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RR 2012/211 The Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology Edited by Daniel J. Christie Wiley-Blackwell Maiden, MA and Oxford 2011 3 vols ISBN 978 0 4051 9644 4 £350/$495
Also available online updated annually at www. enyclopediaofpeacepsychology.com; contact publisher for pricing information
Keywords Conflict resolution, Encyclopaedias, Peace, Psychology
Review DOI 10.11 08/095041 21211 240503
It is possibly of some significance that I find it easy to accept the idea of there being a psychology of war, but see peace psychology as a slightly eccentric field of study. This is silly of course -they are two sides of the same coin. King's College London has a renowned department of War Studies. Bradford University has a department of Peace Studies. A comparison of their undergraduate prospectuses (see www.kcl.ac.uk/ prospectus/undergraduate/index/name/ war-studies/alpha/W/header_search/ and www. brad.ac.uk/peace/courses/UndergraduateCourses/ BAHonsPeaceStudies/) shows a very considerable overlap in academic content. Certainly as far as psychology goes they simply study the same subject from slighdy different angles.
On investigation there is quite a substantial peace psychology literature. We must welcome all psychological interest in the real, social, world. Springer, indeed, has published a whole series on the topic - the Peace Psychology Book Series. The most recent that I could find was the Handbook on Building Cultures of Peace (De Riviera, 2008). Psychology Press have naturally published in the field. I noted their Handbook on Peace Education (Salomon and Cairns, 2010), among others. Pride of place among printed works should go to the massive four-volume The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace (Young, 2010) (RR 2010/ 313). This is, of course, radier broader in scope but does have a substantial psychological content. (There is also the Encyclopedia of Peace Education (Baja, 2008) (RR 2009/110) although this is more an anthology than a true encyclopaedia.) There are also numerous information sources on the more specialised topic of conflict resolution, such as Contemporary Conflict Resolution (Ramsbotham et al., 2011). However, I should most particularly note Peace, Conflict and Violence: Peace Psychology for the 21st Century, edited by the editor of the encyclopaedia under review (Christie et al., 2001) This was originally published by Prentice Hall...