I
Simon Pierre Boulanger Martel et al. (2024) “Peace with Adjectives: Conceptual Fragmentation or Conceptual Innovation?” International Studies Review (https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viae014) identifies the following varieties of peace in their review of the literature, 1969 – 2022:
adversarial peace, autonomous peace, bellicose peace, cold peace, conditional peace, contested peace, cooperative peace, dictatorial peach, elusive peace, fearful peace, hybrid peace, illiberal peace, illegal peach, insecure peace, militarized peace, normal peace, partial peace, precarious peace, polarized peace, regional peace, restored peace, restricted peace, territorial peace, tyrannical peace, unjust peace, unresolved peace, unstable peace, victor’s peace, violent peace, warm peace. . .
AND THERE IS ALSO
agonistic peace, civil peace, consolidated peace, constitutional peace, everyday peace, inclusive peace, institutional peace, just peace, legitimate peace, liberal peace, local peace, maximal peace, negative peace, participatory peace, quality peace, relational peace, republican peace, sovereign peace, stable peace, strong peace, sustainable peace, a different territorial peace, world peace. . .
AND THEN
climate resilient peace/intersectional positive peace, decolonial peace, emancipatory peace, feminist peace, gender-just peace, positive peace, post-liberal peace, transrational peace. . .
The authors understandably ask–
For example, how does a case of insecure peace (Höglund and Söderberg Kovacs 2010) differ from a case of precarious peace (Maher and Thomson 2018)? And is feminist peace (Paarlberg-Kvam 2019) the same as gender-just peace (Björkdahl 2012), or do these concepts denote different understandings of the meaning of peace?
–noting, anyway, “the lack of minimal agreement on the core features of peace. . .”
II
The more differentiation of what is and is not peace, the better in my view. The world is that complex. And yet it is difficult to gainsay one of the authors’ conclusions:
There are structural incentives for scholars to coin new terms to improve their publication and citation rates, and less incentives to allocate time for thorough reading and engagement with existing scholarly work. . .While it is not easy, especially for early-career scholars, to challenge the dominant structures of academic career-making, we would nevertheless like to end with a small call for resistance to the logic of individualized output optimization in favor of more collective, dialogical, and cumulative knowledge production.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 