Getting Clues About Peaceful Societies
an article by Tony Dominski

Over the past few days, I spent blissful hours reviewing the Peaceful Societies website. Launched last month on January 20, 2005, Inauguration Day, it showcases two dozen societies that profess and practice non-violence as a cultural value. These societies represent a broad geographic range from Tahiti to the Arctic, from Nepal to Central Africa, and include the Amish and Hutterites in the United States.

The website is organized as an encyclopedia with basis facts of each culture: population, economy, beliefs, gender relations, child rearing, cooperation and competition, social control, and ways to avoid conflict and warfare. It was fascinating and encouraging to see how many different cultural routes lead to non-violence.

The experience of peaceful cultures provides a stark contrast to U.S. conditions. The website recounts an amazing cultural exchange of the Ifaluk of Micronesia with United States Navy vessels who visited their island after WWII. The sailors showed American films to the Ifaluk. Unfortunately, the violence displayed in those films--people being beaten and shot--panicked the islanders, terrifying some into illnesses that lasted for days.

The Peaceful Societies website does not claim that any of the cultures are models for others to follow. Rather it intends that the study of peaceful cultures could provide tantalizing clues to how a culture of peace might be created. To me, the website is an inspiring demonstration of how the science of anthropology could be used to advance the Culture of Peace.

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Are nonkilling societies possible?


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NON-VIOLENCE

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I wanted to pass on some good news found in Christian Science Monitor, 1/12/07: "The number of conflicts in Africa has dropped to just five in 2005, from a peak of 16 in 2002."
Ann McLaughlin, Director, NGOabroad

This report was posted on March 8, 2005. The moderator is Danielle.

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