CfP for the Annual Conference of Millenium: Peace in International Relations

The annual conference of Millennium: Journal of International Studies will take place on 20-21 October 2007 at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The conference will explore the concept of peace in International Relations (IR).

The annual conference of Millennium: Journal of International Studies will take place on 20-21 October 2007 at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The conference will explore the concept of peace in International Relations (IR).
The formative purpose of IR was not simply to understand the problem of war and prevent its reoccurrence, but to cultivate the conditions for peace. Over time this concern has been lost. The field of peace studies flourishes, but is somewhat detached from the core of IR theory. Consequently, peace has become under-theorised within IR, and is addressed only tangentially in mainstream IR debates. The most prominent engagement with the concept of peace in recent IR scholarship, Democratic Peace Theory, simply defines peace as the absence of intentions for war. This conference aims to bring peace back in to the discipline, while providing a more sophisticated conceptualisation of what peace might mean beyond the absence of interstate war. Yet the relationship between war and peace must not be ignored. An expanded notion of peace cannot lose sight of the paradoxical notion of making peace through war, a feature of international politics from the Pax Romana to wars of humanitarian intervention. The purpose of the conference is to provoke discussion and debate with a view to arriving at a richer understanding of peace and, in the process, to recapture a concept once at the heart of IR.
Key questions to consider are:
- What does peace mean today?
- How has the concept of peace developed over time?
- Who can make peace?
- Should peace be the ultimate aim of IR?
A selection of the conference papers will be published in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, vol. 36, no. 3.
Deadline for abstracts is 15 April 2007.
For submissions details contact: The Editors, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, LSE, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK; Tel: +44 (0)20 7955 6232; Fax: +44 (0)20 7955 7438
Email: millennium@lse.ac.uk