Peaceful Societies

Alternatives  to Violence and War

 

 

News and Reviews
about
Peaceful Societies

January 7, 2016. A Birhor Celebration
The Chief Minister of India’s Jharkhand state celebrated the 91st birthday of a prominent leader of his political party, the BJP, by calling attention to the needs of the Birhor people. (Full story)

January 7, 2016. A Successful Amish Enterprise
Daniel Yoder, a 56-year old Amish man from Holmes County, Ohio, has built a thriving furniture business through his attention to quality manufacturing and good customer relationships. (Full story)

December 31, 2015. The Batek and the Forest
A news report from the U.K. last week described the recent visit of the British photographer Joshua Gray to the Batek living near the Taman Negara National Park in Malaysia. (Full story)

December 31, 2015. Inuit Woman Revitalizes Sharing
Sharing with others is a very strong ethical value in the cultures of many peaceful societies, including that of the Inuit. (Full story)

December 24, 2015. Tahitians Learning from the Maori
A delegation from Tahiti recently visited a Maori community in New Zealand in order to study their approaches to teaching their language to children, since the use of Tahitian is dying out. (Full story)

December 24, 2015. Preserving the Semai Language [conference paper review]
The languages spoken by the Orang Asli of Malaysia preserve their wisdom, social concepts, environmental knowledge, and, for some, their beliefs about peacefulness. (Full story)

December 17, 2015. Rural Thai Village Copes with Climate Change
A coastal fishing village in Rural Thailand is being submerged by the rising seas, according to a haunting feature in Al Jazeera last week published as an exclamation point to the climate change negotiations in Paris. (Full story)

December 17, 2015. Boycott in Ladakh
Three years ago, in September 2012, two dozen Ladakhi Buddhists decided to convert to Islam, and the social relations in the area, which had been harmonious for centuries, took a severe nosedive. (Full story)

 

For earlier articles, please visit the listing of older stories on the News and Reviews page.

 

 

 

Peaceful societies are contemporary groups of people who effectively foster interpersonal harmony and who rarely permit violence or warfare to interfere with their lives. This website serves to introduce these societies to students, peace activists, scholars and citizens who are interested in the conditions that promote peacefulness. It includes information on the beliefs of these peoples, the ways they maintain their nonviolence, and the factors that challenge their lifestyles.

Zapotec boyLISTS: A list of peaceful societies is never completely finished or accurate. However, social scientists have convincingly described at least 25 societies around the world in which there is very little internal violence or external warfare. Generalizations are difficult to make accurately, except that most of the time these peaceful societies successfully promote harmony, gentleness, and kindness toward others as much as they devalue conflict, aggressiveness, and violence.

DISCLAIMER: While scholars have clearly identified a small number of societies in which people rarely act aggressively, it must be emphasized that no stamp of approval is intended for the societies included in this website. None of them are utopias. They share many problems with the rest of humanity. That said, however, most of the time they interact in a highly pro-social manner and they successfully avoid both violence within their own societies and warfare with other peoples.

OTHER "PEACEFUL" SOCIETIES: Popular writers and casual observers have also described many other societies as “peaceful,” but often in a more general or romantic sense. This website focuses, instead, on societies where there is significant scholarly literature to support the claims of peacefulness, and where the evidence provided by those scholars appears to be quite convincing.

COMPARISONS: Part of the fascination of this scholarly literature is the way readers can compare the extent of peacefulness and violence in these societies. Their differing ways of developing social, psychological, ethical and religious structures that foster peacefulness should inspire—and challenge—anyone interested in the processes of peace building. This literature suggests several questions:

APPROACHES TO PEACEFULNESS: Most of the nonviolent peoples have a wide range of strategies for promoting interpersonal harmony, building mutual respect, and fostering toleration for individual differences. Many of them are masters at devaluing conflicts, minimizing and resolving them when they do occur, and preventing them from developing into violence. Many of these peaceful societies also devalue competition, self-focus, and other ego-centered social behaviors that they feel might lead to violence.

LITERATURE: While the literature about these societies is small in contrast to the vast number of works about violence and war, there are some notable, highly readable books about peaceful societies and some useful websites that describe a few of them. Most of the best literature, however, is available in books, journal articles, and essays contained in published volumes. A small number of the best journal articles and essays from books are included in the Archive of Articles on Peaceful Societies of this website. Three different encyclopedia articles describe peaceful societies and the literature about them (Dentan 2002; Fry 1999; Sponsel 1996).

ADDITIONS: Additions to the website, as well as news about the peaceful societies, are noted on the News and Reviews page.

Photo: Seven year old Zapotec boy eating a tortilla in the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, near the village of La Paz. D. P. Fry photo collection.

 

 

 

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