ISA 2011

ISA is over, and a good share of the PRIO crowd has already crossed the ocean. The 2011 Annual Convention was a good event for PRIO, where both the institute and our researchers were very visible in a variety of fora – including panels, roundtables, organizing committees, receptions – and of course all sorts of corridor encounters and meetings at the fringes. I was unfortunate to have to leave before the annual PRIO-Uppsala dinner, which took place on Saturday night, but would be surprised if it was not as nice an event as always. I was even more unfortunate to have missed the editorial board meeting of Security Dialogue, for the very simple reason that my airplane seat had been allocated to others (admittedly, I was late…). I could join the group for dinner, and learnt that it had been a good meeting.

The PRIO reception on Friday was also a great success, with a packed room. It speaks volumes about PRIO’s position that we could play a central role in two receptions at ISA (the first one honoring Nils Petter’s editorship, hosted by Sage), both with enormous turnout, good atmosphere and productive intellectual exchanges (not that I overheard them all). Even though the bar closed at 8 p.m. sharp, the last guests left just short of an hour later.


Ladies and gentlemen, Friends of PRIO,

Welcome to this reception, which is an occasion to celebrate PRIO, the Peace Research Institute Oslo, our collaborators and supporters throughout the world – and not the least our joint achievements. If it also serves to renew old and establish new friendships – to have a good time - all the better.

My name is Kristian Berg Harpviken; I am the director of PRIO since mid-2009. Joining PRIO first in 1993 while writing my M. Phil. Dissertation – on armed groups in Afghanistan – I am not any more a freshman at the institute. To my mind, being PRIO director is the best job in the world.

Why would PRIO treat itself with a reception during the annual ISA convention? First of all, because for many of us at PRIO, the annual ISA conventions are really a home away from home. At PRIO premises in Oslo, the only other time in the year that the corridors are equally empty must be during the X-mas break. This year, some 40% of our academics are here. A majority with backgrounds in political science and IR, we also have anthropologists, demographers, historians, human geographers, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists. This also explains why PRIOites are so engaged in the running of ISA. PRIO veteran Nils Petter Gleditsch’ contributions to ISA – including his service as ISA president 2008-2009 – is perhaps the most outstanding example, but it is by no means the only one, and it is a tradition that we will uphold.

In 2009, PRIO celebrated its 50th anniversary. At the ISA convention in New York, we hosted a reception. The anniversary was a great occasion to look back, to examine the development of peace research and our own contributions to it, and to look towards the future. We believe we are well positioned to uphold our role as we move towards our first centenary celebration. The world has changed, and so has peace research: in its substantial foci, in its methodological approaches, as well as in its engagement with a variety of actors and its role in the public debate.

Complementing this reception, we hosted a roundtable on peace research on Wednesday, with four great introductions – by Christian Davenport, Glenn Palmer, Michael Brzozka and Ole Wæver. Under the title ‘Is there a political agenda in Peace Resarch?’, the discussion highlighted considerable differences in what peace research is about, and where it should aim. The standard self-identification is that peace research, while committed to the highest disciplinary standards, is driven by a unique moral commitment. This was questioned. So was the attempt to define peace research as a thing apart, be that by drawing boundaries that distinguishes it as a discipline, or by defining a core that is particular to peace research. Some suggested that the best contributions of peace research have - over time – been adopted in IR, security studies and other areas. Peace research, it was suggested, has served to cultivate – and to incubate - the new ideas, directions and approaches that come to characterize the study of war and peace more generally. That way, we move from defending the boundaries towards offensively imposing ourselves on the larger academic world. That seems to me a very worthwhile vision.

Most of you here know PRIO. As one good colleague remarked earlier today, it seems remarkable how everybody that does interesting work on peace and conflict seem to be passing through Oslo and PRIO. Let me mention a couple of current highlights:
* You know our two journals, the Journal of Peace Research and Security Dialogue. In 2009, both of them were on the top ten list of IR journals – ranked by the 2 years impact factor.
* In 2011, one of our main efforts will be the launching of a research school in peace and conflict studies, in collaboration with the University of Oslo and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, which will be educating the new generation of scholars in this area. Twelve students have been accepted, we have the official launch on 11 April.
* Then, there are certain things you cannot say yourself. In the almost fresh off the press International Studies Encyclopedia, published jointly by ISA and Blackwell, there is an entry on ‘Peace Research’, written by Carolyn Stephenson. It has a list of institutions at the end. In the entry on our institute, it is suggested that PRIO is ‘probably the world’s premier peace research institute’. No wonder we are so fond of ISA.

As we are reminded, even as we engage intellectually here in Montreal, the real world is in motion. The implementation of a non-fly zone over Libya shall be interesting to follow, and may prove no less monumental than the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Other countries in the Middle East have seen non-violent protest movements, in no large measure attributed to the influence of Gene Sharp, who in fact spent the end of the 1950s – overseeing the birth of PRIO – in Oslo. Sharp still cites the non-violent protests of the Norwegian teachers during World War II as a prime source of inspiration. An emergent body of research suggests that protest movements who adopt non-violent tactics have generally been more successful than those that use violence. I am glad that we already last year assembled a team to work on the outcomes for protest movements that choose non-violent tactics.

And non-violent it shall remain here tonight. Stay on, have a good time. Let me propose a toast to ISA, to PRIO, and to the relationship between the two. Let me also include, in that toast, each and every one of you!