The Mediator's Handbook for Durable Peace

By Evan Hoffman - 2010

This handbook examines the question of how mediators can improve the prospects that durable peace will follow from a mediation process. Agreement design, spoiler management, and managing the parties' power dynamics at and away from the table are topics of special interest in this handbook as they are of primary concern to ensuring that an agreement will endure and durable peace will flourish. An original model of durable peace is presented plus numerous practical tactics for designing good agreements, managing spoilers, and chanelling the parties' power struggle into nonviolent mechanisms and processes.

Peace Guerilla: Unarmed and in Harms Way, My Obsession with Ending Violence

By Ben Hoffman - 2010

Peace Guerilla is a vivid memoir that illuminates the process of dealing with fearsome brutal leaders one would be afraid to have dinner with - and why we should do so. There is tension when Hoffman, as President Jimmy Carter's representative, travels deep into the African bush in Sudan to meet face to face with Joseph Kony, a violent war lord who was abducting children in Uganda to be soldiers in his Lord's Resistance Army and terrorizing the population. There are insights on every page on topics ranging from negotiating techniques, US diplomacy, and the emotional, intellectual and technical effort required to mediate high-stakes peace agreements. And there is the heartbreak of failure and its tragic consequences.Hoffman discovers that a mediator must discard neutrality in favour of a bias for peaceful agreement. A mediator must wage peace with the same intensity and creative tactics as the guerilla fighter pursues violent domination. At the heart of it all is the challenge of transforming power from violence to peace; and that in turn brings our values into sharp focus. Peace Guerilla is exciting, instructive, and conveys a sense of immediacy which is nearly cinematic. Some parts of Ben Hoffman's story will be featured in the upcoming Hollywood movie Girl Solider.

The Peace Guerilla Handbook

By Ben Hoffman - 2007

This Handbook is for anyone charged with the task of preventing political violence or with building peace. The Handbook puts flesh on the bones of commonly recited 'best practices' for peacebuilding: that action be theory informed, holistic, comprehensive, collaborative, facilitative, and sustained. It goes further, calling upon the peacebuilder to apply unconventional methodologies in an ever-vigilant effort to remove violence and to build the conditions in society that will make positive peace sustainable.

Cost: $11.00 Cdn. + $2 Shipping and Handling ($3.50 for U.S. customers and $4.50 for international orders). Orders of 2 or more books are invoiced on a per cost basis.

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1+1=3: New Math for Human Relations

By Ben Hoffman - 2003

A novel approach using the metaphor of math to present concepts such as power, synergy, and humanity's potential of living at The Creative Power Frontier by moving on a"power axis" from forms of "power over" to "power with". The reader is introduced as being number "1". There are other 1s and the mystery of life is symbolized by the number 0. The Power Axis (developed in a Ph.D. thesis on forms of power in war and peace) is presented in personal and spiritual terms, taking into account "1's" orientation to creation, self and others. A non-religious, humanist case is made for overcoming alientation from creation and other "1s," and in doing so, finding the synergy possible in human relationships. How to move on the Power Axis from "power over" to "power with" is addressed in the Alchemy of Power. The critical issue of whether there is a moral imperative for humanity ("what ought 1 to do?") is addressed affirmatively in the chapter, The Ought of 1. A section at the end called "exercises" is less stereotyped than these tend to be, offering tasks that help guide the reader through a number of stages of existential and consciousness-raising experiences. Short, uncluttered, innovative.

Cost: $10.00 Canadian + S&H, GST Included.

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