On the Epistemology of Peace
R. B. J. Walker

Professor R.B.J. Walker :
On the Epistemology of Peace: A Lecture/Seminar Series.

University of Tromso, March 20-22, 2003

Time/place: Thursday 20 March, 9.15-13, room C-1006, 14.15-16, room C-1005
Saturday 22 March, 10.15-14, room C-1007

1. Beginnings A. (primarily lecture):

i. foundations (ontological, axiological, political and thus
epistemological); thus the question of authority and authorization; thus
the grounding of various methodological traditions (structure and history,
explanation and interpretation, induction and deduction, science and
critique).

ii. problems: knowledge as problem driven; hypothesis and refutation; on
the priority of theory over data; on the status of answerable questions.

iii. classifications, typologies and discriminations: before and after:
here and there; us and them, subject and object, identity and difference,
universal and plural, war and peace.


2. Beginnings B. (primarily seminar):

i. foundations of peace research: when did peace research begin and what
are the consequences of assuming this beginning?

ii. peace as a problem: what kind of problem is peace, in what contexts, in
what intellectual traditions, and with what kinds of theorization?
Specifically: peace and war; peace and violence.

iii. which classifications now enable contemporary peace research? How do
these classifications work and with what effects?


3. Modern traditions (primarily lecture):

Machiavelli and political judgement: contingency, freedom and the economy
of violence
Hobbes and the grounds of sovereign authority: the conditions of a domestic
peace
Kant, subjectivity, modernity: the conditions of a democratic peace
Weber, Morgenthau and modernity: political idealism as political realism
Clausewitz, Schmitt, and politics at the limit: war and the liberal conscience



4. Against modern traditions (primarily lecture):

i. Reading the classics against themselves: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Kant,
Weber, Clausewitz, Schmitt

ii. The question of other traditions; feminisms, religions, sociologies,
cultures, economies, psychologies.

iii. The experience of peace studies in various contexts; the case of WOMP;
the case of “development”

iv. Peace and the epistemology of alterity

v. Peace and the place/time of legitimate violence


5. Peace and politics (primarily seminar):

group discussion of the character of peace studies as a form of political
analysis
group discussion of the methodological implications of treating peace as a
political practice.


6. The changing historical/structural context of contemporary peace studies
(primarily lecture).

From states system to what?

Secular and sacred
Great powers and empires
inclusions and exclusions: boundaries, territorial and otherwise

securities and citizenships: subjectivities, securitizations,
governmentalities
territories and trajectories: relations, networks, movements
the new sovereignties: on power, legitimacy and the capacity to decide
exceptions