I have just started a state-of-art study that focuses on the epistemological and methodological limitations of peace research according to the next points:

• The difficulties of arranging an objective theory of peace research when it is based in the inter-subjective experiences of people affected by conflict situations. Is it possible to talk of peace as an objective and verifiable phenomenom when it arises from subjective processes, like power relations, communication networks and symbolic interactions?
• The elasticity of the main concepts in peace research, such as 'peace' or 'violence'. These concepts have been widened throughout the development of the discipline, and include different levels (negative and positive peace; direct, structural and cultural violence) that may not offer an accurate (and replicable) description of the research phenomenon. On the contrary, this terminology articulates an ethical corpus of what peace should be. Consequently, the analytical models derived from peace research studies might be overly normative rather than descriptive. To what extent these normative models and definitions of peace are useful to the establishment of a scientific peace research?
• The main barriers of qualitative research in peace studies: problems when accessing to key informants in fieldwork, difficulties in the control of bias, arrangement of non-representative samples, differences between the symbolic universe of the researcher and that of the fieldwork subjects, and so. To what extent qualitative methodologies lead to reliable analysis of peace and conflict phenomena?

I am interested in reviewing critique references that focus on some of the precedent topics. The study will be a bibliographical review of the most important references in the field, both from classical and current authors. Any idea for discussion and reflection will be welcome. Thank you all.