Elise Boulding and peace education: theory, practice, and Quaker faith

Elise Boulding wrote academically to help to create and influence the field of peace education, and lived a life that exemplified it. Her life integrated theory and practice and exemplified peace praxis as the 'craft and skills of doing peace' and 'the integration of thought and action'. For Boulding, peace education occurred at all levels, across academic disciplines, across time, and across boundaries of cultures, states, class, race, age, and gender. As one of the founders of the field of peace studies, she became a sociologist to 'do' peace, and was especially oriented to peace education and activism and to futures studies and to studying women and children and cultures of peace. Her spiritual roots were in the values and testimonies of Quakers, especially simplicity, peace, integrity, community, and equality. She saw that of God in all, and lived the 'inner light' important to Quakers.