Peaceweaving

• Date: 01 April 2017
• Author: Joseph Soeters,Patricia M. Shields
• Published date: 01 April 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/0275074015589629
• Subject Matter: Articles

American Review of Public Administration

2017, Vol. 47(3) 323 –339

© The Author(s) 2015

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DOI: 10.1177/0275074015589629

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Article

Peaceweaving: Jane Addams,

Positive Peace, and Public

Administration

Patricia M. Shields1 and Joseph Soeters2,3

Abstract

Beginning with the odd finding that “peace research is just the study of war,” this article

explores “positive peace” as an important yet neglected notion in public administration. It does

this by examining the ideas of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jane Addams, a pioneer in public

administration and peace theory. More than 100 years ago, Addams refined an expansive notion

of peace that incorporated social justice and social equity. Addams’s feminist, pragmatist ideas of

peace, which we call peaceweaving, emerged from her critique of municipal government and her

experience as a settlement worker in Chicago. Her ideas are placed in historical context, and

applied to an essential problem facing contemporary peace operations, which is how to prepare

troops and other state agents for the seemingly contradictory demands that come along with

today’s security problems, both intra- and internationally.

Keywords

positive peace, Jane Addams, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, ambidexterity

Introduction

Ideas seem so unreal, so powerless, before the vast physical force of the military masses today; it is easy

to forget that it is only ideas that created that force and that keep it in action. (Balch, 1915/2003, p. 47)

“Peace Research—Just the Study of War?” the title of a 2014 bibliometric study in the highly

ranked Journal of Peace Research reveals a surreal trend. The “Just the Study of War” article

graphically illustrates that mainstream peace research has primarily become an examination of

war. This finding is, in part, attributed to the dominance of a negative definition (the absence of

war) in the conceptualization of peace (Gleditsch, Nordkvelle, & Strand, 2014, p. 145). The

absence of war definition is easily operationalized and studied using impressive databases and

applied to sophisticated, quantitative methods. Also, perhaps the state of war makes its absence,

or peace, an imperative in a way that reducing ongoing societal structural violence (an early

1Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA

2Netherlands Defense Academy, Breda, The Netherlands

3Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Corresponding Author:

Patricia M. Shields, Department of Political Science, Texas State University, 601 University Drive, San Marcos, TX,

USA.

Email: Ps07@txstate.edu

589629ARPXXX10.1177/0275074015589629American Review of Public AdministrationShields and Soeters

research-article2015

324 American Review of Public Administration 47(3)

component in the definition of positive peace) would not. To change this situation, this article

explores “positive peace” as an important yet neglected notion in peace research as much as in

public administration.

Of course, peace researchers acknowledge the value of a positive definition. Galtung (1969)

and others have recognized the temporal and process orientation of peace. In a society at war, the

first stage of peace begins as the end of personal violence and absence of war (negative peace).

In the next stage, a stronger society would emerge with communities that sustain freedom, social

equity, social justice, cooperation, and so on (e.g., positive peace). Furthermore, a state of peace

cannot be placed in a neat rational continuum beginning with negative peace and ending with

positive peace. War and violent conflict are messy; the two types of peace overlap and are seldom

clearly separated. Positive peace is itself complicated and demarcated as a continuum because a

community may not be at war, yet filled with structural violence and militarism. This community

could be wrestling with creating a positive peace. It is obvious on its face that public administra-

tion should be part of the fabric of positive peace.

Given the dominance of the negative definition of peace, it is not surprising that peace is an

idea mostly missing from public administration discourse.1 We argue, however, that positive

peace is a conceptualization well suited to public administration. The ideal of positive peace

incorporates social justice, social equity, cooperation, community engagement, collaboration,

effective-governance, and democracy. This less well-articulated and studied notion of peace also

deals with the underlying social mechanisms that reinforce positive relationships, be they

between or within members of a family, tribe, city, or nations. Positive peace is both a process

and an end-in-view. One of Jane Addams’s insights is that peace is uneven. Her analysis of the

remnants of militarism in the city government is an example of this unevenness (Addams,

1907/2007). The notion of positive peace is perhaps latent found in closely related, prominent

Public Administration concepts such as social equity and social justice.2

We argue that the ideas of Jane Addams offer a useful avenue to begin exploring the notion of

positive peace in public administration. Jane Addams is chosen because her experience and ideas

emerge from a public administration setting. First, her ideas incorporate municipal governance

practice (Addams, 1907/2007). Second, she was a leader in the moral progressive era reform

movement that shaped social welfare policy (Skocpol, 1995; Stillman, 1998). Third, her experi-

ence directing an effective non-profit organization and her activity as a public administrator

shaped her ideas of peace (Addams, 1910/1990). Fourth, her many books on peace, sustained

peace activism, and recognition via the Nobel Peace Prize give her the credentials needed to be

proclaimed as a peace theorist and peace practitioner (Hamington, 2009).3

We are not suggesting that Addams’s ideas are perfect or that other philosophers, public fig-

ures, scholars, or even religious leaders such as Dewey, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Tolstoy, or

Jesus do not also have much to offer. Rather, Addams’s ideas are a kind of threshold into a pos-

sible larger investigation. For a variety of reasons that will be clear as the article unfolds, we

summarize her key insights into peace by the term “peaceweaving.”

Our purpose is to bring the concept of positive peace into public administration discourse. To

do this, we place Addams in a historical context and critically examine her ideas of peace. Her

feminist pragmatist ideals of positive peace will be shown to have links to the administrative

challenges of the municipal government in the 1890s and early 1900s. Subsequently, we focus on

the relevance of her ideas in today’s immigration policies, city policing, and, particularly, inter-

national peacekeeping missions, as these are arenas with obvious applications to ideas of peace.

We need look no further than the title “Peace” Officer given to the municipal police to see the

connection between peace and city government. Traditionally, border control agencies and police

organizations have been assigned the task of keeping the peace in everyday society (e.g., Bittner,

1967; Wilson, 1968). Contemporary scholars voice concerns over the blurring of local police and

military functions, suggesting her insights retain currency (Campbell & Campbell, 2009).