Views from the Social Sciences.- Learning from Extant Cultures of Peace.- Political Economy of Peace.- War in Peace: Cultural Regulation of the Construction-Destruction Dynamic.- Culture Change: A Practical Method with a Theoretical Basis.- The Paradigm Challenge of Political Science: Delegitimizing the Recourse to Violence.- Assessing the Peacefulness of Cultures.- Building the Eight Bases for a Culture of Peace.- Peace Education: Its Nature, Nurture and the Challenges It Faces.- Gender Equality and a Culture of Peace.- Social Cohesion and Tolerance for Group Differences.- Democratic Participation.- Open Communication.- Human Rights and Peacebuilding.- International Security.- Sustainable Development.- Tools for Building Cultures of Peace.- Nonviolent Action, Trust and Building a Culture of Peace.- Negotiation and the Shadow of Law.- Deliberate Dialogue.- Restorative Justice and Prison Reform.- Police Oversight.- Personal Transformations Needed for Cultures of Peace.- Achieving Peace in the Family.- Participatory Approaches to Community Change: Building Cooperation through Dialogue and Negotiation Using Participatory Rural Appraisal.- Community Reconciliation and Post-Conflict Reconstruction for Peace.- Reconciliation as a Foundation of Culture of Peace.- Using the Tools to Build the UN Bases.

Joseph de Rivera is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Peace Studies Program at Clark University. He attended Bowdoin College, graduated from Yale, served in the Navy Medical Service Corps, and received his doctorate from Stanford University. His area of research focuses on the experience of nuclear weapons, peace fairs, and the emotional motivation of righteous behavior.

Mediation and negotiation, personal transformation, non-violent struggle in the community and the world: these behaviors-and their underlying values-underpin the United Nations' definition of a culture of peace, and are crucial to the creation of such a culture. The Handbook on Building Cultures of Peace addresses this complex and daunting task by presenting an accessible blueprint for this development. Its perspectives are international and interdisciplinary, involving the developing as well as the developed world, with illustrations of states and citizens using peace-based values to create progress on the individual, community, national, and global levels. The result is both realistic and visionary, a prescription for a secure future.

A sampling of topics covered in the Handbook:

• Basic components of a culture of peace (including education, tolerance, gender equality, human rights, and sustainable development), and how each strengthens the whole.


• The politics and socioeconomics of a culture of peace.


• The relationship of personal to cultural change.


• Applying peace concepts in the law enforcement, justice, and prison systems.


• Community reconciliation and post-conflict reconstruction.


• Achieving peace in the family.


• Assessing-and learning from-modern cultures of peace.

Global in scope and far-reaching in its analysis, the Handbook on Building Cultures of Peace is a source of real-world ideas and lucid insights to enhance the work of social and peace psychologists, policy analysts, and the studies of graduate students in psychology and sociology.