The Book Story-Formed Pathways to Peace calls readers to action around a single vision—making peace a reality. It draws on the unexpected power of stories to transform the world. The stories retold here have resonated through the ages not only with those religious but also with thinkers, artists, musicians, and others who have seen in them universal patterns of behavior. Now retold with commentary as seen through the lens of conflict and peacemaking, they illuminate pathways to peace as relevant today as when first told. Each chapter is fronted with imagined headlines of the ancient story with actual parallel headlines from the present, thus highlighting this connection of past and present. It is then in going back that pathways toward peace are illuminated for the present and future. The wisdom tradition of sacred texts is hereby extended.
Story-Formed Pathways to Peace is the second edition of the award-winning - first edition. Though this edition retains the content of the first, it has been expanded to include a very practical "best practice" application at the end of each storied chapter. The stories themselves, retold from ancient sacred texts, have resonated through the ages not only with those religious, but also with thinkers, artists, musicians, and others who have seen in the universal patterns of behavior. The characters in the stories model both negative and positive ways of working with conflict. And the added "best practice" application makes clear how the best that is modeled in each story is exemplary for everyday living in our time, whether in families, communities, and even nations.
State formation after civil war offers a new model for studying the formation of the state in a national peace transition as an integrated national phenomenon. Current models of peacebuilding and state building limit that possibility, reproducing a fragmented, selective view of this complex reality. Placing too much emphasis on state building as design they place too little on understanding state formation as unplanned historical process. The dominant focus on national institutions also ignores the role that cities and civic polities have played in constituting the modern state. Mining ideas from many disciplines and evidence from 19 peace processes, including South Africa, the book argues that the starting point for building a systematic theory is to explain a distinct pattern to state formation that can be observed in practice: Despite their conflicts people in fragile societies bargain terms for peaceful coexistence, they make attempts to constitute the right to rule as valid state authority, in circumstances prone to conflict, over which they have imperfect influence, not control. Though the kind of institutions created will differ with context, how rules for state authority are institutionalized follows a consistent basic pattern. That pattern defines state formation in peace transitions as both a unified, if contingent, field of normative practice and an object of comparative study. Where the national-centric models see local government as a matter belonging to policy on decentralization for later in the reconstruction phase, the book uncovers a distinct "local government dimension" to peace transitions: A civic dimension to national conflicts that must be explained; incipient or proto-local authorities that emerge even during civil war, in peace making, after state collapse; the fact that it is common for peace agreements and constitutions to include rules for local authority, for local elections to be held as part of broader democratization, and for laws to be enacted to establish local government as part of peace compacts. The book develops the concept of local peace transition to explain the distinctive constitutive role of this local dimension in peace-making and state formation. This path-breaking book will be of compelling interest to practitioners, scholars and students of comparative constitutional studies, international law, peace building and state building.
This book brings together an Iranian Iran-Iraq War veteran and an American Vietnam War veteran, both mental health professionals, to exchange war stories and discuss self-help strategies for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They engage in forms of self-help therapy for treating PTSD. Each chapter contains an exchange of stories, a discussion of therapy in progress, and self-help assignments for readers.
"If you read Supreme Court opinions on cases involving First Amendment religion issues, you're likely to encounter the ubiquitous phrase "sincerely held religious belief." The "sincerity test" of religious belief has become a cornerstone of US jurisprudence, determining what counts as legitimate grounds for First Amendment claims in the eyes of the law. In Sincerely Held, Charles McCrary provides an original account of how "sincerely held religious belief" became the primary standard for determining what legally counts as genuine religion. McCrary traces the interlocking histories of sincerity, religion, and secularism in the US, starting in the mid-nineteenth century. He then shows how, in the 1940s, as the courts expanded the concept of religious freedom, they incorporated the notion of sincerity as a key element in determining religious freedom protections. The legal sincerity test was part of a larger trend in which the category "religion" became largely individualized and correlated with "belief." This linking of religion and belief, with all its Protestant underpinnings, is a central concern of critical secularism studies. McCrary contributes to this conversation by revealing the history of how sincerity and sincerely held religious belief developed as technologies of secular governance, constraining the type of subject one has to be in order to receive protections from the state"--
Alex, a troubled youth from Earth, travels to the world of Caperston via a wormhole in hopes of resolving his struggles. He meets a messiah, who preaches equality amongst the "Haves" and "Have nots" in Caperston, and his youth followers. Alex finds himself enmeshed in the challenges of their world. The youth, while asking for equality, are attacked as they march to see the Ruler. Alex steps in to stop the carnage but tensions are ready to explode. A short time later the messiah is arrested. Great drama follows over an eighteen-month period. Alex, hearing from Earth friends, isn't sure whether he should return home. Is it even possible? The book concludes with ten pages of activities for Christian youth leaders to use, when discussing the events taking place in the story. Themes of forgiveness and prayer are highlighted.
The ambivalent role of religions in contemporary conflicts has generated an increasing call for faith-based peacebuilding endeavours. In Pathways for Theology in Peacebuilding: Ecumenical Approaches to Just Peace, Sara Gehlin discusses the ways theology can provide essential resources for such peacebuilding pursuits. The pathways for theology in peacebuilding are investigated with regard to a recent faith-based peace endeavour, namely the creation of an international ecumenical declaration on just peace. In the book, Gehlin explores the meaning of a just peace from the perspectives of theological ethics, biblical interpretation, spirituality, and ecumenical vision. On the basis of this exploration, the book maps out theological resources for peace in our time.
This book proposes a conceptual-empirical framework for exploring forms of continuity and change along psychosocial pathways in South African universities. It illustrates how the psychosocial pathways are grounded in the symbolic narratives and knowledges of young scientists, engineers and architects - all interlocutors in the research from which this book is based. Alala, Mamoratwa, Welile, Odirile, Kaiya, Amirah, Takalani, Nosakhele, Naila, Ambani, Khanyisile, Itumeleng, Ethwasa and Kgnaya provide collective standpoints in the multiplicities within and between the lived lives and told stories of young Black South African women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. In doing so, this compelling work advances possibilities for demythologising scientific endeavour as a white male achievement and shifting knowledge communities across gendered, racialised, class and national divides. This book presents an innovative narrative methodology, utilising the myth of the Minotaur to examine the state of the university at the heart of the hierarchical labyrinth in “post”-apartheid South Africa. Throughout the work the author wrestles with and self-reflexively highlights her own positionality as a white, middle-class South African woman to examine how this affects the production of this research in ways which serve to preserve the colonial knowledge system. With the rise of the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall student movement in South Africa, demanding for the fall of institutionalised racial hierarchies, the author uses the cover image of narrative formations in the spirit of exploration to think with and through undulating networked forms that could possibly forge new psychosocial pathways towards decolonising and reinventing South African universities. This work offers a unique conceptual and methodological resource for students and scholars of psychosocial and narrative theory, as well as those who are concerned about the politics of higher education, both in South Africa and in other contexts around the world.
The Evacuation of Singapore to the Prison Camps of Sumatra aims to describe the events prior to, during and after the Fall of Singapore and the ways in which former prisoners are remembered on Bangka Island today. It is the product of many years of detailed historical research, interviews with camp survivors and personal experiences discovering and locating the former Japanese civilian prison camp sites of Bangka Island and Southern Sumatra. Judy's aim has been to compile an accurate description of the fate of evacuees from Singapore who were bombed and killed in the South China Sea and Bangka Strait or imprisoned in harsh Japanese civilian prison camps. Many families have not known the fate of their relatives until contacting the author through the Muntok Peace Museum website http://muntokpeacemuseum.org. The Peace Museum was established by prisoners’ families in 2015. The author has also described her many visits to Bangka Island and Sumatra in detail so others may follow in her footsteps and know that their relatives who were imprisoned and died during WW2 are now remembered very respectfully in the small town of Muntok. Annual Memorial Services are held each February 16, attended by families and the Australian, New Zealand and British Embassies. All royalties to this book will be donated to the Muntok Red Cross in memory of the prisoners.
