For several decades these two rival methodological camps were treated by researchers and a few philosophers of education as being rival paradigms (Kuhn's ideas, albeit in a very loose form, have been influential in the field of educational research), and the dispute between them was commonly referred to as "the paradigm wars".
Few if any commentators in the "paradigm wars" suggested that there was anything prohibiting the use of both approaches in the one research program provided that if both were used, they only were used sequentially or in parallel, for they were underwritten by different epistemologies and hence could not be blended together.
According to Victor Menotti, director of the California-based International Forum on Globalisation, "This is a paradigm war taking place from the arctic to tropical forests.
These proposals are wilfully ignoring all the research evidence; and with campaigning organisations (like Early Childhood Action) likely to be outraged by these proposals, the "paradigm war" in England's nurseries looks destined to reach previously unheard-of levels.
He argues that whereas, in the industrial war paradigm, war led to victory and thus to peace, in the modern paradigm confrontation leads to conflict, which then reverts to confrontation.
In its aftermath a number of challenges to this classical paradigm of war emerged, the first in the closing days of World War II.
The premise of the book is that the world is experiencing a new paradigm of war in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, which Smith dubs "war amongst the people", in which nebulous, open-ended conflicts have become the norm.
Roberts believed that Smith over-stated the transformation into the new paradigm of war by playing down the extent to which there have always been wars amongst the people, over-emphasised the role of technology in the shift from industrial warfare, and downplayed the continuation of industrial war.
Smith suggests that his new paradigm of war amongst people had its origins in places like Malaya, not to mention Vietnam, during the cold war.
That's another feature of the new paradigm: No war, but no peace either, only conflict without end.
As Smith puts it, "establishing a condition may be deemed a hallmark of a new paradigm of war".
