• 'Witch' hunt in contemporary Tanzania : exploring cultural and structural factors leading to violence against women in a Sukuma village 

      Røkke, Mette (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2004)
      The presented work investigates root causes behind contemporary ‘witch’ hunt in Tanzania and is based on a four months research in the region Shinyanga in Tanzania. For many years elderly women in Tanzania’s north-western region have been victims of brutal collective violence, accused of being ‘witches’. While some manage to flee, others are killed in their home villages. The perpetrator is the ...
    • “Dream of the Good” – a peace education project. Exploring its potential to educate for peace at an individual level 

      Sommerfelt, Ole Henning (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2004-06-14)
      This study concerns the Swedish peace education project “The Dream of the Good” (DODG) and explores it’s potential to educate for peace at an individual level. DODG is a holistic, transformative and networking peace project. It aims to inspire for and facilitate education for individual peace in schools at different levels through practical methods based on two key principles: 1) awareness of ...
    • Exploring medical peace education and a call for peace medicine 

      Melf, Klaus (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2005-01-20)
      Medical peace work and peace education are requested and practiced. Experiences in practice and teaching are, however, unstructured and fragmentary; there is a need for a sound and comprehensive theoretical concept. Applying Galtung’s distinction between direct, structural and cultural violence, and between negative and positive peace, the framework of ‘peace medicine’ is presented as a possible new ...
    • 'Peace now' in Israel in search of an alternative identity 

      Ahmetaj, Nora S. (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2005-05)
      Using the perspective of the role of fear in security and identity-based conflicts, I was motivated to investigate in this thesis how peace actors strive to be actively involved in peacemaking in Israel. The main objective of this thesis is to gain insight in the activities of Peace Now in light of the second Intifadah 2000-2004, and disorientation of peace camp. If successful, the results of this ...
    • Virtuous wars and virtual enemies. The construction of self, other, and conflict in Black Hawk Down and other mass media representations 

      Pötzsch, Holger (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2005-06-07)
      The present thesis looks at the relationship between cultures, mass media representations, war, and peace. The main research question is how self, other, and conflict are presented in artefacts of contemporary US popular culture - war and action movies in particular - and what impact such representations have on the attitudes, conceptualisations, and, ultimately, the behaviour of individuals and ...
    • Is gender identity the primary cause of insecurity in the context of trafficking? Country in focus: Ukraine 

      Selivanova, Maryna (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2005-06-09)
      The thesis examines the question of women trafficking arguing that taking gender lenses and offering human security framework will provide an important angle for examining the problem. It takes Ukraine as a case study and suggests that inbuilt in the Ukrainian society gender inequalities which reproduce gender identities is a major factor contributing to women’s insecurity on the one hand and making ...
    • Theorizing peace education. A theoretical survey of the practice of peace education 

      Thoresen, Alberto Valiente (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2005-06-17)
      This theoretical investigation presents Peace Education as a group of deliberate human activities that consist on teaching and learning about and for positive peace. It addresses conceptual issues concerning the structures and dynamisms of this field of human activity. Although this effort assumes a humble attitude toward the conceptual controversies it presents, it highlights that effective practice ...
    • New clothes but old demons. European antisemitism from Christianity to progressive left wing milieu 

      Appelbaum, Amir (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2005-11-08)
      Is there one root, and one infrastructure under the hatred of Israel, since the late 19th century, called antisemitism? Can we dare and raise such a question with regard to a phenomenon so prolonged in time and so diversified in its appearances and explanations – a human phenomenon which started as early as the charge of deicide, and which is present during a couple of thousands of years, as steady ...
    • The fight against domestic violence in East Timor. Forgetting the perpetrators 

      Bye, Hanne Hovde (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2005-12-14)
      War is an extreme situation where nationalism and solidarity are decisive factors. With peace in East Timor, men and women are returning back to daily life, but whereas men are expecting to return to the more traditional way of living, women – having adapted to a new way of living and often have become more independent – seem to want to expand on the new roles they gained during the occupation. ...
    • Skolemobbing. Fred og ufred i et flerkulturelt område i Nord-Norge 

      Breivik, Reidar (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2005-12-16)
      Dette arbeidet handler om skolemobbing i en lokal kontekst. De egentlige drivkreftene til mobbing er vanskelig å avdekke i sin helhet, men her kan det fastslås at mobbing er handlinger som må karakteriseres under begrepet vold. Vold er det motsatte av fred. Vold i sin meste ekstreme form er krig. Fredsbegrepet har historisk blitt relatert til krigshandlinger mellom nasjoner. I min søken etter ...
    • The identity conflict of the Csango minority from Romania 

      Borit, Cornel (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2006)
      <p>In the eastern province of Romania, also called Moldavia, lives a minority group of nearly a quarter of a million people named Csangoes, designated by the religious allegiance to the Roman-Catholic Church, and the use of Hungarian language as mother tongue by approximatively 60 000 people. The common literature of the last period has launched the idea that the Csangoes represent a mysterious ...
    • Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. A discourse analysis of President George W. Bush's declared war on terrorism. 

      Solheim, Silje (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2006-06-09)
      The focus of my thesis is how the ‘war on terrorism’ was discursively constructed as the appropriate response to the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001. To answer this research question, a discourse analysis was undertaken of six of President George W. Bush’s speeches and one official strategy document by the Bush administration. The background for my thesis is that the US ...
    • Divided societies and ethno-regional antagonisms: “A study of the social interaction between Anglophone North Westerners and South Westerners resident in Buea, South West Cameroon”. 

      Arrey, William Hermann (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2006-06-09)
      This thesis comes at a time when there is much talk on democratic deficit and questions concerning whether and how cultural groups should be recognized in politics in ethnically divided societies. The study therefore uses the Anglophone Cameroon North West/South West ethno-regional divide as an entry point to contribute to this issue of global concern. By employing a variety of research techniques ...
    • International accompaniment in violent scenarios. A performative reading of Peace Brigades International in Colombia 

      Fabra Mata, Javier (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2006-06-15)
      Since its first application in Central America in the 1980s, the practice of nonviolent international accompaniment of civil society members threatened with political violence has undergone substantial growth. This thesis provides an understanding of protective international accompaniment as a communicative phenomenon. It shows the intricate dynamics of international accompaniment and its impact on ...
    • The internal dynamics of a non-state conflict actor. The organisational resources and internal legitimacy of the FARC-EP in Colombia 

      Borch, Guri Waalen (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2006-11-16)
      Being the largest guerrilla group in Colombia and entitled the richest guerrilla group of the world, the FARC-EP constitutes the most important non-state conflict actor of the Colombian internal conflict. In recent years it has been recognised in conflict research that non-state actors must be taken seriously if we want to understand today’s internal conflicts. This is the starting point for my ...
    • From horror story to manageable risk. Formulating safety strategies for peace researchers 

      Meyer, Scott D. (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2007-06-11)
      Research in the social sciences, and specifically peace studies, often utilizes fieldwork as a method to collect data. During this process, researchers are exposed to a variety of safety risks from the ambient fieldwork setting that they are often unprepared to deal with. This thesis argues that researchers and their sending institutions should do a better job of managing risks in the field, ...
    • "Strategic Firmness - Tactical Flexibility". Why did the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) decide to join the peace process? 

      Bragtvedt, Stian (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2007-06-18)
      This paper looks into the reasons for the Nepali Maoists’ decision to join the peace process. Nepal, a country of 27 million inhabitants and squeezed in between India and China, was engulfed in a civil war between 1996 and 2006, that cost the lives of over 13000 people. In 2005 King Gyanendra assumed full power in a coup, and vowed to restore peace. The response was an alliance between the Maoists ...
    • Playing to win or playing for empowerment? An analysis of a Namibian team participating in the Norway Cup-project 

      Bjertnæs, Hanne (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2007-06-18)
      In recent years, the value of sport as an important and useful tool in peace and development work has been increasingly recognized. The Norway Cup-project is one of Norway’s largest sport for development projects, and uses the Norway Cup-tournament as an arena for teams from developing countries to strengthen projects in their home communities through empowerment of the participants. This thesis ...
    • From friends to enemies : inter-ethnic conflict amongst the Tikars of the Bamenda Grassfields (North West Province of Cameroon) c. 1950-1998 

      Tangie, Evelyn Ngengong (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2007-11-01)
      Ethnic conflicts in the Bamenda grassfields became common occurrences at the advent of the Chamba raids in the 1820s. Despite the presence of such conflicts, few scholarly works have been done. This lack of material provided a motivation for this study – “From Friends to Enemies: Inter-Ethnic conflict amongst the Tikars of the Bamenda Grassfields (North West Province of Cameroon) C. 1950-1998”. The ...
    • The dynamics of communal conflicts in Ghana's local government system : a case study of the Adaklu-Anyigbe conflict 

      Gati, Noble Kwabla (Master thesis; Mastergradsoppgave, 2008-06)
      The recent flaring up of conflicts along ethnic lines in various communities in the Ghanaian society is a source of worry among responsible politicians and citizens as it could threaten the relative peace and stability that the country seems to be enjoying. This study seeks to investigate the causes, processes of escalation and dynamics of recent emerging disputes over the creation of District ...