Abstract

Historical Peace and Conflict Studies (HFKF) and the Historical Peace and Conflict Research Working Group (AKHF), founded in 1984, have their roots in the peace movement and the normative and present-oriented peace and conflict research of the 1980s. Since then, its central characteristic has been a normativity oriented towards the ideal of peace, which distinguishes it from other historical perspectives and approaches. It is therefore all the more astonishing how little this specific characteristic of HFKF has been the subject of critical self-reflection to date. At the same time, it should be noted that this normativity only appears to be a constant of HFKF at first glance. On the one hand, historiography is just beginning to focus on the historicity of the concept of peace and thus also on the changeability of its central normative categories. On the other hand, HFKF is constantly coming into contact with new fields, approaches and methods of research that bring their very own normativity to the table, such as gender studies or postcolonial studies.

Based on these observations, the conference on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the AKHF aims to initiate a fundamental process of reflection on the role of normativity in historical peace and conflict research. The following questions will take center stage on the basis of concrete empirical examples:

• How do our objects of study, methods and approaches shape our understanding of peace?
• To what extent is our empirical research based on normative guiding concepts of peace?
• What different normative concepts of peace can be identified in the research fields relevant to the HFKF?
• To what extent can questions and research findings be interpreted as impulses for identifying options for action to overcome conflicts in the present?

The conference aims to overcome the European-centricity that is characteristic of HFKF and expand it regionally. At the same time, the aim is to include epochs beyond modern and contemporary history to a greater extent. For this reason, three relevant thematic fields have been defined that cover as broad a spectrum as possible and are accessible to experts working on different world regions and eras.

The first field deals with norms and values that determine the historiography of military issues. It aims to discuss the role of a normative reference to peace in the historicization of warfare and link it to the latest findings of the HFKF. With a view to security policy research that is primarily oriented towards the social sciences, the panel aims to emphasize the relevance of historical depth for current debates on war and peace.

The second topic area is dedicated to the transitions from war to peace and examines the normative peace plans of contemporary actors as well as the values and visions of the future on which they are based. On the other hand, the question of how these contemporary normative projects relate to retrospective historical knowledge production will also be asked.

The third thematic field deals with the rememberance of wars and asks to what extent conflicts in the politics of memory are based on different perceptions of peace. In view of the strengthening of historical revisionist forces, to what extent is it the task of research to adhere more strongly to a peace-oriented remembrance? Or does it not rather run the risk of missing the opportunity for a more differentiated and critical approach to remembrance?