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Peace Studies as a Social Science:
Developing analytical and practical skills
Peace Studies
might be described as a social science organized around a project
to transform culture in the interests of peace and justice.
I. Analysis of institutions and discourses: Learning to
discern and discuss:
- Issues currently
important to us
- Dominant discourses and practices and how they came to be
- Relations between issues, institutions, and practices
- Important discourses which inform social science; (e. g., mainstream
social science; Marxism, neo-Marxism, world systems theories; anti-globalization
critiques; postmodernism; feminism; post-colonialism)
- Religious and spiritual traditions of nonviolence, peace, and
justice; of multiculturalism
- Linkages between critical discourses (e g., feminism, ecology,
colonialism, racism)
- Contributions to thinking about thinking from dominant cultures
and alternative cultures
II. Skills for cultural transformation and peacemaking.
An introduction to:
- How to utilize,
construct, and deconstruct symbolic discourse, both verbal and quantitative
- How to analyze conflicts from the personal level to multi-party
conflicts
- How to negotiate and mediate conflict
- How to identify and interpret the culture of a community
- How to communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds
- How to identify where cultural change is possible
- How to evaluate programs working for cultural change
- How to form networks with people working in cultural change activities
- How to map the intersection of personal, ethnic, gender, class,
and global themes
- How to communicate effectively in oral and written English
- How to do library and computer searches on whatever topic
- How to use computers and media resources for social change and
peacemaking
- How to increase one’s emotional intelligence
- How to plan and execute effective public presentations
III.
Related skills
- Learning
to participate effectively in dialogue
- Learning to do ethnographic studies
- Learning to manage non-profit organizations
- Learning to write grant proposals
- Learning to facilitate meetings and initiate group activities
- Learning mathematical and modeling skills
- Learning skills and tips for living in an ecologically responsible
way
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