If anyone is to be justifiably called a “parent” of the field of peace and conflict research it is Elise Boulding, who, together with her equally influential husband Kenneth, had a hand in most of the pioneering initiatives of the 1950s, the 1960s, and beyond.
As Dr. Boulding makes clear in her interview, the Bouldings’ Quaker backgrounds made it almost inevitable that they would be drawn towards the study of the causes of war and the construction of a peaceful world as part of their research in the aftermath of the Second World War and with the on-set of the Cold War. Kenneth had a background in the study of economics in the days before this field was captured by mathematical modelers and this shows clearly in some of his earlier works, such as Conflict and Defense and the papers he wrote for the General Systems Yearbook. Elise, by contrast, had studied sociology and this clearly influenced her analyses of societal sources of violence and the search for a peaceful society. Her other strong interest was in women’s roles in society and how these could, perhaps, contribute to a future global society that would develop peaceful methods of handling conflicts.
The Bouldings were tremendously influential in the early growth of the field, being part of the group of scholars at Ann Arbor who started the Journal of Conflict Resolution and who made the University of Michigan, for a time, the center of conflict studies in North America. Elise and Kenneth, together with the Dutch jurist Bert Roling, were key figures in the founding of the International Peace Research Association and in the establishment of the Conflict Research Society in England.
Our interview with Elise Boulding thus covers these and many other topics germane to the early history of peace and conflict research, and provides many insights into the struggles that attended efforts to have the field accepted in academia and acknowledged as relevant by policy makers.
JB/CRM
