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The chapters in this section deal with issues of peace: the relative success of measures that are being used and the mechanisms that need to be considered more systematically. The authors critically discuss various operationalization of violence, and they present challenges and prospects for building peace. The section begins with two chapters by Maya Beasley and Iwan Sujatmiko; they describe attempts by governments to resolve conflicts as a way of establishing peace. Following these, two chapters by Don Eberly and Syed Mansoob Murshed discuss civil society institutions that are important for building peace. The last chapter in this section, by Bandana Purkayastha, discusses activist attempts to mitigate violence and build peace.

The study of armed forces and conflict resolution has undergone important developments at the turn of the millennium and this has occurred not only due to the far-reaching work of scholars in the field, but, as often occurs in the social sciences, has been driven by events and new situations. It is well to recall in this regard that it was precisely the need for knowledge and intervention on the military institution that brought about the groundbreaking work done in the United States by Samuel Stouffer (see Stouffer et al., 1949) and his team after the country had entered into war, a work that gave rise to the contemporary history of sociology applied to armed forces.

Purpose: Since the middle of the 20th century, much of the literature on conflict resolution has focused on ways to manage and diffuse conflicts, but there have been recent efforts to include peacebuilding and sustaining processes in these studies. The discussions on peace have, inevitably, raised questions about the definition of violence: there are dissenting ideas about the boundary between violence and peace. Traditionally, the literature on violence focuses on ethnic conflicts, wars, terrorism, and the results of such armed conflicts. This chapter illustrates other “debates” about violence and peace, by focusing on the discourse and explicit activism “in the field.”

Method: The chapter draws on archival sources for examples of protests, discursive politics, and human rights activism.

Findings: The chapter highlights, the ways in which more conventional ideas about violence, and the boundaries between peace and violence have been challenged. It focuses on women's and women-dominated activism to highlight the role of actors whose explicit and unobtrusive actions are not systematically recognized as we study efforts to build and sustain peace.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how routine violence seeps into the interstices of social life. Routine violence is part of a continuum of violence that extends from intimate violence to large-scale wars. It is gendered/racialized/classed and it is often invisible because it is normalized in everyday life.

Using cases from India we illustrate facets of routine violence and then use the frame to discuss some examples from the United States.

We discuss the social implications of routine violence including the significant harm on large sections of people in today’s world.

We meld theoretical discussions about violence associated with states with scholarship on violence against women; we use Indian activists’ concepts of routine violence and examine routine violence in the United States.

This first part of the book is devoted to the forms of conflict that are characteristic of the start of the twenty-first century. As I document in the first essay, the newest and most significant form of struggle of our times is asymmetric warfare, which has had an enormous development as shown also by the great number of studies dedicated to it (see the bibliographies of the chapters focussed on this form of conflict).

The role of the military in society has a long history beginning with the earliest of human civilizations. Through the ages, kings, tribal leaders and politicians have encouraged their soldiers to fight enemies (real or imaginary) in the name of nationalism, religion, tribal loyalty, ideology, etc. Though the means of fighting the enemy have changed, with primitive weapons replaced by superior technologies, in some societies, particularly in poor, under-developed countries, the same old tools are used. However, there are relatively few wars between the developed countries (excepting the war on terror), and as such the role of soldiers in these societies has changed. In these countries it is peace keeping or peace making, disaster management and similar strategies that most military efforts concern. Further, military recruitment has moved away from models based on conscription, and we see more and more women serving in armed forces. The traditional understanding of the soldier, as an instrument of cruelty and sometimes torture, is being particularly questioned. Sometimes, even soldiers themselves are questioning the need to fight, whom they are fighting, and what they are fighting for. Modern modes of war and peace missions affect the physical and mental health of soldiers even though it is fought with less immediate and more technologically advanced equipment. All of these issues are affecting the social, political and economic fabric of the country tremendously. Accordingly, Military Sociology needs to be looked from broader, interdisciplinary perspectives. The papers in the book, written by distinguished scholars, are focused towards this.