, and potential for, peace in everyday life. “Peaceableness” refers to the active, evolving process of individuals discovering, practicing, and promoting methods of peace in their daily lives.
The project collects a diverse array of examples of peace behaviors from around the world to illustrate the various manifestations of cultures of peace in human life. This open-ended document consists of original contributions by students who have granted permission for their work to be included.
The inspiration for the project is Elise and Ken Boulding, who emphasized that in order to understand and cultivate cultures of peace, we need to be open to, and aware of, the prevalence of “peace signals.” As Elise Boulding noted, “We need to develop an alertness to peace signals. This means examining each day’s news with great care, teasing out indicators that suggest the peace potential, the potential for creative solutions in situations of tension, and then looking for strategies that will reinforce those potentials” (“The Dialects and Economics of Peace,” 1990, p. 6).
Students are asked to identify and explain distinct instances of peaceableness from a variety of contexts. This includes explaining the context of the conflict situation and exploring the peace signals allowing the parties involved to navigate the conflict in a non-violent manner.
You can access the project here and watch the Bouldings discuss “The Dialects and Economics of Peace” here:
