55 Copies of IPRA’s Last Book Shipped to Libraries in Africa, Asia and Latin America

Two new books edited by IPRA members from Mexico (Ursula Oswald Spring and Serena Erendira Serrano Oswald) and Germany (Hans Günter Brauch) were published in February and May 2021:

• Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Brauch, Hans Günter (Eds.) Decolonising Conflicts, Security, Peace, Gender, Environment and Development in the Anthropocene (Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2021);
• Prado de Sousa, Clarilza, Serrano Oswald, Serena Eréndira (Eds.): Social Represen-tations for the Anthropocene: Latin American Perspectives(Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2021).

Ursula Oswald Spring was Secretary General of IPRA (2016-2018) and President of IPRA (1998-2000).  Ursula Oswald Spring and Serena Eréndira Serrano Oswald were both Secretary Generals of the Council of Peace Research in Latin America (CLAIP).

In late May 2021, 55 book gifts of the first IPRA book based on peer-reviewed chapters presented at or written for the IPRA Conference in 2018 in Ahmedabad (India) were sent exclusively to libraries of peace research centres and libraries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to make the research of scholars from the Global South available in their region and to enhance their voice and visibility globally with the second largest global scientific publisher.

In the first book 25 authors from the Global South (19) and the Global North (6) address conflicts, security, peace, gender, environment and development. Four parts cover I) peace research epistemology; II) conflicts, families and vulnerable people; III) peacekeeping, peacebuilding and transitional justice; and IV) peace and education. Part I deals with peace ecology, transformative peace, peaceful societies, Gandhi’s non-violent policy and disobe-dient peace. Part II discusses urban climate change, climate rituals, conflicts in Kenya, the sexual abuse of girls, farmer-herder conflicts in Nigeria, wartime sexual violence facing refugees, the traditional conflict and peace-making process of Kurdish tribes, Hindustani family shame, and communication with Roma. Part III analyses norms of peacekeeping, violent non-state actors in Brazil, the art of peace in Mexico, grass-roots post-conflict peacebuilding in Sulawesi, hydro diplomacy in the Indus River Basin, the Rohingya refugee crisis, and transitional justice. Part IV assesses SDGs and peace in India, peace education in Nepal, and infrastructure-based development and peace in West Papua.

• Peer-reviewed texts prepared for the 27th Conference of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) in 2018 in Ahmedabad in India
• Two pioneers of global peace research: Johan Galtung from Norway wrote a Foreword and Betty Reardon from the United States a Preface
• Innovative case studies by peace researchers on decolonising conflicts, security, peace, gender, environment and development in the Anthropocene, the new epoch of earth and human history
• New theoretical perspectives by senior and junior scholars from Europe and Latin America on peace ecology, transformative peace, peaceful societies, and Gandhi’s non-violence policy
• Case studies on climate change, SDGs and peace in India; conflicts in Kenya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico; Roma in Hungary; the refugee crisis in Bangladesh; peace action in Indonesia and India/Pakistan; and peace education in Nepal

The second book by Clarilza Prado de Sousa (Sao Paulo, Brazil) and Serena Eréndira Serrano Oswald (Cuernavaca, Mexico) brings together original texts on the theory of social representation by Latin American authors that are highly relevant for peace researches trained in social psychology. Its 19 peer-reviewed chapters were translated from Spanish and Portuguese and carefully language edited in English.

The Anthropocene has become a field of studies in which the influence of human activity on the Earth System and nature is both the main threat and the potential solution. Social Representations Theory has been evolving since the 1960s. It links knowledge and practice in everyday life and is an effective way to deal with systemic crises based on common sense. This book assembles key contributions by Latin American scholars working with social representations in the social sciences that are of conceptual relevance to the study of the Anthropocene and that investigate the societal consequences of complex interrelations between common sense and topics of global relevance, such as the contradictions of sustainable development, the construction of risks beyond risk-perception, health, negotiation and governance in the field of education, gender equality, the usefulness of longitudinal and systemic ethnography and case studies, and agency and the link between inequality, crises and risk society in the context of COVID-19, presenting theoretical and methodological innovations from Spanish, Portuguese and French research that have rarely been available in English. 

•         This is the first book to address the relevance of Social Representations Theory for the Anthropocene as a societal era

•         It presents the multidisciplinary scope of Social Representations

•         This book covers emerging research contributions in Social Representations Theory from Latin America

•         This book presents innovative research and commentaries by established researchers in the field

•         This multidisciplinary book should be in the libraries of many disciplines in the social sciences and humanities