Peace as an event, peace as utopia: a re-imagining of peace and its implications for peace education and development

Abstract

This paper aims to provide a new approach to peace in order to contribute to a theoretically informed approach to peace education and development practice. Arguing that liberal peace can be counter-productive and can actually betray peace, I offer an alternative approach in order to contribute to thinking on peace for educators and development practitioners. Introducing the theory of peace that I developed in my recent Ph.D., I explore how utopian and post-structural theory conceptualises peace as an open-ended promise, facilitating alternative thinking about peace and how to engage with it. I then discuss the implications this has for praxis and finish by looking at how the work of translating peace is an important aspect of peace education and development.

Keywords:

• peace theory
• peace education
• the event
• Derrida
• utopia
• Bloch
• Santos
• Mindanao conflict