Heather Devere

University of Otago · National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

Before some connections to politics begin to be made, different meanings of friendship are explored, starting with Western concepts ranging from Greek and Latin terminology, such as philia, eros, agape, xenia, amicitia and caritas, to associations of friendship with virtue, kinship, fraternity, gyn/affection, solidarity, and networking, to postmode...

Connections between politics and friendship are examined through forms of political arrangements such as democracy, socialism, social justice, and feminism. Links through ethics and philosophy, psychology, postcolonialism, Afrocentrism, indigeneity, communitarianism, postmodernism, and anarchism are then explored, bringing everything together via r...

The conclusion provides a summary of the book, leaving it open to the reader to continue to make links exploring whether friendship might be an important concept to relate to politics that provides practical, realistic, and ethical relationships for better working together in our current deeply disturbed world.

A wide-ranging interpretation of ‘the political’ is provided, beginning with acceptable connections to authority, obligation, legitimacy, power, rights, and justice to more contestable aspects such as conflict, competition, religion, ideology, ethics, and relationships and the connections to friendship are touched on through feminism, identity, cul...

Friendship is often left out of the discussions about peace. Likewise social justice is not always included in debates around peace and conflict. Friendship can be considered as vital for justice or to be unfair and unjust. This Special Issue on Friendship, Peace and Social Justice contributes to making the connections between three overlapping con...

As colleagues drawn together by our work related to Indigenous peace, conflict and social justice, we wanted to bring to light some of the Indigenous research that is taking place within a university setting of Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS). This is a field that has only recently engaged with Indigenous knowledge systems and ways of knowing. We...

In drawing to a close this book, we reflect on the material that has been presented here, on the concept of decolonisation as an appropriate, useful and ethical approach to peace and conflict studies, and the benefits for the discipline of incorporating Indigenous knowledge into the study of peace and conflict. Links between advancing self-determin...

Aotearoa New Zealand has gained a reputation as a peaceful country, judged as the second most peaceful county in the Vision of Humanity (n.d.) Global Peace Index 2018, second only to Iceland. The global view of a peaceful nation is somewhat at odds with the image of Māori, the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa, who have often been portrayed only as wa...

This article uses the concept of Ngā Tai Matatū (Tides of Māori Endurance) developed by Mason Durie, a leading Māori scholar, to consider three indigenous communities of Aotearoa New Zealand that have demonstrated endurance and resilience in maintaining their unique peace traditions in the face of opposition from both Western and Māori cultures of...

In this chapter, we relate the little-known stories of some Indigenous peace traditions of Aotearoa New Zealand. We provide an historical account of three peace traditions: the Moriori of Rēkohu (Chatham Islands ); Waitaha in the South Island; and Parihaka in the North Island. The Moriori people adhered to an ancient vow to never kill another perso...

This chapter functions as a conclusion to this volume of studies of peacebuilding and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. It reviews major developments in global institutions, centred around the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and consequent academic scholarship in the various fields of Indigeous Studies. In particular,...

This book analyses efforts to advance the rights of Indigenous People within peace-building frameworks: Section I critically explores key issues concerning Indigenous Peoples’ Rights (struggles for land, human, cultural, civil, legal and constitutional rights) in connection with key approaches in peace-building (such as nonviolence, non-violent str...

This chapter provides, first, a brief history of friendship treaties, followed by an overview of a range of treaties that include in their title the concepts of friendship or amity viewed according to geographical context. The ‘great’ powers which have entered into such treaties most prolifically are the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United...

The Fourth Estate role of the media in a democracy is to inform its citizens and to be a forum for debate about political issues so that the citizenry is able to make informed decisions about the role its government plays. New Zealand portrays itself as a leading democracy in the Pacific, but how much do New Zealanders know about what is happening...

While the concept of friendship has been largely invisible within Western political debate, in the international political domain, 'friendship' and the language of friends has been prominent in treaties and alliances between nations. Database searches on the topic of 'politics and friendship' locate predominantly references concerning relationships...

Friendship is a frequently-used word but it is difficult to define it clearly. Friendship in its various configurations links people and communities together in some sort of reciprocally beneficial association that forms societies. Thus friendship is a concept that deserves attention. This paper examines some of the similarities and differences abo...

The media uses the technique of framing to process and package information in order to make sense of the material and present a news ‘story’ which is accessible to the audience. International research reports demonstrate a consistent ‘gendered’ framing of media coverage. ‘Gendering’ refers to the highlighting of a person’s gender, when this is not...

At the beginning of the 1990s, according to the UN gender-sensitive Human Development Index, Australia was ranked sixth and New Zealand was eighth. A decade later, Australia ranked second while New Zealand ranked seventeenth. In other words, according to the United Nations, gender equality is more advanced in Australia than New Zealand. Yet a close...

This article outlines the context and history of the development of the Court Education for Young Witnesses service for children who give evidence in the criminal court in New Zealand. A pilot programme in three courts was funded and implemented by the New Zealand Department for Courts in 2000 along with a two-year evaluation contracted by the then...

Different ideals of friendship feed into different ideals of political community. A political liberal can accept that political association should be a form of friendship,so long as his conception of friendship is a liberal one. Plato hopes for maximal mutual identification, with lovers' lives merging, and citizens applying the term 'mine' together...

The extension of rights to citizens groups has been a notable feature of politics in the last sixty years. However, one group that is rarely acknowledged as rights-holders and has been significantly absent from key rights extensions is children. This paper looks at children's rights in the context of the debate about corporal punishment in New Zeal...

This thesis is an exploratory study of women's attitudes to political issues. The thesis poses the broad questions of what is the range of women's attitudes to specific issues, what patterns are there to women's attitudes and how well do traditional political categories describe women's attitudes? Attitudes of women to five civil rights or moral po...