Peace Building and Violence: Perspectives from Around the Globe
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REVIEW ESSAY Peace Building and Violence: Perspectives from Around the Globe KENT J. KILLE The College of Wooster, Wooster, OH, USA
Adekeye Adebajo, Building Peace in West Africa: Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-Bissau (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002), pp. 192, $14.95 Softcover; John Darby, The Effects of Violence on Peace Processes (Washington, DC: USIP, 2001), pp. 153, $19.95 Softcover; Andrew Rigby, Justice and Reconciliation: After the Violence (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), pp. 207, $49.95 Hardcover, $19.95 Softcover; Paul van Tongeren, Hans van de Veen, and Juliette Verhoeven, eds., Searching for Peace in Europe and Eurasia: An Overview of Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Activities (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002), pp. 832, $65.00 Hardcover, $24.95 Softcover. Introduction Despite the best efforts of scholars and practitioners seeking peace, armed violence and war remain persistent aspects of life throughout the world. Dealing with armed violence is a challenge for, as Richard Solomon, President of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), has stated quite simply, “It is easier to start a war than it is to stop it” (Darby, p. vii). Then, if warfare can be ended, how can peace be sustained? There is an extensive literature on peace and violence on which to draw for lessons. The publishers of the books under review here offer a remarkable array of work devoted to the topic. USIP — not surprising given its mandate — has published work encompassing a variety of cases and themes. Lynne Rienner Publishers also has an impressive lineup of related books: the Adebajo volume is part of an extended series of International Peace Academy Publications, the van Tongeren, van de Veen, and Verhoeven work is part of the Searching for Peace Program, and the recent catalog contains over one hundred books related to peace.1 The four books reviewed here represent some of the latest efforts to assess our understanding of violence and how to build peace. These books, taken together, do well in covering these issues from around the globe. Adebajo provides the most focused effort, examining interventions by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in member-states Liberia, Sierra Leone, and GuineaBissau. The Searching for Peace volume includes 27 chapters surveying Northern Ireland, Basques in Spain, Cyprus, Turkey, Southeastern Europe, Russian Federation, Southern Caucasus, and Central Asia.
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The studies from Darby and Rigby are more thematically based, but still use case studies to support and detail their arguments. Darby integrates case material within the text, while also providing freestanding case overviews written by him (Northern Ireland) and others (Sri Lanka, Spain, Israel-Palestine, and South Africa). Rigby examines post-World War II Western Europe, Spain, Latin America (especially Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala), East European transition (in particular Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Poland), South Africa, Palestine, and the international tribunals for former
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