The Global South as a theoretical and methodological marker for scientific inquiry: researching and teaching decolonial peace

Abstract

How do we know, theorize, and teach the possibilities of peace in the Global South? For most of Eurocentric literature on the topic, peace in the Global South seems like an impossible utopia. Building on Freire’s pedagogy, I argue for a decolonial approach to peace studies centered on the agency of Global South peoples and their power to transform the world. This means that the construction of knowledge around the possibilities for peace are situated in concrete and real struggles of marginalized groups that have been resisting the expansion of violent and oppressive systems, and whose existence and struggles for alternative worlds are an example of “building peace” beyond the neoliberal-Western constraints. The aim of theorizing and learning peace from such perspective is to rescue the liberatory power of the idea of peace away from an imperialist agenda of control and oppression, and towards a liberatory strategy for people and planet.