Stein Tønnesson – författare

Marek Thee was a Jewish Polish journalist, scholar, and activist. He was able to move to Norway where he worked for twenty years at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), editing an international quarterly journal, Bulletin of Peace Proposals and doing research on the arms race.

The fascinating and controversial (but also personal) story of a 6-year research program based at Uppsala University that, instead of explaining conflict, has sought to explain peace, and to gauge its quality and sustainability. Specifically, the program has sought to understand the dramatic drop in battle deaths in East Asia (including Southeast Asia) from the 1980s, just as warfare worsened in the rest of the world. The book recounts heated discussions to explain this ‘East Asian Peace’. Was it due to a changing power balance? The ASEAN Way? China’s ‘peaceful development’ doctrine? Growing economic interdependence? Or, as the author contends, a series of national priority shifts by powerful Asian leaders who prioritized economic growth and thus needed external and internal stability? The book also deals with civil as well as international conflict, and discusses why Thailand, Myanmar and the Philippines have not yet achieved internal peace. The author recounts his debates with colleagues who find it difficult to accept that a region with unresolved disputes, rising arms expenditure, massive human rights violations, and high domestic violence can be called ‘peaceful’. East Asia, they say, has just a ‘negative peace’ or relative absence of war. Though he holds that a ‘negative peace’ has tremendous positive value, Tønnesson does ponder its future. For instance, can China keep peace with its neighbors? A rare combination of detached analysis and personal narrative, the book examines developments in the world’s most important region while also telling the story of how researchers with different assumptions develop rival theories and predictions. A companion volume to the main output of the Uppsala peace research program, Debating the East Asian Peace, this study will be of especial interest to not only scholars and students but also policy-makers, NGOs, businesses, journalists and many others engaged with the peace, stability and prosperity of the East Asian region.

Forskningsprogrammet "Den östasiatiska freden" vid Uppsala universitet tilldelades anslag av Stiftelsen Riksbankens Jubileumsfond år 2010. Efter decennier av konflikter och lidanden i Östasien - med Vietnamkriget och folkmordet i Kambodja som de två mest kända exemplen - inleddes år 1979 en lång period av fred i regionen. Forskarna har undersökt bakgrunden och de tänkbara orsakerna till denna östasiatiska fred och om den kan antas vara hållbar. Detta är programmets slutrapport.

This open access book explains how PRIO, the world’s oldest peace research institute, was founded and how it survived through crises. In this book, twenty-four of its researchers and associates, including Johan Galtung, Ingrid Eide, and Mari Holmboe Ruge, who founded the institute back in 1959, tell the stories of their roles in inventing and developing peace research. They reflect on their personal experiences with peace and conflict, tell what drove their peace engagement, and discuss the balance sought in the field between the cold dictates from academic rigor and the hot pursuit of peace, a desire for research to make a positive difference. Most of the chapters are interviews where one colleague interviews another. Some are self-reflective essays, while others are memorial essays written about a peace researcher who has passed away. Taken together, the book presents a lively picture of a thriving world-leading research environment and a wealth of conflicting or mutually reinforcing perspectives on war, violence, conflict, conflict management and resolution, negotiations and mediation, peacemaking, peace building, and the contested concept of peace.“The Oslo Stories is an indispensable source to the history of peace research.”Dr. Olav Njølstad, Director, Nobel Institute, Oslo