Peacefulness in general
Olympics Postponed—Should Peaceful Societies Care?
Several months ago, as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread in East Asia, sports fans speculated about what would happen to the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, scheduled for July 24 through August 9. The subsequent news that it was going to be postponed came as no surprise but the announcement on Monday last week was […]
Valentine’s Day and Peace
Tomorrow, February 14, people in the United States and many other countries will celebrate Valentine’s Day, not as an official holiday but as a folk celebration of romantic love. If you can ignore the commercial aspects of the occasion, this unofficial holiday celebrates the love among couples that can foster nonviolence. For an advocate of […]
Ifaluk Atoll Has an Uncertain Future
A prominent educator from Massachusetts spent some time on Ifaluk Island 40 years ago so now he has decided to return there to live out the rest of his life. John Chittick was born and raised in the small city of Fitchburg, completed an Ed.D. from Harvard, and went on to have a career as […]
Peaceful Societies Introduces a New Video Resource
The goal of this website, Peaceful Societies, is to promote peacefulness through the study of societies that are already nonviolent. They provide examples from which we might learn to be more peaceful by dealing more effectively and nonviolently with conflict. This website also strives to reflect the goals of its host, the UAB Department of […]
Peace and Nonviolence: Anthropological Aspects [a review]
In “Peace and Nonviolence: Anthropological Aspects,” Leslie Sponsel presents a concise and convincing argument for the persistence of nonviolent behavior throughout prehistory and history by providing numerous empirical examples from an anthropological perspective. Because of the inherent multidisciplinary approach anthropology provides, it creates the ideal framework from which to view peace and nonviolence in contrast […]
Statistics about Peaceful Nation States
The Global Peace Index for 2015, which evaluates several measures indicating the peacefulness of 162 countries, was released by the Institute for Economics and Peace on June 17. The 117 page report is available as a PDF on the website of the Institute. While the GPI surveys the peacefulness of nation states rather than peaceful […]
Unicorns, Peaceful Societies, and Peace Systems
Several scholars deny the existence of peaceful societies, arguing that they are simply a myth, but Douglas Fry characterizes their attitudes as a “unicorn factor,” after the mythological animals. Deniers maintain that peaceful societies, like unicorns, are figments of the imagination, but Fry disputes that. Last week, as part of a presentation titled “The Creation […]
Some Peaceful People Are Birdwatchers [a tenth anniversary reflection]
I was delighted when Jody and her husband Mark sat down at our table at the Christmas Bird Count dinner on Saturday evening, December 20th. Before we had even started eating, Jody asked what I was doing during my retirement years, so I told her about peaceful societies and this website. She expressed interest and […]
Birthday Wishes for Glenn Paige
June 28th marked both the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, an event which triggered World War One, and the 85th birthday of Glenn Paige, who began a movement promoting nonkilling. The media focused a lot of attention on the Great War last Sunday, but more attention needs to be paid to […]
Most Forager Bands Are Not Warlike [journal article review]
What prompts violence and warfare among human beings? What are the best ways to promote peacefulness within societies, and peace between them? Is humanity fundamentally aggressive? Numerous scholars and writers have argued all of those questions. Some seek to prove that all humans are warlike in nature. Their arguments have been based, in part, on […]
