Elise Boulding died last week. She was an activist, sociologist, mother, feminist, Norwegian-American, author, Quaker, wife to a famous economist-poet, professor, a founder in the field of Peace & Conflict Studies …and much more.
A brief reminiscence from someone who only knew her in passing: When I was a 20-something intern in mediation, I attended the first National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution (1983, I believe). Elise Boulding was the keynote speaker. I got up the nerve to speak with her–and as we sat in the coffee shop, two important things happened. The first was that she agreed to write the forward for my book Peacemaking in your Neighborhood. If it weren’t for her endorsement we probably would have sold 300 copies!
The second was a small thing…. As we were talking, the conference organizers swept by, expecting her to come join them for lunch. She declined, and after they left she said with a twinkle, “you know I always avoid the important people at conferences. I like to talk to the 20 and 30 year-olds who are doing the new and interesting work.” At conferences I have tried to follow her example ever since (one notable set of coffee shop conversations was with the nannies of famous anthropologist mothers, but that’s not a tale for a mediation blog
The final night of the conference, Elise Boulding got up to speak, looked down the stage with its row of men and one woman (the organizer), gazed out into the full hall. She observed that a good majority of the attendees were women. While all week long the speakers been men. Women are given the role of peacemakers in many societies, she said, they are the experts in how to do this work of resolving conflict. The stage should be full of them! The audience burst into wild cheers. And to give all of us in the field credit, many women have come crowding onto the stage since then. Thank you Elise!
The beginning of Elise Boulding’s Forward for Peacemaking in your Neighborhood:
If you have felt discouraged about prospects for world peace lately (and who hasn’t), this is a wonderfully affirming book to read. It talks about where peace begins–in one’s own neighborhood. It recounts how one group launched a peacemaking project in that most unpromising of all settings, the fringes of a city, and saw that project take root there.
Conflict, we know, is everywhere. It is in our own inner being, it is present in our relationships even with those we love most. Wherever human beings are in relationship, in the home, at work, in civic affairs, in political decision-making, and in the macro-institutions of state and world, they to some degree clash with each other. Each I has unique wants, needs, interests, and perceptions, as does each social group, in a conglomerate of uniquenesses which is staggering to the mind if we think of the number of conflictual interactions taking place at any one moment on the planet. Out of this conflict can come human growth and development, or destruction. The quality of any human group, institution, or society depends on how that conflict is handled.



