Violence, Peace, Peach Research
Journal of Peace Research http://jpr.sagepub.com/
An Editorial
Journal of Peace Research 1964 1: 1 DOI: 10.1177/002234336400100101 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/1/1/1.citation
Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of:
Peace Research Institute Oslo
Journal of Peace Research Replication Data
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>> Version of Record - Jan 1, 1964 What is This?
Downloaded from jpr.sagepub.com by guest on February 24, 2013
AN EDITORIAL
What is peace research a It is highly doubtful whether much would be gained by a heavy intellectual investment in semantic clarification to define a field of research, or to establish criteria for priorities. Clarity may perhaps be obtained in the sense that any piece of research can be classified as peace research or not, but such criteria would at best reflect the state of our knowledge and conceptual framework today. There is the danger that strict definitions may throw a shadow of Today into Tomorrow, freezing the status quo by tying us to perspectives and dimensions that may be outworn very soon. One is reminded of such conceptual borderlines as that drawn between moving and non-moving bodies in physics, defining the former as somehow unreal. Or the tri-partition of animals using ’in the water, on the land or in the air’ as the guideline for scientific progress in zoology. Indispensable tools in one phase may become the strait jacket of the next. Empirical and theoretical research, and conceptual clarification, must go hand in hand, in a pattern of mutual fertilization. On the other hand, the flatness of a naive kind of operationalism, ’peace research is what
An Editorial
Journal of Peace Research 1964 1: 1 DOI: 10.1177/002234336400100101 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/1/1/1.citation
Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of:
Peace Research Institute Oslo
Journal of Peace Research Replication Data
Additional services and information for Journal of Peace Research can be found at: Email Alerts: http://jpr.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://jpr.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
>> Version of Record - Jan 1, 1964 What is This?
Downloaded from jpr.sagepub.com by guest on February 24, 2013
AN EDITORIAL
What is peace research a It is highly doubtful whether much would be gained by a heavy intellectual investment in semantic clarification to define a field of research, or to establish criteria for priorities. Clarity may perhaps be obtained in the sense that any piece of research can be classified as peace research or not, but such criteria would at best reflect the state of our knowledge and conceptual framework today. There is the danger that strict definitions may throw a shadow of Today into Tomorrow, freezing the status quo by tying us to perspectives and dimensions that may be outworn very soon. One is reminded of such conceptual borderlines as that drawn between moving and non-moving bodies in physics, defining the former as somehow unreal. Or the tri-partition of animals using ’in the water, on the land or in the air’ as the guideline for scientific progress in zoology. Indispensable tools in one phase may become the strait jacket of the next. Empirical and theoretical research, and conceptual clarification, must go hand in hand, in a pattern of mutual fertilization. On the other hand, the flatness of a naive kind of operationalism, ’peace research is what