In this twelve-week class, the professor (anonymous) describes how various mechanisms for addressing conflicts have evolved over human history. The majority of the class studies the Western tradition, though significant time is spent exploring non-Western cases.
The framing of the course is that, while conflicts can be resolved "brutally by war, massacres, and assassinations," the rise of state- and non-state-based institutions have offered less violent alternatives to resolving disputes. The mechanisms studied vary from the institutional and legal to the informal and social. Not all of these mechanisms are entirely nonviolent.
The ideological basis grounding the course is classical liberalism, and many of the views expressed are centrist or slightly right-of-center. It's focus isn't on liberation or on the total cessation of violence, but assumes that conflict, and perhaps violence, is inevitable and that mechanisms must be developed to minimize their destructiveness (an approach known in peacebuilding as "conflict management"). Not all readers will share this approach, though I hope that the information shared will be of use to folks coming from a variety of ideological positions. For a more progressive approach to conflict, see the course
Theories of Conflict.
Each page was written using notes from each lecture. Additional readings are found at the bottom of each entry. Currently, only the first three lectures are available, hopefully with more to come soon.