Geographies of Peace and Antiviolence

Abstract

AbstractGeography’s ties with war‐making, territorial and imperial conquest are well known. Geography has also made contributions to the study of peace. In recent years, geographers have been engaged in a rich debate over the relations between studies of war and peace and the conceptual and methodological frameworks for approaching studies of violence. This paper reviews the vibrant recent literature on geographies of peace, which features two striking points of consensus. First, peace must be understood as a process. Second, defining peace is a question of defining violence. These points of consensus, in turn, raise questions about research sites and methods. To flesh out some of these issues, this paper turns to Galtung’s theorizing on peace and structural violence. The concept of structural violence has been very influential, but remains undertheorized. The third section, in turn, details feminist theories and methods of researching violence that challenge undifferentiated landscapes of war, peace and structural violence. The fourth section illustrates the ideas of peace as a process and epistemologies of violence by way of example. I sketch the context and terms through which “antiviolence” organizing emerged in the United States over the past 30 years. Antiviolence, as developed most centrally by antiracist, feminist activists and theorists, offers not only a powerful analytic for understanding connections among forms of violence and uneven spaces of harm and well‐being, but also a practical way of bridging spheres of organizing that might otherwise remain discrete. I conclude by offering implications drawn from antiviolence praxis for geographic studies of war and peace.