International Interfaith Organisations Network

Elise Boulding, 89, a sociologist who was instrumental in establishing peace studies and conflict resolution as an academic discipline, died June 24 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease at a nursing home in Needham, Mass.

Dr. Boulding, a Norwegian-born Quaker, taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder before retiring from Dartmouth College in the mid-1980s. AS a movement, she emphasized the role of women and families in creating a less violent world.

“Elise Boulding was to peace studies what Rachel Carson was to conservation and Margaret Mead to anthropology,” Colman McCarthy wrote. “She gave academic legitimacy to the study of pacifism as both a moral force and a practical alternative to violence–all the way from military violence to domestic violence.”

Dr. Boulding raised five children long before she entered academia, and her experience as a mother convinced her that people can be taught to wage peace just as they are taught to wage war.

Much of Dr. Boulding’s scholarly work was grounded in what she called the underside of history–the people and ideas that have been largely overlooked in narratives of the past. She wrote about important, little-heralded contributions by women from the Paleolithic period through modern times. As a counterpoint to studies of past wars and conflicts, she examined peaceful eras and cultures.

In her book, “Cultures of Peace: The Hidden Side of History” (2000), Dr. Boulding said that peace is a daily and dynamic activity rather than a dull, static state. “Pacifism, which literally refers to the making of peace,” she wrote, “is often mistakenly understood as passivism.”

Dr. Boulding said one of her most important tasks was challenging people in workshops held across the country to envision a world in which quarrels are settled wtihout threats or weapons. “We cannot achieve what we cannot imagine,” she wrote.

Her husband died in 1993. Survivors include five children, 16 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.