New book! Peaceful Societies: Alternatives to Violence and War, by Bruce Bonta

The Center for Global Nonkilling is pleased to announce the publication of its latest book Peaceful Societies: Alternatives to Violence and War. The book was carefuly prepared by Bruce D. Bonta (1941-2021) during his many years as editor and curator of the online Encyclopedia of Peaceful Societies and associated website at the Univerity of North Carolina Greensboro. The book can be downloaded for free in PDF at this website and printed copies can be ordered here.

The book starts out from the following question: Is it possible to draw conclusions about the possibilities of building a more peaceful world by studying peaceful societies? In response, Bonta’s book attempts to demonstrate that peaceful societies are inspiring and that they frequently shed light on difficult aspects of the paths to peacefulness; but there are no good, easy, or obvious answers. These groups of people provide inspiration about possibilities, however. The careful reader will be inspired to look for ways forward on many different issues related to building a more peaceful world by studying societies featured in this book: Lepchas, Ifaluk, Semai, Piaroa, Batek, Buid, Ladakh, Kadar, Chewong, Paliyan and others.

Bonta, a peace scholar a member of CGNK’s Nonkilling Anthropology Research Committee, had also authored Peaceful Peoples: An Annotated Bibliography among other works. He served as head of reference at Penn State University’s Pattee Library and worked at the Library of Congress. The posthumous publication of this important manuscript, with a foreword by Dale Hess, is intended as a tribute to Bruce’s life and scholarship and testimony to the importance of his work and legacy.