Centre for Peace Studies at the University of Tromsø hereby presents Working Papers No 9.

From April 5-7, 2006, the Centre for Peace Studies (CPS) at the University of Tromsø hosted a conference entitled “Peace and Place: A Symposium Exploring Peace in the Home, Community and the Urban Environment”. The idea for the symposium came about when Diane Lister became the new Academic Coordinator at the CPS in September 2005. The symposium was organised by Diane Lister, Academic Coordinator on the Master’s in Peace and Conflict Transformation (CPS); Alberto Valiente Thoresen, Executive Officer (CPS); and Jochen Peters, Project Leader (CPS).

The symposium themes were the issues of peace, place, home and community, which are of increasing importance in current international academic debates about the governance and facilitation of stable communities, the creation of new forms of living and the division of public and private space. These debates focus on the breakdown of community life and the prevalence of street crime, anti-social behaviour and civil disobedience in everyday life, whilst increased security measures, surveillance technology and the curtailment of individual freedoms through legislative and/or social control, appear to be an antidote to such risks. Community development and urban renewal in post conflict areas are also of increasing interest and importance as a range of responses and initiatives, similar to those indicated above, are implemented to create and maintain street peace and sustainable communities.

The main aim of the symposium was to provide an opportunity to look at Peace Studies from the perspective of these current debates and to examine the ways in which risk, conflicts and threats to individual and street peace are managed and avoided. During the symposium, the discussions surrounded the topics of home, community, the urban environment and peace. These subjects had not been considered previously through the lens of Peace Studies. In this sense, the symposium served to open up for new areas of research and interest for Peace Studies. For example:

How housing policies and urban planning can contribute in the implementation of peace processes and to generate the conditions for peaceful communities;

Relationship between places, contexts and learning a culture of peace;

Re-formulations of the notions of peace and community through complexity theory;

The use of public opinion surveys to de ideologise contemporary notions of place and community that foster violence;

Human security (including health) as a governance goal for achieving sustainable communities;

Effectiveness of surveillance techniques and how they affect possibilities for peace;

Different influences of urban and rural settings on criminal behaviour and violence;

Hindrances for peace posed by segregating communities through gating or the creation of high security zones.

The symposium also served as a meeting ground for researchers from fields of urban planning, urban geography, psychology, organisational development, peace studies, political science, architecture, medicine and sociology; all of whom are dealing in one way or another with the main topics of the conference.

The symposium presented Paddy Gray and Karina Landman as keynote speakers. There were sixteen additional contributions.

Tromsø, November 2006.

Editor:
Alberto Valiente Thoresen
Lecturer / Executive Officer
Centre for Peace Studies
e-mail : albtho@sv.uit.no

Address:
Centre for Peace Studies,
University of Tromsø,
N-9037, Norway.
http://uit.no/cps

Tromsø, December, 2006.

CPS Working Papers:

No 1 Three articles by Johan Galtung:
What is Peace Studies?
The Epistemology and Methodology of Peace Studies. Constructing a Daoist Social Science Epistemology

No 2 Arne Kommisrud:
State-building, Nationalities, and Conflict Dynamics in the Soviet and Habsburg Empires. A Rokkanian Approach.

No 3 Johan Galtung:
Toward Peaceful Worlds - A Guide to Peace

No 4 Stein Tønneson:
A ‘Global Civil War’

No 5 Bjørg Berg:
Paying for Peace: Is it a Human Right?

No 6 Sri Lanka 2003

No 7 Christine Schweitzer:
Nonviolent Intervention

No 8 Conference Papers. “New Directions in Peace and Conflict Research. Non-violent Strategies for Confronting Global Terrorism and for Promoting
Peaceful Social Change”. September 7-9, 2005. University of Tromsø.

No 9 Conference Papers. "Peace and Place: A Spymposium Exploring Peace in the Home, Community and the Urban Environment". April 5-7, 2006.
University of Tromsø

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