Heroic Endeavors: A Cross-Cultural Narrative Exploration of the life Stories of Chinese and American Peacebuilders

This study explores the life stories of eight expert peacebuilders. Four of the peacebuilders are from the People's Republic of China (China) and four are from the United States. The purpose of the study is to understand the peacebuilders' personal and cultural backgrounds and how these factors influence the ways they think about and approach peacebuilding. This cross-cultural approach facilitates an analysis of how American and Chinese culture influence the peacebuilders' perspectives towards peacebuilding. The study also explores eight distinctive emergent qualities of the expert peacebuilders, along with axial sub-themes for those qualities. The peacebuilders' life stories have been gathered through Appreciative Inquiry (AI) open-ended interviews, participant observation, and archival documentation using narrative analysis.