Kenneth Boulding’s The Image: A cognitive basis for peace entrepreneurship

In 1956 economist Kenneth Boulding wrote The Image: Knowledge and Life in Society. This work concerns the role of mental representations, referred to as images, in the organization of human knowledge. This paper applies Boulding’s image construct to non-economic entrepreneurship, specifically to the case of “peace entrepreneurs.” 

Our argument is that mental phenomena, such as image-rendering, provides a basis for human decision-making and action. We build upon these matters to explore how mental imagery not only informs strategic formulation and tactical actions by peace entrepreneurs, but how such entrepreneurialism shapes broader socio-political attitudes toward peace. 

This paper illustrates the role of the image in peace entrepreneurship by exploring the attempts of Richard Cobden, John Bright, and other exponents of the nineteenth-century “Manchester School,” to revise public images of free trade, and inter-state political arbitration, as alternatives to war and violent conflict. Despite the successes of the Manchester School in promoting the economics and politics of peace, the full realization of its efforts was frustrated by ideational tensions between reformers and adherents of the statist status quo of militarism and protectionism. 

Conflicting images mark the struggles between the pro-peace mental projections by Manchesterian peace entrepreneurs, and deep-seated Hobbesian accounts legitimizing state violence in the name of securing peace. The endurance of Cobden and the Manchester School’s image-based peace entrepreneurship is critically appraised. The English experience shows how cognition spurs human action and reaction on peace questions.

Find the full paper here.