Friendship and Positive Peace: Conceptualising Friendship in Politics and International Relations

Yuri van Hoef and Andrea Oelsner
Additional contact information
Yuri van Hoef: Department of History and Art History, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Andrea Oelsner: Department of Social Sciences, University of San Andrés, Argentina

Politics and Governance, 2018, vol. 6, issue 4, 115-124

Abstract: In recent years, the study of friendship has gained traction in political science. The aim of this article is threefold: (1) to offer an overview of the status of friendship studies and how it relates to the emotional turn in international relations, (2) to present a wide variety of different approaches to studying friendship, and (3) to highlight the contribution that a friendship perspective can make to other fields, such as Peace and Conflict Studies. From Aristotle and Plato onwards, we trace the development of the concept of friendship, and present several theoretical conceptualisations and methodological approaches that can be readily applied when making sense of friendship, both on a personal level between elite actors, and on the international level between states. We end by drawing attention to the merit of the study of friendship specifically for the field of Peace and Conflict Studies, where it helps to address the lacuna of research on positive peace.

Keywords: affect; emotions; friendship; international relations; Johan Galtung; peace and conflict studies; peace research; politics; positive peace; state leaders (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/1728 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v6:y:2018:i:4:p:115-124

DOI: 10.17645/pag.v6i4.1728

Access Statistics for this article

Politics and Governance is currently edited by Carolina Correia

More articles in Politics and Governance from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().