conflict resolution
Black Carbon and Black Anger: Changing Conditions in Ladakh [book review]
The old Ladakhi men are sitting in a line on one side of the community hall arranged by descending age, with the eldest in the corner. The women bring around five gallon buckets of chang, the local beverage, bantering amiably as they fill the mugs of the men. The villagers living in Kumik, in the […]
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 […]
Conflict Resolution and Gender Equality in Lepcha Society [book review]
The Lepchas, like most of the peaceful societies, are frequently stressed by changing cultural, social and economic forces, some of which affect their patterns of nonviolence. Anita Sharma published a book last year that seeks to enrich our understanding of, and appreciation for, those changes Lepcha society. A major goal of her work is to […]
Avoiding Conflicts in South Asia [anthology chapter review]
The four peaceful South Indian foraging societies included in this website have similar beliefs that tend to inhibit conflicts, and they have comparable techniques for resolving them when they do occur. Out of the 18 distinct foraging societies in South India, six have been extensively studied by anthropologists, and four—the Malapandaram, Paliyans, Kadar, and Yanadi—are […]
Resolving a Conflict in East Africa
Effectively resolving conflicts is an essential ingredient of all peaceful societies, so an article in a leading Tanzanian newspaper last Thursday provides an interesting glimpse into the ways a village in the Fipa section of the country is handling a local dispute. The difficulty concerns a Mr. Said Mohammed, who has been harassing his neighbors […]
Peaceful Societies Exemplify Ecocentric Living [Panel presentations, part 2]
Alberto Gomes suggests that new images of social and economic relations are needed, ones which abandon human-centered paradigms and focus, instead, on the interdependence of people with the natural environment. Equality, sustainability, and peacefulness, in the new model proposed by Gomes, are intertwined. He demonstrates his arguments with numerous examples from the Orang Asli (“Original […]
The Ju/’hoansi and the Anthropologists: an Overview [journal article review]
A generation or two ago, anthropologists celebrated the Ju/’hoansi as an archetypical peaceful society, a people who sometimes had their squabbles but who were so dependent on one another that serious fighting was simply out of the question. The scholars who were involved with various research projects in the Kalahari Desert described the ways the […]
Keeping the Peace, Semai Style [journal article review]
The Semai are able to maintain peace in their communities because they can effectively resolve their conflicts. Three scholars who are intimately familiar with those people describe, in a recent article, how they developed their formal, conflict resolution meetings in the last century by modifying Malay practices. The authors maintain, however, that the Semai commitment […]
Women Help Resolve Political Conflicts in Rural Thailand [journal article review]
The intensity of local political elections in Rural Thailand can place immense stresses on Thai women, who have to maintain harmony within and between communities. In contrast to other authors, who see local Thai politics as primarily a male preserve, Katherine Bowie recognizes, in a recent journal article, the important role that women play as […]
Amish Negotiations Settle Conflicts [journal article review]
Increasingly, the Amish are able to resolve conflicts with the mainstream society through negotiation, an approach that often produces very positive outcomes. A recent journal article by Wayne F. Miller describes some of the 1400 different ways the Amish resolve their conflicts—a figure, the author tosses out, which is based on the number of Amish […]
