Abstract

In school they taught me about war. About armed conflicts, structural violence and weapons of mass destruction. Peace was simply something existing between wars, a taken-for-granted condition occurring in the absence of armed or interstate violence. Omitted from my Swedish schoolbooks and classroom discussions were the resistance and alternative visions that have always come hand in hand with warfare and militarisation. That is, the peace work, in its broadest and deepest sense. With my 15-year-old sister in mind, this peace education primer is a response to that lack of nuanced perspectives on and stories of thinking, doing and believing in peace. It traces sites of peace work from the streets of Stockholm, London and Bogota to historical archives and globally spanning digital networks. What do we mean by peace? What can doing peace involve? What critical pedagogies are required to open up peace as possibility, in and outside the classroom?