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Little raises many questions of international legality in addressing the finer concepts of peace enforcing, peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peace building. He accentuates the rule of law, democracy, and human rights as foundations for each of these stages towards a Just Peace. Looking towards collectively accepted international treaties for a concept of justice, Little taps into a notion of legal validity that is at least partially composed of a legitimacy that emanates from the people themselves. Although there are valid reasons for questioning who has been allowed to participate in the process developing international law, protecting the human rights of all, and labelling it justice certainly does not seem to create an untenable starting point. In fact, this approach that looks to protect the rights of all can be quite constructive because, ultimately, it is the people involved in a conflict who will determine whether a peace is just, and therefore lasting.

Sir Harold Nicolson’s international thought, more specifically, his thinking on international order, diplomacy, a united Europe, world government, and global peace, was shaped by his upbringing in a diplomatic household, an Oxford classical education, and two decades as a diplomat in Europe and Asia Minor. Especially significant were his Foreign Office service in London during the First World War and his involvement in peacemaking at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which culminated in the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Nicolson also made important contributions at the Lausanne Conference (1922–23), en poste in Germany between 1927 and 1929, and as an anti-appeasement MP prior to the Second World War. His fifty-year career, from the time of the Balkan Wars to Suez, represented an attempt to resolve the question of how best to secure international stability: through power politics, idealism, or an amalgam of realist and idealist approaches.

This chapter distinguishes between conflict settlement, conflict resolution, and reconciliation. The chapter relates these three processes of ending conflict to the author's earlier work on social influence (i.e., process of compliance, identification, and internalization). Five conditions that can help groups in conflict arrive at the difficult point of revising their identity so as to accommodate to the identity of the other are discussed.

The first part of the chapter gives a brief account of the bloody fratricidal war fought in Croatia and Bosnia‐Herzegovina in 1991–5, which resulted from ethnic nationalistic revolutions aimed at destroying the multiethnic federation of Yugoslavia founded by the communists, and establishing independent homogeneous states. Further wars would continue in 1998 (between the Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo) and in 2001 (between Albanians and Macedonians in Macedonia). The main part of the chapter discusses religion and nationalism in these successor states – Islam and Muslim nationalism in Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Catholicism (the Madonna of Medjugorje) and Croatian nationalism in Bosnia‐Herzegovina and Croatia, and the Orthodox Church in Serbia (and Kosovo), Macedonia, and Montenegro. The remaining two sections of the chapter discuss saint making in Croatia in the late 1990s, and the role of religious organizations in the international peace process.

Like the last chapter, this one focuses on cultural shifts in the Israeli/Palestinian communities that are the key to determining a new relationship between them. This is contextualized by summarizing insights from the previous chapters in a phrase: myth matters. The author advocates a turning of conflict prevention and resolution methodologies toward a synergistic and humble engagement with the lived uses of ritual already in place in peacemaking in the region. In addition, he seeks a creative investigation and experimentation with the vast reservoir of Abrahamic uses of ritual to heal, establish basic patterns of civility, transform broken relationships, mourn, repent, end war, and make peace. The recommendations presented are given under the headings of Education and Training, Myth, Ritual, and Ceremony, Land Attachments, The Poor, Study as Peacebuilding, Social Contract and Covenants, Trust Building, Self‐examination and the Move From Barrier To Bridge, and Recommendations To Officials.

Examines the development and ideology of Evangelical Contribution on Northern Ireland (ECONI). ECONI has forged an activist, open, yet orthodox evangelical identity opposed ideologically to the religious nationalism of Paisleyism and Orangeism on the one hand, and the passive impotence of Presbyterianism on the other hand. The group’s existence (and opposition to it) is reflective of the theological diversity within Ulster evangelicalism. ECONI lies on the evangelical left, articulating a pre-fundamentalist broad evangelical tradition with an emphasis on social justice and peacemaking and a non-defensive inclusive ethos. It is argued that, despite inconsistencies and limited popular impact, the group has succeeded in allowing a coherent expression of evangelical faith shorn of ethnic particularity to be expressed in Ulster.

This introductory chapter highlights the role of culture and religion (which, for purposes of this book is treated as a subset of cultural phenomena) in conflict generation and peacemaking. The importance of cross‐religious study is also emphasized, particularly in the case of religions with very complex origins such as the Abrahamic faiths (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) in which interrelatedness betrays the causes of rivalry and historical conflict, and the chapter also uncovers places for conflict resolution and peacemaking by discovering points of convergence. The aim of the book is to discover the deeper roots of the Middle East conflict and to apply them to the challenges and possibilities for future Palestine–Israel relations.

Starts with an analysis of the Abrahamic family myth (or metaphor) as treated by the three Abrahamic faiths (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity), showing how it sets the stage for mythically based conflict. It goes on to discuss the use of metaphor and cultural constructs as a framework for meetings and peace negotiations between Israelis and Arabs, and then addresses street or other public encounters, and wonders whether the alienating constructs of modern city life (and Western suburban life) have a role to play in the origin of violence. The last part of the chapter wraps these approaches together in a discussion of the possibilities for Arab/Jewish reconciliation in general, and Israeli/Palestinian reconciliation, in particular.

It is argued that the rational processes of political negotiation and diplomacy can never progress very far without taking account of the (cultural) myths underlying the attitudes of all parties (and intervenors) involved. Such myths are often expressed in terms of some idealized self‐image, together with a demonized mythic construct of the “other.” These arguments are illustrated by addressing the contemporary examples of the coup against Milosevic in Serbia, and peacemaking processes in which the author has been involved in Israel/Palestine. The latter covers the work of Rabbi Frohman in Israel, attempts to get the US Administration under Clinton involved in a Jewish–Muslim dialog, and steps toward the Jerusalem Religious Peace Agreement (the Islamic/Jewish treaty).

Addresses the role of memories of personal and collective injury – the scars of conflict and violence – in retarding peacemaking processes. The important role of organized religion in this kind of “perpetuated mourning,” and its role in conflict generation and avoidance, and self‐examination and self‐judgment, is discussed. It is noted that systems of coping with ultimate loss must become part of any conflict resolution between enemies, and that although each community involved must accomplish this separately, peacemakers should coordinate the process. Two things are needed to disengage a group from the need to be violent: manufactured injury (often based on the political ambitions of leaders) must be separated from actual injury; and manufactured injuries that are rooted in weak internal self‐conceptions must be replaced by a strong sense of self that does not need injury to survive. In the case of the Israel/Palestine conflict, these processes are as important for Jews in relation to the Holocaust as for Palestinians in relation to the loss of their country in 1948.

One of the central challenges facing cultural and religious peacemaking is the self‐imposed wall around ethnic and religious identities, particularly in terms of the deliberate circumscription of their prosocial moral structures and meaning systems. Among the ethical resources within Abrahamic traditions for peacemaking and conflict resolution, one of the most important in terms of building prosocial relationships is the way that individuals and communities cope with moral failure of the individual. Understanding this is vital for intercultural work because here the outsider group is often the object of the failed relationship; potentially at least, such a relationship could be transformed by means of the traditional process of acknowledging sin and ultimately receiving forgiveness. The various parameters and uses of forgiveness and reconciliation in the traditions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are examined at length, and it is concluded that there is potential in all three of these religions for the use of reconciliation in the processes of conflict resolution.

This chapter discusses the four major restorative practices: victim-offender dialogues, family group conferences, peacemaking circles, and truth and reconciliation commissions. It offers individuals who have not participated in a restorative practice the opportunity to envision each of the processes from preparation through follow-through. While the practices highlighted are often used in the aftermath of crime, all of them can be adapted to addressing wrongdoing in a number of other contexts. Examined for each of the descriptions are foundational principles that underpin the practice, an overview of the preparation, the process of the actual encounter, and follow up. Finally, the chapter offers some thoughts about why the process can be so effective.

This chapter starts by pointing out a major contradiction in the current United States public school system. Ideally, schools are places where children acquire intellectual and social skills that support their capacity to develop. However, when behavioral problems occur, too often students are addressed from a deficit-based approach, and opportunities for them to learn from mistakes are lost. The chapter explores how peacemaking circles are used in schools as an innovative approach to assist students, faculty, families, and community members in addressing problems that arise in the school as well as creating new stories of hope, contribution, and inclusion for students in the school system. It points out that restorative processes are often used in extreme punishment scenarios such as in the case of expulsion, but the case study considered in the chapter focuses on a restorative process used in an ordinary and routine situation—miscommunication between a school staff member and student.

This chapter takes an anthropological look at the principles, institutions, and practices of humanitarianism. The chapter finds that the ethics and norms inherent in the humanitarian encounter frequently reflect the fact that good intentions can have unintended and harmful consequences. This analysis looks at development programs, humanitarian efforts, human rights organizations, and peacemaking initiatives. It is argued that the ethics of humanitarianism may indeed be compromised as humanitarians engage with political reality. However, this engagement elevates politics overall. The principles and rules of humanitarian institutions can constrain power, and its adverse impact on philanthropy. In a case study of the Sudan, however, the chapter finds that Sudanese politics and society overwhelm and subvert humanitarian ethics and norms.

The Introduction outlines the areas to be covered in this book, reviewing the literature on civil society peacemaking and the Northern Irish peace process. It emphasizes the neglect of religion, and civil society more generally, in the literature on Northern Ireland’s peace process. This presages the contribution of the book, which lies in three areas: developing a conceptualization to help understand religious peacebuilding in Northern Ireland; more generally, to evaluate the role of civil society in democratic transitions; and to assess the potential for spiritual capital in Northern Ireland post-conflict. The arguments of the book are summarized.