Listening, Community Engagement, and Peacebuilding

This book explores the role of listening in community engagement and peacebuilding efforts, bridging academic research in communication and practical applications for individual and social change. For all their differences, community engagement and peacebuilding efforts share much in common: the need to establish and agree on achievable and measurable goals, the importance of trust, and the need for conflict management, to name but a few. This book presents listening – considered as a multi-disciplinary concept related to but distinct from civility, civic participation, and other social processes – as a primary mechanism for accomplishing these tasks. Individual chapters explore these themes in an array of international contexts, examining topics such as conflict resolution, restorative justice, environmental justice, migrants and refugees, and trauma-informed peacebuilding. The book includes contemporary literature reviews and theoretical insights covering the role of listening as related to individual, social, and governmental efforts to better engage communities and build, maintain, or establish peace in an increasingly divided world. This collection provides invaluable insight to researchers, students, educators, and practitioners in intercultural and international communication, conflict management, peacebuilding, community engagement, and international studies. Chapter 10 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-ND) 4.0 license.