Getting to “no”: Locating critical peace education within resistance and anti-oppression pedagogy at a Shi’a Islamic school in Lebanon

Abstract

This paper critically engages observations from a school that was aligned with a resistance movement in Lebanon during a post-war period of sustained political violence (2006–2007). Focusing on the pedagogical practices at one community-centered and community-led Shi’a Islamic urban school, the paper draws on extensive ethnographic data to illustrate how teachers and students, together, negotiated resistance and peace learning through a critical and participatory process at a school whose curricular content, structure, and pedagogy explicitly addressed both direct and structural forms of violence. Drawing on rich, illustrative classroom data, I examine the production and enactment of peace knowledge as resistance to the status quo. This knowledge production does not exclude the performance of militarism and heroic resistance as forms of praxis, creating dissonance for understanding peace education as a field of scholarship and practice. This dissonance, I posit, is critical in forging possibilities for transformative change. The paper brings postcolonial theory into conversation with critical peace education to consider how larger structural, material, and political realities serve to mediate learning processes and value biases in peace research.

Reconsidering partnerships in education in emergencies

“…Although a relatively recent field of study, a robust scholarship on EiE focuses on a range of areas such as education during and after armed conflict (Burde et al, 2017;Novelli & Cardozo, 2008;Smith, 2005;Zakharia, 2017), crisis impacts on marginalized groups (Burde, 2014;Zakharia, 2013), education for refugees (Bellino, 2018;Dryden-Peterson, 2016, 2022Kirk & Winthrop, 2007;Mendenhall et al, 2015;Shohel, 2020;, and post-disaster schooling (Brundiers, 2018;Shah & Lopes Cardozo, 2014). A strong body of scholarship offers country-level analyses of crisis and schooling (Akar & van Ommering, 2018;Hamadeh, 2019;Taskin & Erdemli, 2018;Pherali, 2011;Zakharia, 2013).…”

Teachers’ strategies of everyday diplomacy in peace education: A case study of the “infrapolitics” of peacebuilding in Greek-Cypriot schools

“…Peace education, as a formalized field of research and practice since World War II, has traditionally been premised on the notion of a normative, teleological project of Western Enlightenment humanism (Zakharia, 2017) that advocates for “liberal peace.” Liberal peace is essentially grounded in liberal views of peacebuilding; its proponents seek to appropriate everyday activities by inhabitants in conflict-affected societies and integrate these as support for the peace intervention (Richmond, 2011; Richmond and Franks, 2009). Also, universal conceptions of peace, humanity, and progress towards the elimination of conflict and violence drive these interventions, while cultural, structural, and economic inequalities are often ignored or undermined, thus creating a naïve and romanticized conception of the peacebuilding process (Zembylas, 2018a).…”

“…Also, universal conceptions of peace, humanity, and progress towards the elimination of conflict and violence drive these interventions, while cultural, structural, and economic inequalities are often ignored or undermined, thus creating a naïve and romanticized conception of the peacebuilding process (Zembylas, 2018a). To this end, scholarship and practice in peace education “have historically attempted to unify conceptualizations of peace and peace practices through a number of prescriptive measures” that “universalize or homogenize concepts or approaches” (Zakharia, 2017: 48)—something that may be counter-productive, according to Zakharia, “by masking power relations embedded in complex historical relations and undermining local understandings of how participants might cultivate their sense of transformative agency” (Zakharia, 2017: 48).…”

“…For example, in our own work in Cyprus (Zembylas, 2015; Zembylas et al, 2016) and Israel (Bekerman and Zembylas, 2012), we have noted how universal conceptions of peace and naïve assumptions about “supporters” and “non-supporters” (“rejectionists”) of peace education are too simplistic to describe the variability and complexity of people’s everyday stances, affects, and opinions. Similarly, Zakharia (2016, 2017) discusses that distinctions between peace educators as “nonconforming” and those construed as “peacebuilding” fail to capture how these politically loaded terms reflect liberal international agendas. Other works also highlight the complex and multiple roles that teachers play in peace education programs (e.g.…”

Feminist Solutions for Ending War

“…This subfield draws from postcolonial theory. It underlines that peace education could become part of the problem that it tries to solve, particularly if it overlooks the Western, Eurocentric assumptions about peace and peace education (Gur-Ze'ev 2001;Zakharia 2017;Zembylas and Bekerman 2013). According to Bajaj and Hantzopoulos (2016, 4), there are three underlying principles to critical peace education: first, critical peace educators pay attention to how unequal social relations and issues of power must inform both peace education and corresponding social action; second, critical peace education pays close attention to local realities and local conceptions of peace that amplify marginalised voices; third, critical peace education draws from social reproductive theory and critical pedagogy (as advocated by Freire 1970) to view schools as potential sites of both marginalisation and/or transformation.…”