Why Peace and Conflict Studies?

Abstract

This chapter describes the interdisciplinary field of Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) as a distinct and emerging arena of academic and practitioner pursuits. This field learns from fields and contributes new knowledge through identifying conflict and working to transform conflict nonviolently. This means recognizing violence as a form of conflict that is intentional but unnecessary. PACS perceives violence as a barrier to full humanity and seeks to both learn about conflict and share tools and techniques that ameliorate or eradicate violence using intervention methods. By presenting the diverse and divergent global concentrations of work that is included in the field of PACS, this section seeks to present the field as a locus of human investigation and manifestations and to collapse and collect various streams of inquiry and endeavour into a definition that provides a useful categorization of the interdisciplinary work of PACS. The terminology of PACS will be introduced in this section including the question of the moral rationale of intervention, which in relation to suicide and acts of violence is ordinarily termed ‘prevention’. In addition to an encapsulation of the field of PACS, this section presents a substantiated rationale for suggesting that PACS, as a locus of inquiry, needs to pay more attention to suicide.