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Few words are so often used & abused as the word ,peace.' Thus, when efforts are made to plead almost any kind of policy, then it is often asserted that that policy, in addition to other merits, will also serve the cause of peace. This practice is not necessarily harmful. By projecting an image of harmony of interests, the term 'peace' may also help bring about such a harmony. One may object that frequent use of the word gives an unrealistic image of the world, but leaving aside this ` major argument for the moment, it is obvious that some level of precision is necessary for the term to serve as a cognitive tool. To discuss the idea of peace, one may start from 3 simple principles: (1) The term 'peace' shall be used for soc goals at least verbally agreed to by many, if not necessarily by most. (2) These soc goals may be complex & difficult, but not impossible, to attain. (3) The statement 'peace is absence of violence' shall be retained as valid. Everything now hinges on making a definition of 'violence.' However, it is not so important to arrive at anything like the definition, or the typology, for there are obviously many diff types of violence. More important is to indicate theoretically signif dimensions of violence that can lead thinking, res &, potentially, action, towards the most important problems. IPSA.

Despite the proliferation in recent years of scholarly journals, university and college departments and research institutes dealing with peace studies, it would be difficult to conclude that this area of academic enquiry is as yet firmly established in the wider field of International Relations. It may well be, as one sympathetic writer noted recently, that peace research is 'alive, vigorous, rapidly maturing and producing a good deal of work conforming to the tenets of social science'. At the same time it remains a fairly new field and one which, over the years, has suffered, and continues to suffer, from internal disputes, particularly about substance and values. In some respects these debates and controversies are a sign of intellectual vigour. It must also be said, however, that in the past the 'lack of agreed focus and definition ideological divisions, competing disciplinary biasses, ambiguities of priorities and purposes', have led to 'an unhealthy confusion and mystification of issues' which has helped to prevent its wider acceptance within the academic field.

Peace may be conceived of not only as the absence of physical or structural violence, but also positively as harmony between culture and structure. In that case, the values of a society must be known in order for us to assess the degree of peace. Since 'small peace' presupposes a shared symbolic reality, most instances existing today are small — e. g., religious communities — and 'world peace' will have to consist of a multitude of 'small peaces', which may also contain what the outsider will define as structural violence.

Contents: The transformation of the Nobel Peace Prize, by Irwin Abrams; Norway and the Peace Prize, by Jakob Sverdrup.