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.