CRITICAL ACCLAIM
"Peace Review is absolutely superb . . . very topical, easy to read . . . a pleasure."
- Johan Galtung, Institute for Peace, University of Hawaii, USA
". . . unswervingly honest in attacking power politics, totalitarianism, militarism, and war . . . For libraries that support studies of peace, war, military science, and international relations."
- Choice
"I can resist no longer . . . the issues I have seen so far have been too good to miss!"
- Bruce Kent, Committee for Nuclear Disarmament, London, UK
"Peace Review is important and has widespread potential for the education of the general public about peace research."
- Robin Crews, Past Director, Peace Studies Association, USA
For information about
PEACE REVIEW Editors, Advisory Board, Awards, and our Recent Issues and Forthcoming Issues:
EDITORS
Rob Elias was a Founding Editor, and has been Editor-in-Chief of
Peace Review since 1992, when the journal moved to the University of San Francisco (Department of Politics). The journal was founded by John Harris at Stanford University in 1988. We’re grateful for the continuing financial support from the Lane Family Foundation.
Our Managing Editor is
Anne Hieber., and our USF Editorial Board includes:
Bernadette Barker-Plummer (Media Studies)
Jennifer Turpin (Sociology)
Peter Novak (Visual & Performing Arts)
Cecilia Santos (Sociology)
Scott McElwain (Politics)
Roberto Varea (Visual & Performing Arts)
Lois Lorentzen (Religious Studies)
Stephen Zunes (Politics)
David Batstone (Religious Studies)
Jeffrey Paris (Philosophy)
AWARDS
Jesuit Foundation Grant for four special issues in 2002 (2001)
Project Censored Award for having published two of the Top 25 Most Censored Stories for 1999 (2000)
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Grant, for a special issue on Eastern Europe (1991)
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Grant, for a special issue on Africa (1990)
RECENT ISSUES
Law and War (16:3: Summer 2004)
The U.S. National Security Strategy adopted in 2001 maps an aggressive, unipolar vision of American empire. New interpretations of preemptive strike, imminent threat, and unlawful combatant have followed, leaving the letter of the law (of war) unchanged, while radically reinterpreting the terms to which it applies. Have
jus ad bellum and international humanitarian law become mere tools of imperial aspirations, or can they yet serve the cause of a peaceful international order?
Peace Review, invites submissions for a special issue devoted to law in the context of war in the following three respects: 1) The development of international law's central concepts and theories; 2) The social dimension of its institutionalization; and 3) The contemporary military and interpretive threats to the rule of law itself. Possible questions for consideration might include: How do colonial, religious, or commercial interests inscribe today's international laws and just war theories? How have competing public and private interests contributed to the evolution of terms such as preemptive strike, imminent threat, or individual and nation-state sovereignty? What role have social movements and NGOs played in the codification of international humanitarian law and the operations of the United Nations? What role could they play in the future? How are we to conceive of the relationship between recent U.S.-led wars and the globalization of capitalist markets? Does the International Criminal Court or the concept of humanitarian intervention have a future after the Bush years?
Subcultures and Political Resistance (16:4: Winter 2004)
In recent years, the politics and anti-politics of X-generation youth have been replaced by the resurgence "and in some cases insurgence" of subcultural groups. Recent attempts to understand these groups have brought changes to the older discipline of subcultural studies, and have even been tentatively dubbed "post-subcultural studies." Changes linked to the globalization of culture, music and fashion have made subcultures less bounded, and the fusion of different styles and politics offers the possible lens for imagining a global youth counter-culture of diverse practices of resistance.
To help bring together the thoughts of scholars from around the world on these matters, Peace Review is devoting a special issue to "Subcultures and Political Resistance." It is our contention that these forms of lifestyle, political activism, and tribal identification are constructing new categories of liberatory imagination. We therefore solicit essays on the following topics: Subcultures as political/
anti-political agents; Subcultures as new social movements; Subcultures vs. post-subcultures; Subcultural coalitions: The politics of fluidity; Subcultures and intentional community; Subcultures and revolutions of everyday life; Subcultures with and against technology; Primitivism, Modern Primitivism, Future Primitivism; Techno-Hippies? Crossing subcultural boundaries; Neo-Tribalism; Punk, anarchism, and the new DIY culture; Techno and the global underground; Postmodernism and youth movements.
FORTHCOMING ISSUES
Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Movement
In 2003 the Brazilian government introduced to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, a resolution that attempted to establish that abuses on the basis of sexual orientation are indeed human rights abuses. Votes on this "Resolution on Sexual Orientation" were postponed again in April 2004, defeated mostly by countries whose records of abuses toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people are stunningly violent. Over 80 countries criminalize sexual behavior between same-sex consenting adults, and almost ten countries punish that behavior with the death penalty. Peace Review, A Journal of Social Justice calls for papers that address issues of LGBT rights around the globe with special attention to grassroots international activism based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Special consideration will be given to essays that address LGBT activism in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and predominantly Muslim countries.
Gender and Globalization
In the past fifteen years, the process of globalization has affected women's and men's lives in significant ways throughout the world. Likewise, globalization has greatly impacted women's and/or gender studies. Nowadays, international women's issues are not restricted to courses and research on women in developing countries. Scholars from different disciplines have increasingly studied a variety of issues concerning the relationship between gender and globalization, paying particular attention to the gendered effects of globalization on women both in the North and in the South. Among other issues, scholars have addressed how gender, masculinity, and femininity have been socially constructed in different locales within the context of globalization; how women's rights have been shaped by processes of globalization; how labor has been gendered under the influence of global forces; how sex work and the traffic of women have been shaped and expanded by globalization; how feminist movements have further developed transnational networks and have increasingly operated at an international scale; how feminist theories have traveled from the North to the South; how new technologies and the Internet have shaped women's issues and women's organizing; how transnational migrations have been gendered, and so on. To help bring together the insights of scholars from around the world on these matters, Peace Review is devoting a special issue to Gender and Globalization. Although globalization has impacted women's and men's lives all over the world, the ways in which different groups of women and men are gendered, experience, and participate in the processes of globalization need to be uncovered and analyzed. We therefore solicit essays on the following topics: Gender, factory work, and globalization; Globalization and sex work; Gender and transnational migrations; Globalization and women's or feminist movements; The Internet and women's activism; Masculinities and/or femininities in the context of globalization; Gender, the State, and globalization; Globalization and intersections of gender, race, class, and/or sexuality; Globalization and the traveling of feminist theories; Globalization and violence against women; Women's human rights and globalization; Gender, law, and globalization; Gender, health, and globalization; Gender, religion, and globalization; Gender, war, and globalization
Military Dissent
Dissent amongst those subject to military service around the world is an ever increasing phenomenon today. Those subject to conscription as well as
those on active military service have dissented and resisted the call to arms on a variety of levels in various nations.
Peace Review invites submissions for a special issue devoted to the personal strategies and tactics of dissent against the military from those who have been subject to conscription, and military service. We are interested in both principled objection and dissent, e.g., conscientious objection; and, what may be considered less principled forms of resistance. We are particularly interested in the personal experience of resistors and dissenters, and those essays that provide insight into practical actions that others subject to military service might pursue to resist military imperatives.
Psychology of War
Horace wrote that "it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country." This thought has echoed through the centuries, punctuating the battle cries of those who dream of righteous conquest and holy war. Warfare has been perpetuated to the extent that struggles on the battlefield have been linked with ideals such as honor, duty, and loyalty. Yet these words cannot nullify the reality of warfare, which is death, destruction and devastation. Gwynne Dyer captures war's essence when he contends that, by becoming soldiers, Men agree to die when we tell them to.
In the twentieth and twenty-first century, vast numbers of civilians have joined soldiers as victims of war. Brzezinski describes the last century as the "century of the megadeath,"estimating that more than 87 million lives were lost in the wars of the past one-hundred years. In the First World War, nine-million people died--more than twice as many as had died in wars in the previous two centuries. Yet the Second World War produced a death toll of even greater magnitude, estimated at well over fifty-million.
How can we make sense of the ritual of death and destruction in warfare? What does it mean? What is its continuing appeal? What does its persistence say about us? This special issue of the Peace Review on "The Psychological Interpretation of War" will address these and similar questions, exploring the human tendency to embrace warfare--in spite of the misery it creates and disillusionment that follows in its wake. Though warfare is often thought of as normative if not normal, we shall seek to lift the idea of war out of the realm of the self-evident and to view it as something extraordinary.
This special issue will raise vital questions relating to the psychology of war. For example, how do motives such as fear, humiliation, anger, and the wish for vengeance become linked to the ideology of warfare? If war indeed is a socially constructed institution, upon what bases do we construct it? By virtue of what mechanisms do we turn human "others" into enemies? How do we come to believe that killing is "necessary" to the creation of a better world? What is the relationship between the notion of a sacred ideal and the willingness to kill and to sacrifice one's own life?
To move toward a world not dominated by warfare, one must do more than advocate peace. We must begin by interrogating the sources of war's appeal. In this special issue of the Peace Review, we seek to publish outstanding papers that explore the mystery of the human attraction to an institution whose primary product has been suffering and death. 
