Elise M. Boulding (; July 6, 1920 – June 24, 2010) was a Norwegian-born American Quaker sociologist, and author credited as a major contributor to creating the academic discipline of Peace and Conflict Studies. Her holistic, multidimensional approach to peace research sets her apart as an important scholar and activist in multiple fields. Her written works span several decades and range from discussion of family as a foundation for peace, to Quaker spirituality to reinventing the international "global culture". Particularly of note is her emphasis on women and family in the peace process. Boulding was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.
Biography
Elise Biorn-Hansen was born in Oslo, Norway in 1920. Her family moved to the United States when she was three years old. She and her family were greatly affected by the outbreak of World War II and the German invasion of Norway. Elise became strongly convinced by living through the World War II years that violence was not the answer to the world's problems and that if even her peaceful homeland was at risk, violence was truly a systemic world concern. In her youth, she became active in anti-war activities and converted to a historic peace church, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). It was at a Quaker meeting in May 1941 that she met her future husband, Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993), a respected English economist who would collaborate extensively with Elise on her peace work.
The Bouldings raised five children, with Elise serving as both homemaker and activist. Her writing on the foundations of peace would reflect her valuation of women, children and family in the peace process. She believed the family unit, and especially the role of women within that unit, was crucial to the global peace movement. After working at Iowa State College (where she received her master's degree in sociology) and at the University of Colorado at Boulder, she and Kenneth were invited to become scholars in residence at Dartmouth College after Elise completed her PhD in sociology at the University of Michigan. While at Dartmouth, she chaired the Sociology Department and developed the nation's first Peace Studies program there. She is credited with greatly advancing the academic study of peace through her work at Dartmouth.
Boulding held many leadership positions in peace- and social justice-related groups, from chairing the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) to creating the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) to work with the United Nations through UNESCO and the University of the United Nations. She is considered to be one of the most influential peace researchers and activists of the 20th century. On June 11, 2000, the Peace Abbey, in Sherborn, Massachusetts, awarded Elise Boulding with the Courage of Conscience award for her lifelong commitment and contributions to peace and justice, envisioning the Peaceable Kingdom as a shared reality.
Work
The Religious Society of Friends
Boulding's Quaker faith played a vital role in her focus and development as a sociologist and peace activist. She found the Religious Society of Friends in young adulthood, but did not have a particularly religious upbringing. Though there was a church near her childhood home that had services in Norwegian (her family had emigrated from Norway), her family did not attend. Her father would read the story of Jesus from the Bible on Christmas Eve, and she knew the Lord's Prayer in Norwegian all her life. Despite the lack of structured religion in her youth, she claims she felt the presence of God as a young child, and when she was 9 years old she began attending a local Protestant church on her own. She developed a relationship with the minister's wife, who served as a spiritual mentor of sorts for the young Elise. In her teens, however, she recalls a longing to know "god" (she often used a lowercase g in referring to God in her personal writings) but felt that "no religion can quite fulfill [her] needs, so [she] will make [her] own religion". She also was strongly influenced by her mother, who in Norway had been involved in peace parades and was a social worker for girls who worked in Norwegian factories. Elise shared her mother's nostalgia for Norway, and always thought of her homeland as a "safe place" until her last year of college when the Nazis invaded it. It was then that she embraced pacifism, and began attending Quaker meetings that she had been introduced to by college friends. She decided that if "safe places" were to exist in the world, she would have to work for them, and this was her calling as a Friend.