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ADVANCING NONVIOLENCE AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON NONVIOLENT THEORIES Heather Eaton and Lauren Michelle Levesque (Editors) Sheffield, UK: Equinox Publishing 380 pages, paper, [pounds sterling]22.95 / $29.95 This volume [...]

CHAMPIONS FOR PEACE: WOMEN WINNERS OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE (2nd EDITION) Judith Hicks Stiehm Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014 277 pages, Hardback $50.00 What lessons do the lives [...]

The authors examine how the U.S. peace movement responded to the Bush administration's attempts to generate and capitalize on a heightened sense of threat after the 9/11 attacks. Longitudinal analysis of statements by U.S. peace movement organizations issued before and after 9/11 indicates that the movement's discourse is both ideologically consistent and contextually adaptive. In each period, movement discourse highlighted the U.S. government as a source of threat and people living outside of the United States as the targets of that threat. Nonetheless, the movement's discourse changed significantly in the exacerbated climate of fear in the first 4 months after the 9/11 attacks and then began to revert to pre-9/11 patterns during the Iraq War when the salience of threat declined. This research significantly advances knowledge of social movement discourse by establishing that ideological consistency and contextual adaptation are not mutually exclusive, by highlighting the contextual and dialogical factors that encourage certain types of movement responses to dominant discourses, and by explaining the role of emotional work in mobilizing dissent. Keywords: social movements; peace movement; discourse; emotions; September 11; United States of America

An annotated bibliography of resources on conflict, peace and justice provides a teaching and curriculum development tool for women's studies and peace studies. The bibliography, which consists of books, chapters in books and articles, is divided into eight categories. These are: general overview; education and feminist social change; women: war, conflict and violence; masculinity and militarism; women and nonviolence; women organizing for peace and justice; and feminist peace research and conflict resolution. All categories include additional resources.

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses various topics within the issue including multidimensional approach to intersectionality, balance of powers in groups, and intersectionality and social change.

The article examine the ways that the integration of peace culture theory, green jobs and ideas about environmentally sustainable development could be used to guide the development of green economies within a framework of social justice. A discussion of the ways that the principles of peace culture and community empowerment could be used to help develop green economies is presented. Changes of policies which would have to be implemented in order to have the principles of peace culture theory and sustainable development merge successfully are discussed.

In the days following the tragic events of September 11, U.S. peace movement organizations (PMOs) found themselves operating in a difficult political climate. For the government, the mainstream media and the general public, "citizen," "patriot" and "retaliation" merged into a single "American" identity so that many felt that the nation and its way of life were at risk and that war was an appropriate response to the "new threat." Since then the mistaken hyperbole of an "everything has changed" approach to understanding September 11 has permeated most discussions of the event. While the extent of change is exaggerated, it is nonetheless true that significant shifts occurred in the political landscape in both domestic and foreign policy. In addition, relatively simplistic understandings of patriotism gained even more credence than usual in the U.S., and policy dissent was denigrated and more easily branded as unpatriotic. A long-range and comparative approach to history shows that many of these political developments are predictable and relatively common when a state comes under attack on its home soil. But owing partly to the United States' placement as the world's lone military superpower and its imperial policies in a globalized economy, the attacks of September 11, 2001 also deeply influenced how Americans understand themselves and perceive their relationships to the rest of the world. For example, the false insularity that most Americans had long taken for granted was suddenly threatened. The Bush administration easily exploited this, rallying support for a policy of a permanent war economy, aggressive military retaliation, pre-emptive attacks abroad and civil liberty suppression at home. At the core was a call to intensely nationalistic patriotism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the multiple tensions that a consensus-based group faced trying to balance the need for business sustainability with their ideological commitments to consensus processes, empowerment of women, and a deep, normative commitment to encouraging and honoring the claims-making by the women within the group. This study of a small business, collectively owned and operated by women, expands the understanding of collective process by analyzing the relationship between democratic participation and the nature of the organization as socially constructed through the claims-making activities of its members. The study highlights the dissonance the group repeatedly experienced between being a successful economic collective. The collective embraced both consensus decision making and the creation of an empowering business space where each woman could find her own voice as a business partner while making individual claims on the group. This combination of normative commitments eventually created a host of competing claims, not all of which could be met by the collective while remaining a viable business venture.

The article discusses various papers published in this issue including one by Paula Cueller on the application of the concept of 'the right to truth' in domestic court cases, one by Ciara McHugh on the relationship between gender, violence and language, and Muriel Schmid on peace activism and the balance between peace and justice.

The article discusses the assessment's role in establishing a student-centered curriculum as employed by the Syracuse University (SU). The Department of Sociology directed an institutional response to the recent ideology of SU, that of being a research university, by systematizing the structure of teaching and learning in the classroom. In spite of the difficulty in assessing students' critical thinking, it brings a vital role in the teaching process and in the foundation of curriculum reforms.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including non-profit peacemaking organizations, leadership and structure, and mountaintop-removal coal mining.