describe the relationship between peace and development
Answers
This unique subject is built on two disciplinary traditions. Peace research includes the study of causes of armed violence and war, processes of conflict, and preconditions for peaceful resolution and peace-building. Development research is concerned with poverty, structural inequalities, reasons for underdevelopment, and preconditions for positive development. Peace and development research provides a unique environment for studying the relationship between conflict and poverty/underdevelopment—resource scarcity, structural inequalities—as well as between peace and development in positive terms.
The research profile of the discipline thus focuses on the link(s) between peace, security and development. ‘Security’ is conceptually to an increasing extent seen as a link between peace and development, since the strive for security involves the absence of direct and structural violence as well as possibilities to economic well-being. The traditional research field of peace research is constituted of insecurity as a result of violence and conflict while the problem area of development research is related to insecurity as a consequence of resource scarcity, inequalities and poverty. Of fundamental weight is the issue of sustainable development, where sustainability involves a relationship between ecological, economic and social factors.
Fundamental processes of change have implied that the study of peace/conflict/war and development has also changed. Wars are acted out in new ways in the forms of civil wars in failed states with a multitude of actors involved. Politics of identity as well as development issues have entered the problematic of war with a new force. Development is no longer an issue only for the South or the so-called developing countries, as poverty, structural inequalities and socioeconomic insecurities are evident in all parts of the world, although in different degree. Globalization and its impact on states as actors, on political institutions and economic transactions are of overall importance in this regard.
Peace and development are then in a fundamental sense related to processes of globalization and global social development. Of particular interest for peace and development research is also how local communities are affected by global change and how local actors navigate in a global system, in relation to peace, conflict, security and development.