One World, Many Peaces

Corporate Peace Activism or Peace Profiteering? Victoria’s Secret, Gap and Zazzle Lead in ‘Peace Merchandise’

The well-known, though relatively recent, symbol of peace was in the 1960s and 70s a sign of rebellion, resistance and idealism. What it means now that giant US retailers are putting it on clothing, swimsuits and even underwear is challenging to make out but vital to understanding how both corporations and consumers are seeking to make peace a profitable product, literally. Is this an extension of the UN’s “culture of peace” initiative or a betrayal of it?

It is nothing short of surprising that major US corporations are for the first time churning out peace-themed products at a time when the country is still involved in two wars abroad and a war on terror globally. Their motives for doing so can hardly be called activist or even peace-motivated because they seem to be exclusively profit-motivated. Yet, there may be something to be said about seeing so many people wearing peace signs in so many different contexts.

Take, for example, Victoria’s secret current lines of peace-themed lingerie, swimsuits and accessories. Difficult as it may be to take one’s eyes of the models, oops, we mean merchandise, to what extent do they both trivialize what the peace symbol used to stand for? But another way to look at the situation altogether is that peace has become part of mainstream US commercial culture in a way that it never has, and how can that be all bad?

Or, perhaps even more surprising, take Gap’s TV commercial plug-in that it will donate to its peace cause for every purchase of a peace-themed product. Gap also has a body lotion called the ‘Peace Train’, which makes one wonder if the company bought the rights to Cat Stevens’ classic peace anthem. Just months after Peace: A World History was released, I started noticing the symbol and word on earrings, sweaters and shoes, to the point where I thought I was going peace crazy. It turns out I wasn’t, or was I?

One of the few place you can still find the original spirit of the peace symbol in products is on Zazzle, where independent designers with strong convictions and superb creativity have an array of anti-war and pro-peace gifts and gear available. So consider getting your next present to someone or yourself in a way that promotes peace and makes the profit do what you want it to. Whether seen as corporate peace activism or peace profiteering, peace products are a current event creating a future in which peace is popular and profitable.

Hot Off the Press-- 2009: The Year in Review from One World, Many Peaces with Antony Adolf

 

 

What was 2009 all about — or was but you didn’t hear about it? How will 2010 and beyond take shape? 2009: The Year in Review is One World, Many Peaces’ answer. Antony Adolf, author of Peace: A World History, shares the stories he covered throughout the year as “Current Events Creating the Future” — Ours.

Includes three new essays by Antony Adolf published together for the first time:

•Buyers and Buy-Nots: The New Economics of Poverty and Affluence
•Post-Islamophobia: How Cultural Integration Can Prevent Terrorism and Build Peace
•A Missile Shield by Any Other Name: Is Obama's Global Military Strategy Taking Shape in Eastern Europe?

One World, Many Peaces: The Blog and Podcast will start anew on January 5. Thank you for a great year and have a safe and happy New Year!

 

Artistic Imperatives in Tough Times

Emphasizing the pursuits and benefits of scientific and technological careers has become a trademark of discourse about how to solve the short-term economic crises while providing for long-term stability. Regardless of the extent to which this limited precept is true, focusing exclusively on science and technology at the expense of artistic endeavors puts in jeopardy the productive balance between them by which societies have progressed and cultures thrived.

Both in the sense of why the arts and artists ought to be fostered and how artists ought to go about their work so as to be fostered, there are at least fives artistic imperatives in tough times such as our own:

Diversion: Facing the fact that many audiences in all artistic media turn to the arts for a pleasant (as in romantic comedy) or empathic (as in the blues) distraction from their troubles in no way belittles the arts or artists themselves. On the contrary, providing a respite or oasis from the toils of daily life during difficult days is one of the primary functions of art and artists because of the renewal in mind, body and spirit that can thus be achieved.

Inspiration: Masterworks of arts in any genre become all the more important in tough times because of the awe-derived motivation they instill in their audiences. A prominent example is John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, the beauty of which stems equally from the desperation it describes as the exceptional quality of the craftsmanship.  This is not to say that masterworks are only those which earn a Nobel Prize, but rather that any piece of art that can positively inspire to a high degree and on a widespread and/or intensely individual basis may qualify as one.

Provocation: Pablo Picasso's Guernica like the novels of Dickens and Zola stand as exemplars of how art can provoke the kind of thought and action that are required for any meaningful, long-lasting change for the better. There is a flipside, though, because being provocative is not always coterminous with being catalytic in a positive and productive way, so artists and audiences please beware.

Mobilization: It is one thing for the arts and artists to create powerful subjective experiences for their audiences, and wholly another for them to create actual objective differences in the world, despite that the two are inextricably tied. Science and technology can give people with ways to improve our world, but art can give reasons and directions in ways that science and technology alone cannot.

(Re)conciliation: Trying to posit the arts and science/technology as a dichotomy harmfully limits each sphere; only by embracing them together can full potentials be actualized. Technology in particular has proven to be a way to connect people of different identities and backgrounds in ways previously unimaginable, but the arts (musical, visual, verbal) have always done so as well in complimentary and irreplaceable ways.

I invite you to add your own here and/or in your heads and hearts, whether you are an artist, part of their audiences or an administrator in the position to foster both, so that they will continue to be vital and revitalizing parts of current events creating the future.