Resources for Peace
An Interdisciplinary Conference for Faculty and Students
Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater and
The Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Thursday and Friday, April 10-11, 2014
at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater
The Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and UW–Whitewater are pleased to invite faculty members and students, as well as the public, to a joint conference to explore Resources for Peace. Resources are goods, symbolic as well as material. Resources like oil, water, metals and food are in shrinking supply and inequitably distributed. Many wars are fought over these natural resources and experts predict increasing global competition. This can often contribute to the sacrifice of social resources like education and healthcare. Most disturbing, personal resources and loved ones have always been and continue to be lost in wars.
· What needs to change for the world to shift to a sustainable and peaceful economy?
· Are there more effective or other approaches to the distribution of resources that are less prone to war?
· What moral and cultural resources may be mobilized for such change?
· Or does an increasingly contested globalization ultimately mean a shrinking humanism as imagined in dystopian novels and films?
We have called for proposals that provide an analysis of conflicts caused by shrinking resources, or that explore human resources and cultural dynamics which could contribute to an understanding of war or other forms of conflict. Papers and presentations were encouraged from across diverse fields: from business to the humanities, education to social-science, natural sciences to multidisciplinary combinations, to the arts and activist projects.