By Buzz McClain
Kevin Avruch. Creative Services photo
Citing the work as “innovative, reflective and interdisciplinary” as well as brave enough to confront “very difficult and controversial issues,” the UK-based Conflict Research Society awarded Kevin Avruch’s “Context and Pretext in Conflict Resolution: Conflict, Identity, Power and Practice” (Paradigm Publishers) its co-winner of the CRS Book of the Year prize for 2014.
Avruch, the dean of George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR), shared the prize with “Inequality, Grievances and Civil War” (Cambridge University Press) by Cederman, Gleditsch and Buhaug.
Avruch’s work, says CRS chairman Gordon Burt, “addresses a range of issues right in the middle of a range of contemporary debates and concerns we and our students currently have…It is erudite, broad ranging and offers significant advances for a range of debates on conflict, resolution, transformation, and so on. It is both theoretical and empirically grounded.
“It sets a great example for younger scholars, and shows a lot of experience.”
Avruch, who has been S-CAR dean since 2013, is also the Henry Hart Rice Professor of Conflict Resolution and a professor of anthropology; he is senior fellow in the Peace Operations Policy Program in the School of Public Policy at George Mason.
“I think Kevin’s book opens the door for a wider discussion about a range of issues,” says Burt. “In other words, it will be widely read and discussed, and not quickly forgotten.”
Avruch, who has lectured around the world and written seven books about peace resolution, will receive the award in September at Leeds University during the annual CRS conference. The CRS, celebrating its 50th year, was founded to promote the study of conflict processes by the late John Burton and by Mason professor emeritus Chris Mitchell; both Burton and Mitchell helped found the peace institute that is now Mason’s S-CAR.