Peace & Power 4e

by Peggy L. Chinn

Book Overview

Community / Public Health This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0763709441
• ISBN13: 9780763709440
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Publishers
• Length: 125 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Peace and Power

This book is a must for anyone who works with people, has friends, family... It focuses our attention on ourselves so that we may reflect and analyse our personal beliefs and how it can affect our relationships.

a new and challenging way to think about group processes

My undergraduate advisor suggested that I read this book and it has really changed the way I think about group interactions, but also everyday interactions. It is from an explicitly feminist perspective, so if you favor an ordered, hierarchial approach to group interaction or leadership, this isn't the book for you. The intended audience for the book are people who are members of or leading a group (across a wide range -- for instance, a college classroom, owners of a quilt shop co-operative, a group that organizes to find homes for stray animals or a support group). The most ideal audience for the book is a group that is committed to feminist group processes (that way everyone in the group would commit to a particular set of princples, including the principles of feminist group processes in the book). However, I have never been a part of such a "committed" group and still benefited immensely from the book. Even if you aren't part of a formal group, one could put some of the ideas in the book into practice or use the ideas as a lens through which to think about group interaction and group process. The book has a lot of "how-to" in it, as well as the theory that undergirds the "how-to" and examples so that the reader can see what the "how-to" might look like in practice. A helpful way to think about the authors' conception of power is the difference between power-over power and peace powers. An examples is that "power-over" something type of power emphasizes "programs, goals, or policies which achieve desired results" (p. 9). Peace power "emphasizes a fresh perspective and freedom from rigid schedules. Goals, programs and timetables are used as tools, but are less important than the process itself" (p. 9). Peace power is, in my own words, the power that comes from working together toward not only the end "goal" but also the process of working to support each other in growing and to affirm the inherent worth of each person and his or her experiences.The reason I only gave the book four stars is because, personally, I found it almost a too "how-to" and would have liked to see the focus of the book not only on how a group committed to a feminist group process could put such ideas into practice, but more focus on how an "average Jane" could think about such ideas and put them into practice in her daily life. There is some of this, but I thought even more would be helpful. The final chapter addresses how one might put some of these practices into use in a more traditional setting, like a classroom, but I believe that these ideas would serve a wider audience (do more good for more people) if they were throughout the book. Overall, though, a helpful book if you're intersted in a new or different way to work as a group or a team.