Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

1-2016

Department 1

Africana Studies

Abstract

Book Summary: Bringing together the voices of scholars and practitioners on challenges and possibilities of implementing peace education in diverse global sites, this book addresses key questions for students seeking to deepen their understanding of the field. The book not only highlights ground-breaking and rich qualitative studies from around the globe, but also analyses the limits and possibilities of peace education in diverse contexts of conflict and post-conflict societies. Contributing authors address how educators and learners can make meaning of international peace education efforts, how various forms of peace and violence interact in and around schools, and how the field of peace education has evolved and grown over the past four decades.

Chapter Summary: By using data on school violence from field research in Trinidad and Tobago (TT), I argue that "in the knowledge production of 'school violence,' 'school' is subtracted as a descriptive [term], and in its place is hoisted the category of 'youth,' inscribed as the 'Other,' the predominant signifier of violence." In so doing, the predominating discourse about what constitutes school violence itself, and its drivers/'causes,' takes on a limiting and individualizing nature. As a result, the principal interventions that emanate from such a discourse are correspondingly narrow and therefore fail to reveal the structural violence in which "youth violence in school" is embedded. I posit this discursive violence as a lingering coloniality, and thus, as a blockade to the implementation of sustainable peace education in TT's schools. [excerpt]

Required Publisher's Statement

Original version is available from the publisher at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/peace-education-9781474233682/

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