Social justice, education and peacebuilding: conflict transformation in Southern Thailand

Abstract

Education is increasingly becoming central to debates about how to promote peace in conflict-affected societies. Equitable access to quality learning, promotion of social justice through educational reforms and conflict-sensitive curricular and pedagogical approaches are viewed as peace supporting educational interventions. Drawing upon the existing body of literature in the area of education, conflict and peace in Southern Thailand and reflecting on Nancy Fraser's theory of social justice and applying the 4Rs framework, this paper provides a critical analysis of inequalities, cultural repression and epistemic domination through education. The paper argues that the 4Rs framework usefully exposes underlying structural tensions in education but does little to show avenues for rupturing unequal power relations and hegemonies that reproduce systems of domination and social exclusion at the macro level. The real hope, however, lies in the potential use of the 4Rs as a tool for grassroots political socialisation.

Social Justice in Higher Education: Revisited, Practices, and Grievances

“…The quest for social justice in higher education is complex in its nature. This complexity is due to differences in conceptualizing social justice (Heslop, 2019;Pherali, 2021;Robinson & Randall, 2016). A universal concept of social justice is "nebulous" (Khan, 2020).…”

“…Previous studies highlighted the room for improvement to work on sources. A sociological imagination, experiences, and historical span identified the work areas (Fisher & Fisher, 2020;Pherali, 2021). History tells us that preventing mistakes and improvement can do better things toward social equality and justice.…”

“…The universities cater hardly fulfill the demands of students and society but chase race of ranking recommendations of HEC (Khan, 2020). This situation itself lays out social injustice (Heslop, 2019;Pherali, 2021). The enrolment statistics, limited Global Social Sciences Review (GSSR) faculty, limited resources, admission issues, dominant grouping, imbalance fund allocation, political interference, corruption, harassment, malfunctioning, and poor funding make social justice education more complicated to be practice.…”

“…The prior reason for higher education is to provide a sense of intellectuality that demonstrate equality, justice, balance, rights, and marginalized social differences. In this scenario, higher education has multidimensional agendas to provide a better nation after education (Pherali, 2021). At higher educational institutions, all the perspectives focused to practice social justice through action research, transformation, and reflection of pedagogies.…”

“…Horizontal coordination among higher education personnel develops a synchronized social harmony. Meanwhile, societal challenges perpetuate socioeconomic injustice and inequalities (Pherali, 2021;Tjabane, 2010).…”