De-/Postcolonial Thought, Peace and Conflict Studies and the Circulation of Knowledge
futures, peacebuilding, participation, conflict, decolonial
Futures-thinking encompasses a range of methods, tools and practices designed to explicitly engage with possible and desired futures. The word “futures” is used in the plural to acknowledge the diversity of potential future situations that have yet to materialise. Both external experts and conflict-affected communities use futures-thinking for analytical purposes and to drive societal transformation in conflict contexts. While business and military planning have professionalised the systematic development of futures-thinking methodology, anticipating and preparing for the future is inherent to all human societies. Therefore, systematic and power-critical futures-thinking can lend itself to participatory, reflexive and constructive practices that are beneficial to conflict transformation.
“May the peace be like a feather… Beautiful, soft and resistant.”
The artwork was provided by (Un)Stiching gazes. The group is an interdisciplinary collective of reflection, research and praxis, which tells and collects stories of peace and encounters in Colombia, especially after the signing of the 2016 Peace Agreement. They do so through textile narrative, that is to say through threads, needles and fabrics.
Anika Oettler
ABSTRACT
This entry responds to simplifying accounts of postcolonialism, and sketches out the great variety of approaches in peace and conflict studies and de-/postcolonial thought. These interdisciplinary fields of academic reasoning have overlapping but also divergent conceptual repertoires and practical implications. The main intersecting discursive lines revolve around the nexus between power, knowledge, the scars of collective violence and the legacy of colonialism. This entry follows these topics, identifies connections, and sketches out a discursive map. The geopolitical context from where I look at the historical formations of de-/postcolonial thought and peace and conflict studies generates a concrete particularity: what the texts present is a sociologically informed version of peace and conflict studies emphasizing German and Latin American experiences and debates. Using the current global political situation and the heated debates about ‘woke gender and postcolonial ideologies’ as a starting point, the first section of this entry outlines the broad field of postcolonial thought, highlighting three lines of argument. First, de-/postcolonial approaches deal with colonial continuities. Second, they form part of a broader movement to critically assess the impact of interests and standpoints on knowledge production, and to use language for the reconstitution of subjectivity, identity and politics. Third, de-/postcolonial thought and practice are intrinsically linked to resistance in diverse forms. The second section of the entry turns to the field of peace and conflict studies, and spells out how it connects to these three lines of argument. The entry provides some background to current debates, but it is not intended to be an authoritative and canonising introductory text. Written for students, journalists, practitioners and decision-makers, the entry discusses the main points of convergence and divergence between the fields of de-/postcolonial thought and peace and conflict studies, and offers many suggestions for further reading. The entry is an invitation to delve deeper into the field, and to think ahead. It therefore does not contain a conclusion, but rather describes some ways forward.
Over the past decade decolonial, intersectional and LGBTIQ+ perspectives have grown rapidly in strength in academia, social movements, the media and politics. However, with antidemocratic and far-right forces on the rise in many countries, bitter disputes over the legitimacy of these and other critical theoretical approaches are becoming ubiquitous in the political arena and even in the mass media. Public responses to calls for radical inclusion and diversity include fierce critiques, ridiculing, and accusations of intellectual hubris. In Colombia a moral panic about the alleged gender ideology of the agreement contributed to the marginal rejection of the peace accord between the Colombian government and the guerrilla FARC-EP in the plebiscite of 2016 (Rodríguez Rondón, ), and in Argentina President Javier Milei has started to push back against policies to promote women’s rights, gender equality and diversity. In the United States the new President Donald Trump has promised to scale back policies against racial and gender discrimination, and in Germany the unprecedented terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel on 7 October 2023, and the start of the war in Gaza, became a catalyst for a discursive escalation. This built seamlessly upon a previous escalation concerning the 2022 art exhibition Documenta 15 in Kassel, when the artists’ collective Taring Pardi and the curators, the Indonesian collective ruangrupa, were accused of antisemitism.
These events have advanced a general critique of poststructuralist approaches including postcolonialism, which also gained visibility in the book market. Two recent books, Der neue Kulturkampf: Wie eine woke Linke Wissenschaft, Kultur und Gesellschaft bedroht (“The new culture war: How a woke Left threatens science, culture and society”) by Susanne Schröter and Woke. Psychologie eines Kulturkampfs (Woke. Psychology of a Culture War) by Esther Bockwyt, were published in Germany in , both denouncing critical theory as extremely dangerous for social life (for similar North American debates, see Rufo, ). These texts are harsh in their denunciation; although they do contain many accurate descriptions of discursive events, some parts are little more than cartoonish, exaggerated, simplified and distorted reconstructions of complex theory.
“I seek to broaden the argument and explain what impulses post- or decolonial approaches have provided for the field of peace and conflict studies, and why this shift in perspective is urgently needed in the violent world of the twenty-first century.”
Esther Bockwyt highlights that there is support for antisemitism among postcolonialists, and that the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel were often viewed positively as colonial liberation by postcolonialists. She is absolutely right to sharply criticise the instances where this was the case, but her critique entails a blanket condemnation of postcolonial theory:
Postcolonial theory is a significant woke foundational theory for anti-racism, according to which Western culture and its achievements are based exclusively on racism, slavery and colonialism. Post-colonial ideology is exclusively dedicated to Western imperialism and colonialism. In the world of the post-colonialists, there is no Russian, no Arab, no Muslim, no Persian, no Japanese, no Chinese colonialism. The point is to show people ‘in the West’ how bad Western culture and its history are. (Bockwyt, , own translation)
I quote this passage at length because it illustrates the way in which current critiques of wokeism are advancing a narrow way of thinking about postcolonialism. Postcolonialism is portrayed here as one facet of an elitist and leftist ideology of censorship and intolerance, which threatens widely shared values and the freedom of speech. It is perceived as forming part of a radical and self-righteous movement that overemphasises identity politics and leads to censoring people for their opinions and use of words. Postcolonial theory production is portrayed as poisoning public spheres. According to Bockwyt, “the point is to show people ‘in the West’ how bad Western culture and its history are” ().
What to do in this polarised debate, in which the arguments of the other side hardly resonate? The rationale behind this entry is not to set the record straight about what postcolonial theory is, or to explain why the danger from the left is less severe than that from the right. Rather, I seek to broaden the argument and explain what impulses post- or decolonial approaches have provided for the field of peace and conflict studies, and why this shift in perspective is urgently needed in the violent world of the twenty-first century.
In the following I will not only shed light on German or Anglo-American debates, but also use examples from Latin America, the context with which I am most familiar. In doing so, I do not claim to give an objective account of the theoretical field; on the contrary, my view is strongly influenced by my research interest in the question of how societies can overcome violent pasts and transform social life towards peace, reconciliation and equity. This standpoint implies a rejection of violence. As a student I read Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth () and felt a deep sense of unease about Sartre’s preface, and about Fanon’s remarks about colonised masculinity and anti-colonial violence as emotional release. At that time I was not familiar with the complex debates about Fanon’s analysis of the psychic structure of the colonial relation (Wallerstein, ; Kastner, ; Ouaissa, ), or with the feminist debates about Fanon’s writing (Vergès, )1 The Algerian feminist Fatma Oussedik for example, discussed Fanon’s ideas about domination and alientation, pointing to the importance of Fanon for feminists movements. My point here is to emphasise that my first encounters with postcolonial thought were influenced by a political attitude that is rooted in my positionality, and which still shapes how I engage with social theory today.
Further, in my privileged and peaceful student world of the 1990s this included a deep irritation about the naive and uncritical support for violent revolutionary groups expressed by “solidarity movements” in Germany. In his article on The end of the ‘Third World’ and the failure of the big theories, Ulrich Menzel () argued that development theory needed a new orientation after the end of the Cold War, including breaking its taboos. One of these taboos was the naivety of the Western left in supporting all groups that included the word “liberation” in their name, even if these “liberations” implied massive and systematic human rights violations such as displacements, executions and sexual violence (Menzel, ), 23). He also criticised theories that identified colonialism as the one and only cause of underdevelopment in the Third World, calling for a nuanced and fine-grained analysis of colonial situations and their aftermath (, 20–21). Both of Menzel’s arguments are still relevant today, and in the following paragraphs I will show how post- and decolonial approaches can also help to overcome these historical shortcomings and offer a diversity of perspectives.
One de-/postcolonial theory or many de-/postcolonial approaches?
Post- and decolonial approaches are a specific type of knowledge, produced mostly – but not exclusively – in institutions of higher education. They deal with the heterogeneous impact of colonial rule in once- or still-colonised countries, and they respond to specific economic, social, political and cultural developments. There are many origins of post- and decolonial approaches, and there are many directions that postcolonial writings have taken. While independence in most Latin American countries was achieved in the nineteenth century, the most important historical context for the emergence of postcolonial theory was the formal end of colonial rule in Africa, Asia and the MENA region in the twentieth century, preceded by anti-colonial struggles and diverse forms of intellectual and practical resistance.
“In contrast to dominant modernisation theories focusing on endogenous causes of “underdevelopment”, postcolonial and decolonial approaches examine social change at the local, national and global levels as part of a broader history of colonialism, empire, exploitation and multiple oppression.”
Some anti-colonial writings, such as Fanon’s Les Damnés de la Terre () and Césaire’s Discours sur le colonialisme (), tend to be assigned to the canon of postcolonial thought, but the founding text of postcolonial theory was Said’s Orientalism, published in . In this classic study of literary and academic texts Said examined the ways in which the West produced and codified knowledge about the colonial subject in the nineteenth century. His main argument was that postcolonial subjects continue to be misrepresented as the inferior, irrational and backward “other” in comparison with inhabitants of the “Western world”. As will be shown below, this argument has been productively applied in the field of peace and conflict studies, and this also holds true for the Latin American debate on decoloniality that has centered on colonial/modern Eurocentered capitalism and the imposition of a racialised Western logic of modernity (for details, see ).
What postcolonial and decolonial approaches share is the argument that European “colonial practices altered the whole globe in a way that these other colonialisms [such as Vijaynagara, Ottoman, Chinese empires] did not” (Loomba, , 3). In contrast to dominant modernisation theories focusing on endogenous causes of “underdevelopment”, postcolonial and decolonial approaches examine social change at the local, national and global levels as part of a broader history of colonialism, empire, exploitation and multiple oppression. As Quijano (, 540) noted, Europe imposed “its colonial dominance over all regions and populations of the planet, incorporating them into its world-system and its specific modes of power”. Therefore, decolonial and postcolonial approaches examine the fields in which the “colonial matrix of power” (, 9) operates: economy, nation-states, gender relations, and knowledge. Post- and decolonial approaches highlight the need to examine both the cultural constellations and the social inequalities that are produced in a “modern” world. This is one of three key arguments that are important for the field of peace and conflict studies.
Before we move on to the other important arguments, it should be noted that the boom in post- and decolonial thought was also driven by its close connection to critical Euro/American theory production of the 1970s and 1980s. Here we see processes of circulation and reciprocity whereby Marxist, feminist, post-structuralist and post-modern languages of philosophy, social sciences and cultural/linguistic studies moved from continent to continent, from discipline to discipline, and from one person to another. Protagonists of postcolonial debates such as Homi Bhaba, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Chandra Mohanty, Aijaz Ahmad and Stuart Hall became connected nodes in global networks of critical knowledge production, and different postcolonial approaches emerged in loops that were both connected to and part of the circulation and development of often abstract theories.
Decolonial approaches to reasoning and understanding
What is often perceived as non-concrete or even solipsist postcolonial reasoning is actually its philosophical core, and this recognition brings us to the second key argument for the field of peace and conflict studies. Post- and decolonial thinkers have been part of a global effort to establish new epistemological perspectives and languages that disrupt classical philosophical approaches to reasoning and understanding. A key line of argument in diverse forms of critical theory, such as post-structuralism, critical gender studies, critical race studies and post- and decolonial studies, is that human understanding is affected by structures of power and interest.
As noted above, Edward Said and others examined the ways in which larger geopolitical formations shape our positions, interests, and the overall narratives of our times. This general argument has been taken into diverse directions; first, it urges us to rethink the origin and meaning of concepts that appear to be universal. As Chakrabarty (, 4) noted in his famous book Provincializing Europe:
Concepts such as citizenship, the state, civil society, public sphere, human rights, equality before the law, the individual, distinctions between public and private, the idea of the subject, democracy, popular sovereignty, social justice, scientific rationality, and so on all bear the burden of European thought and history.
These concepts are deeply rooted in the nineteenth-century idea of Enlightenment, and they emerged in dialogue with other forms of knowledge, whether Western or not. My argument is that the social worlds through which these concepts travelled had an effect on them, resulting in a vast body of social theory that has emerged from once- or still-colonized countries, produced by authors who are connected to European thought but also to local realities. For example, there is a rich and multifaceted history of sociological thought in India, developed in response to colonial rule and the idea of nationhood (Patel, (). As in other parts of the world, including Europe, some Indian authors challenged dominant concepts such as those highlighted by Chakrabarty, while others embarked on alternative routes of social theory.
“…the social worlds through which these concepts travelled had an effect on them, resulting in a vast body of social theory that has emerged from once- or still-colonized countries, produced by authors who are connected to European thought but also to local realities.”
In her book Southern Theory, Connell () explored a wide range of contributions to the global body of social theory, produced by authors from all over the world. These theories, building on rich intellectual trajectories, explained “Southern” as well as global developments. As Ruvituso () has shown, dependency theories elaborated by authors such as Darcy Ribeiro (, (), Samir Amin () and André Gunder Frank () travelled to the “North” and had a strong impact on European Area Studies and development theories (e.g. Senghaas, (). Another example are the writings of Arjun Appadurai (), who has substantially enriched the field of globalisation studies. Connell () describes the claims of universality, reading from the centre, gestures of exclusion, and grand erasure as the main features of “Northern” theory production. She coincides with many other postcolonial thinkers in pointing to the erasure of historical experiences of colonial rule and violence from the narrative of modernity and progress. However, her argument goes further as she points to the erasure of theoretical contributions from writers of peripheral or semi-peripheral contexts from the canon of important social theory. The conclusion here is not that we must dispose of European thought as historical waste; on the contrary, we need “contextual understanding and reconstruction” (Bhambra & Holmwood, (, 21) and serious scholarly attention to the “processes of ‘purification’ that have removed colonialism and empire from sociological understandings of modernity” ().
Many key concepts of social theory carry the weight of Eurocentric history, but they play an important role in diverse traditions of thought all over the world. The writings of Hannah Arendt, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Michel Foucault – to name but a few – have been central to the history of thought in many contexts. However, as Pierre Bourdieu (, 4) explained, writings circulate without their context, especially the field of production they are connected to. Other writers reinterpret these texts in their own specific contexts, and produce knowledge about the world that integrates other perspectives. In this sense, postcolonial approaches are an invitation and a call to broaden our horizons and to renew social theory for, but also from, diverse contexts.
As we will see in the next section, the field of peace and conflict studies is also shaped by this circulation of knowledge, and is gaining new momentum through current debates. This renewal of theory can take mainstream as well as more radical directions. Decolonial thought aims at creating new models of the world from the perspectives of subaltern groups such as Indigenous, Black, and First Nations people. As a consequence, this endeavour goes beyond overcoming the practices of exclusion and erasure, and encourages delinking from the colonial matrix of power (Mignolo & Walsh, () and unlearning Eurocentred logics of knowledge production.
Various entries in this Encyclopaedia outline key debates related to this perspective: discuss mainstream approaches to peace as being rooted in modern-liberal frameworks, introduces the concept of epistemic violence, focuses on futures-thinking methodologies, and discusses postcolonial and decolonial differences. These entries share a common interest in exploring the ways in which (post-)colonial power relations work to constitute knowledge, marginalising other ways of understanding and doing.
“Postcolonial approaches are an invitation and a call to broaden our horizons and to renew social theory for, but also from, diverse contexts.”
Mignolo states that postcolonial theory is a “project of scholarly transformation within the academy” (, 252), whereas delinking (desprenderse) is an epistemic shift, leading to “new inter-epistemic communication” (, 253). This practice of delinking “presupposes border thinking or border epistemology in the precise sense that the Western foundation of modernity and of knowledge is on the one hand unavoidable and on the other highly limited and dangerous” (, 255). Mignolo’s reflection remains an abstract intellectual exercise, although he mentions some examples of intervening logics that he see as contributions to decolonial thinking.2 What is incomprehensible for me is the uncritical equating of diverse discursive and non-discursive practices with decoloniality. To take a concrete example: why does Mignolo refer to “radical Arabo-Islamic thinkers (Sayyid Qutb, Ali Shariati, Ayatollah Komeini)” (Mignolo, 2007, 257) as clear formulations of decoloniality? As diverse authors (Cusicanqui, 2012; Browitt, 2014) have noted, Mignolo tends to reproduce binary constructions (Western modernity vs. the other to Western modernity) which easily lead to the idealisation and homogenisation of a liberating other. Many debates on decoloniality focus on the recognition of non-dualist philosophies, multiple entangled worlds, relational ontologies, pluriversality, and alternative forms of knowledge creation such as senti-pensar (feel-think) with the world (Escobar, ). Although these are abstract categories, they are sometimes easier to understand than supposedly concrete examples. I will discuss below how these approaches influence current approaches in peace and conflict studies.
Shades of Resistance
The arguments on epistemologies and delinking lead to the third key argument that has had an impact on the field of peace and conflict studies. Since post- and decolonial theory is deeply connected to anticolonial thought and liberation struggles, the idea of resistance is one of its key dimensions. In recent decades this has been a controversial topic of discussion within liberation movements in various contexts such as South Africa, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the USA, Chile and Lebanon (e.g. Palmer, ; Wood, ; Figueroa Clark, ; Umoja, ; Jordan & Maharaj, ; Nilsson, ). These debates have concerned various repertoires of resistance (passive and active forms, sabotage, guerrilla warfare, terrorism and revolution) as well as the question of when is the time for armed resistance against tyranny, totalitarian regimes, foreign occupation or colonialism (Jefferess, ). As I believe this issue lies at the heart of recent debates on the conflict in Israel/Palestine, the question arises as to whether postcolonial thinkers justify violent resistance.
From my perspective, there are affirmative, ambivalent and negative responses to this question within the field of postcolonialism. It would be wrong to ignore or sideline the fact that some scholars take an affirmative stance, often arguing from the point of view of combatants and activists. Sen’s () article on Hamas and armed resistance is a case in point, highlighting the destructive and creative side of violence that is portrayed as being “able to protect the (inner) self and prevent it from being conquered” (210). It is precisely this line of argument that public critiques of postcolonialism refer to. However, the contradictions and complexities of multi-layered and ambivalent positions such as Butler’s () reflections on the “force of nonviolence” are less visible in public debates.3 These reflections also bring up the difficult question of whether people who have never lived in conditions of repression, war or dictatorship would consider acts of violence to be legitimate if they were in these situations. Recently, statements on the violence committed by Hamas framed as “acts of armed resistance” have received much media attention, and contributed to the perception of postcolonialism as an extremist and leftist ideology. The famous Jewish American philosopher Judith Butler, who has criticised Israeli politics, Zionism and unequal standards of grievability for decades, was one of the most prominent targets (e.g. Bherer, ). Media coverage of Butler’s key arguments on the instrumentalisation of the charge of antisemitism, Hamas’ responsibility and the cessation of violence (Butler, ) was highly distorted. In fact Butler had always been very clear: “The point is to oppose the destruction in all of its forms in the name of a liveable mode of co-habitation” (Butler, , xxviii). Butler’s work does not relate directly to the field of decolonial thought, although this topic is increasingly entering the philosopher’s queer, feminist and anti-racist agenda (Butler, ). Apart from the colonial matrix of gender, though, there is one argument in particular that speaks to postcolonial approaches, and that is related to the question of resistance.
“The question arises as to whether postcolonial
thinkers justify violent resistance.
From my perspective, there are affirmative, ambivalent and negative responses to this question within the field of postcolonialism.”
Butler has been developing important arguments about the hierarchical structure of responding to mass violence and human suffering for quite some time, and these arguments deserve more attention. Butler’s texts on grievability (, ) are important for postcolonial studies, because they add another segment to the key line of reasoning about hierarchical binary constructions of “us” and the “other” (Said, ; Hall, ). Butler raises questions about which lives and bodies are perceived as worthy of grief responses, and argues that there are deep-rooted cultural frames that identify some populations as more grievable than others. These involve issues of inequality and injustice; Butler presents the US response to the 11 September 2001 attacks and the conflict in Israel/Palestine as prominent examples of the unequal distribution of the right to be grieved. Since the 2000s Butler’s arguments have resonated with many researchers, and the concept of unequal grievability has been applied to diverse contexts such as the femicides in Ciudad Juárez (Boudreaux, ), the death of migrants crossing the Mediterranean (Mercieca & Mercieca, ), pandemic losses (Poole & Galvan, ) and the ‘comfort women’ apologies (Dolan, ).
In these contexts, resistance begins by questioning forms of blindness, racial ignorance and gender negation that have been passed down from generation to generation. In this sense, resistance is a collective process of articulating critical insights, including the call to end insensitivity to diverse forms of entitlement. Vergès (, 3) highlights the situation of “millions of exploited and racialized women” engaged in tasks of cleaning and caring in order to maintain the lifestyle of “bourgeois women around the world”. In her critique of “civilizational” (, 4) white bourgeois feminism she portrays civilizational feminists as “active accomplices of the racial capitalist order” (,12), even though they are rejected by authoritarian politicians as impositions of Western cultures or liberal woke elites. In contrast, a decolonial feminism recognizes “that capitalism, racism, sexism, and imperialism are fellow travellers” (, 9). Resistance, then, means struggle and solidarity. Decolonial feminist resistance forms part of a long movement towards freedom, with decolonial feminism leading to “de-patriarchalizing revolutionary struggles” (, 10):
Joined by feminists in Spain, France, and the United States, these movements declare war on racism, sexism, capitalism, and imperialism through mass demonstrations in Argentina, India, Mexico, and Palestine. These activists denounce rape and femicide, linking this struggle to the fight against policies of dispossession, colonization, extractivism, and the systematic destruction of the living. (, 10–11)
These decolonial feminisms are broad and emancipatory multi-issue movements that aim to overcome racial capitalism and the legacies of colonialism by promoting dignity, social justice and community (Duvenage, ; Ihmoud, ; Stagni ). While violent forms of resistance are embedded in antagonistic constellations of conflict, there is also a discursive and cultural sphere of postcolonial resistance that promotes new forms of world-making and relies, in the words of Mouffe (), on agonistic exchange and contestation.
What is at stake in many social movements that can be considered part of postcolonialism are struggles against exploitation and demands for better and more inclusive forms of representation. Non-violent forms of resistance range from collective efforts to defeat structural violence, mining, land grabbing, and environmental destruction to efforts to create and establish new relational ontologies and cultural practices, such as the Zapatista idea of a pluriverse donde quepan muchos mundos, a world where many worlds fit (Escobar, ). As Cusicanqui () argues, concepts such as the Aymaran ch’ixi – a parallel coexistence of difference – are affirmative practices.
“Butler raises questions about which lives and bodies are perceived as worthy of grief responses, and argues that there are deep-rooted cultural frames that identify some populations as more grievable than others.”
This implies a conception of academic practice as committed scholarly practice. In this vein we could think of bell hook’s Pedagogy of Hope () and Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of Commitment (), which are not only about community organising and solidarity with marginalised and underprivileged people; they are also about constantly re-examining oneself. According to Freire, the transformation of the self is deeply connected to the recognition of common interests and the project of social transformation. Many postcolonial scholars engage in social activism and community empowerment, and build theories that are grounded in practice and solidarity.
In summary, understanding the diversity of what post- and decolonial thinking is requires us to disentangle complex discursive threads and channels of knowledge circulation. As described above, key arguments in post- and decolonial studies centre on a long-term historical perspective of colonial rule and its impact, the construction of “the other”, hierarchies in knowledge production, the erasure of knowledge from the canon of social theory, the importance of relational epistemologies and delinking, and diverse forms of resistance. The field of post- and decolonial theory is constituted by diverse relationships, global hierarchies (Cusicanqui, ), and political commitments. The answer to the question of how to become responsive to the needs of holistic and global transformation has been spelled out in many different forms, with some being connected to a certain left-wing radicalism, some endorsing radical epistemological and relational transformations, and others aiming at new humanistic and pluralistic forms of liberalism. The field is broad, and as we shall see in the next section, post- and decolonial thinking has diverse applications in peace and conflict studies.
De-/Postcolonialism and Peace Research
When we think about the nexus between peace research and decolonial approaches, it is important to note that both fields are part of a globalised scientific system that has become increasingly differentiated. In Western Europe and North America, these disciplines emerged as fields of academic work in the nineteenth century “in response to European problems, at a point in history when Europe dominate[d] the whole world-system” (Wallerstein, , 93). As Wallerstein (, 453) also noted, disciplines like sociology, economics, anthropology, geography and political science were socially constructed as defined fields of study with institutional structures and specific cultures (e.g. “major canonic texts”). This influential world systems theorist argued that the world is constantly changing, and that these disciplines examine multiple temporalities and spatialities from a variety of vantage points. In his view, some academics continue to search for general laws, while others emphasise particularities and differences. Since there are so many disciplinary overlaps and newly-emerging interdisciplinary questions, the previous structure of discrete disciplines has lost its usefulness and Wallerstein therefore argued instead for a “culture of plurals” (Wallerstein, , 458). From today’s perspective, a clear separation between the already interdisciplinary fields of postcolonial studies and peace studies does not make sense, but it is necessary to remember that they evolved in specific geopolitical contexts and in different settings.
Peace research and postcolonial studies emerged as new fields of study several decades before Wallerstein made his observations, with varying degrees of institutionalisation and canonisation. Galtung wrote in (141) that “[a]lthough peace research is as old as humankind”, the establishment of the International Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) was one of the most important founding moments in institutionalised peace and conflict studies. This is the story told by one of the founders of peace research. However, others point to the North American Christian (Brethren, Quaker and Roman Catholic) roots of peace research, with the Brethren Manchester College (Indiana) being the first institution to offer a BA in peace studies in 1948 (Fahey, ). Notwithstanding these differences, what characterises the history of peace and conflict studies is that they emerged in a Western European and North American metropole context after the end of the Second World War, later expanding to many parts of the world. The German Association for Peace and Conflict Studies was founded in 1968, the first study programmes in Peace and Conflict Studies were offered in the mid-1990s in Germany and Colombia, and from 1981 to 2006 the number of study programmes and research departments in peace studies and conflict resolution grew from 36 to 450 (Fahey, ).
“From today’s perspective, a clear separation between the already interdisciplinary fields of postcolonial studies and peace studies does not make sense, but it is necessary to remember that they evolved in specific geopolitical contexts and in different settings.”
The agenda of peace research has a clear set of aims: to understand the causes of war, to prevent the outbreak of violence, and to develop mechanisms of peaceful conflict resolution (Wallensteen, ). To understand the field it is instructive to look at introductory books, and to compare different editions. According to the fifth edition of Peace and Conflict Studies by Barash and Webel (), scholars in the field focus on examining war, terrorism/counterterrorism and nuclear weapons. They seek to understand individual, group-level and state-level decision-making, as well as ideological, social and economic reasons for war. They are interested in investigating dimensions of ‘negative peace’ such as peace negotiations, disarmament, arms control, appeasement and international cooperation, as well as multiple aspects of building ‘positive peace’. Interestingly, updated and new chapters in this introductory book focus on issues such as climate change and the coronavirus pandemic, but not explicitly on de-/postcolonialism. This is a first hint that although postcolonialism has gained importance in the field of peace and conflict studies, it is not always and everywhere one of the most prominent theoretical approaches.
One way of looking at the fibres from which the history of peace research is woven would be a methodological angle. From the very beginning the texture of peace research has been held together by strong quantitative threads, as much of the research questions call for quantitative research designs. Peace research as “research into the conditions for moving closer to the state we have called GCP [general and complete peace], or at least not drifting closer towards GCW [general and complete war]” (An Editorial, , 2) has a global scope and intention, and many of its research questions are inherently quantitative. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), founded in 1966, is famous for analysing conflicts and providing data on military spending, arms transfer, the arms industry, and disarmament. Since 1957 and 1964 respectively, the highly ranked Journal of Conflict Resolution and Journal of Peace Research have provided key forums for knowledge circulation, with a strong focus on case studies and statistical studies. Smoker’s mathematical study on fear in the arms race () was one of the first in a long series of quantitative contributions that addressed methodological questions (Porsholt, ; Cannizzo, ; Gleditsch, Metternich & Ruggeri, ), presenting new datasets on, to mention but a few examples, political apology (Zoodsma & Schaafsma, ), women (Caprioli et al., ), and rebel institutions (Albert, ).
At the time of writing there are 456 search results for “database” in the Journal of Peace Research but only 37 for “postcolonial”, mostly book reviews; there are only a few articles focusing on postcoloniality. A notable study in this area was carried out by Blanton, Mason and Athow (), who examined the nexus between British and French colonial style and the frequency and intensity of ethnic conflict. This is an example of academic attention to postcolonial situations, although the study does not form part of a de-/postcolonial programmatic approach. Nevertheless, it is an important indication of an awareness of the importance of colonial legacies, and that these issues must be incorporated into research agendas. This often implies a critical examination of the notions of “development”, “modernisation” and “state intervention” (e.g. Lüdert, Ketzmerick & Heise ).
Intellectual Alliances
Theorising and the compilation of databases have coalesced around powerful nodes in Western universities, and then these approaches and materials have circulated around the globe. They have entered the canon of peace and conflict studies programmes in diverse countries, laying the foundations for professional training and academic career paths. Many scholars from Non-Euroamerican metropoles and peripheries have embraced these concepts, adding new empirical evidence and theoretical nuances. It is time to overcome simple binaries; not all Global South scholars are decolonialists, and not all Global North scholars stick to Eurocentric concepts. As scholars and researchers tend to become part of their national elites, they have ambivalent roles because of their connections to diverse discursive fields. They are often part of intellectual alliances that sustain political projects such as democratisation and peacebuilding, while at the same time they create perspectives of change, whether within dominant paradigms or otherwise. As the case of the Colombian community of peace researchers demonstrates, de-/postcolonialism is only one paradigm among many others (e.g. Bouvier, ; Díaz-Pabon, ; Valenzuela, ; Rettberg & Ugarriza, ).
“It is time to overcome simple binaries; not all Global South scholars are decolonialists, and not all Global North scholars stick to Eurocentric concepts.”
However, de-/postcolonialism is gaining ever more visibility (Jabri, ), especially in the field of qualitative peace research. Some of the key motifs, themes and theoretical arguments that are important for de-/postcolonial approaches to peace research are not new. During the radicalisation/proliferation phase of peace research (1969 to 1979; see Evans Pim et al., ) many scholars began to move “beyond the traditional concepts of peace” (Ishida, ), considering diverse cultural and structural relations. The global 1960s, characterised by decolonisation struggles, anti-war and nonviolence campaigns, culture wars, leftist rebel energy and new social movements altering the global political landscape, led to a surge in peace movements and peace research in diverse contexts (Kulnazarova, ). The post-Cold War era has witnessed both the hope for democratisation, global cooperation and multilateralism, and shattering disillusionment in the wake of war, intrastate conflicts and the rise of a nationalistic global far-right. It is this historical tableau that provides the framework for the move towards greater dissemination and visibility of de-/postcolonial approaches in peace research.
As Steyn () noted:
As a consistently antihegemonic but internally diverse intellectual movement, the field is dedicated to advancing “un-settling” perspectives on the inherently conflictual global configurations that are the legacy of Western conquest and control of other regions of the world, in all its multiple local inflections. It seeks to disrupt the cultural, discursive, and linguistic means by which oppressive relations are normalized and rendered invisible, and by which Other voices are silenced.
Understood as an intellectual movement, de-/postcolonialism in peace research is diverse, heterogeneous and inclusive, although not all studies informed by de-/postcolonial approaches would fit into this framework. As mentioned above, there are three main layers of de-/postcolonialism, and many de-/postcolonial contributions in the field focus on the recognition of other epistemologies – highlighting, for instance, the role of rivers as holders and co-creators of rights (González-Serrano, ), or the importance of decolonial and intercultural approaches to transitional justice (González Villamizar et al., ). In another entry in this Encyclopedia describe the debate on the coloniality of peace, and introduces the importance of intersectional approaches for peace research. These epistemological shifts are inherently connected to futures-thinking () and pluriversal peacebuilding ().
Latin American Discursive Moves
The discursive arena of decolonial debates within peace research is bound not spatially, but rather by communication. Inspired by key post- and decolonial theoretical contributions, scholars and scholar-activists around the globe have started to make these approaches productive in their respective fields of inquiry. As the Equipo Iniciativas de Paz – CINEP/PPP () noted in an editorial, the question of how to decolonise peace and conflict studies was discussed in European settings at roughly the same time as in Latin America. However, these academic agenda-setting activities unfolded in different political environments. European debates were attempts to rethink Western-centric concepts and curricula (Lottholz, ) in a context when the failure of allegedly universal recipes for democratisation, liberalisation and peace building were becoming ever more visible, and voices and restitution claims for colonial violence were getting louder. In the geopolitical context of the 2000s, de-/postcolonial approaches also gained momentum in the field of security studies (Barkawi & Laffey, ; Donnelly, ; Das, ), with many contributions examining issues of gender and human security (D’costa, ; Shani, ). Debates in Latin America focused on rethinking peace in times characterised by protracted violence and new threats such as extractivism and climate change (Brett & Florez, ; Pearce, ).
The debates leading to the comprehensive 2016 Colombian peace agreement between the government and the FARC-EP mirrored developments in the field of Colombian peace research. The peace accord, which was born from decades of academic and social peace activism, was a manifestation of a diverse set of approaches, with many of them implicitly or explicitly linked to decolonialism. The peace agreement added further weight to key questions of peacebuilding: Which types of peace did the agreement include? How was the differential, territorial and gender approach spelled out, and how participatory was the Havana negotiation process? What did the agreement mean for peasants, women, indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations, and other marginalised groups? What peace formations and peace infrastructures did the agreement feed? And where could violence stop perpetuating itself?
“Debates in Latin America focused on rethinking peace in
times characterised by protracted violence and new threats such as extractivism and climate change.”
As Castillejo remarked, it would be useful to have a “[G]eiger counter that would directly register the seismicity of the transition: not only the fractures of the transitional promise, the breakdown of expectations regarding the project of ‘a new imagined nation’, but also the emergence of hope and the arts of survival” (Castillejo, , 6; translation AO). This is precisely where decolonial approaches come into play. They expand the local turn (Mac Ginty, ; Aning et al., ) and take it to another level by emphasising the importance of thinking in terms not only of territorial dynamics and everyday practices, but also of diverse visions and epistemologies.
In their excellent and comprehensive edited book Paz decolonial, paces insubordinadas: conceptos, temporalidades y epistemologías (Decolonial peace, insubordinated peaces: Concepts, temporalities and epistemologies) (), Julio Roberto Jaime-Salas, Diana Gómez Correal, Karlos Pérez de Armiño, Sandra Liliana Londoño Calero, Fabio Saúl Castro Herrera and Jefferson Jaramillo Marín highlight: “At no point would we suggest that the reality of our America, peace, violence and conflict should be exclusively understood through the lenses that structure the epistemologies of the South, since we consider dialogue with critical theories of modern Western thought as vitally important” (42, own translation). What is at stake here is a permanent dialogue that brings together different world views and paves the way for new solutions for the most pressing issues of our times. In this sense, decolonial perspectives add another theoretical, methodological, epistemological and thematic layer to an understanding of critical social science that has evolved in Latin America since the 1970s, responding to specific Latin American conditions of oppression. There is growing attention, not only in Latin American peace research but also globally, to debates on polyphonic experiences of peace(s), old and new violence, and practices of indigenous world-making (Brigg & Walker, ). Methodologically, this calls for forms of participatory action research, engaged anthropology, decolonial pedagogy (Alban-Achinte, ; Walsh, ) or intersectional, differential, territorial and decolonial approaches that differ significantly from what was known as investigación-acción (investigation-action) in the 1970s (Fals Borda, , 254).
In a range of current peace processes and following transitional justice and peacebuilding activities, decolonial perspectives have driven a rethinking of how public policies should address long-term (Jaime-Salas, ) and holistic intersectional perspectives, and recognise relational ontologies in peacebuilding. Most importantly, in the realm of transitional justice scholarship and practice there is a move towards conceptions of transformative justice and transformative peace (Gómez Correal, ). This has a strong and explicit decolonial underpinning (Bueno-Hansen, ; Castillejo, ) that is connected to feminist, queer and Black women’s struggles (Grueso & Arroyo, ; Quiceno, ; González-Villamizar & Bueno-Hansen, ). In the dynamic geographies of current knowledge production there is a constant circulation of knowledge, and these practical and conceptual developments have fed reconfigurations in diverse contexts.
“There is growing attention […] to debates on polyphonic experiences of peace(s), old and new violence, and practices of indigenous world-making.”
The most important item on the agenda here is reorienting how peace is built in conflict-affected countries such as Colombia (Castro-Herrera, ). This reorientation is not limited to normative claims; on the contrary, it is about concrete local developments, experiences and visions related to a more just and peaceful human and more-than-human conviviality. There is already wealth of relevant literature in this area; there is not the scope here to list it all, but Hernández (, ), González et al. () and the chapters in Jaime-Salas et al. () are a few insightful examples. The complexity of territorial peace (Peña, 2019) and the changing geographical dynamics of the Post-2016-armed conflict (Cairo, ) also give additional weight to this much-needed shift of perspective towards “peaces from below” (Hernández, ), “small-scale peace” (Castillejo, ), “slow peace” (Lederach, ) and everyday forms of resistance (Scott, ; Richmond, ).
This brings us to resistance, which is another important layer in this discourse and constitutes a key dimension of many, although not all, contributions in this heterogeneous field. There are various understandings of the term (Glick Schiller, ) with many scholars in the field understanding themselves as scholar-activists, especially in the context of agrarian and Black and queer feminist struggles (Aguiar et al., ; Sudbury & Okazawa-Rey, ). They seek to create linkages between academia and movements for change, liberation or resistance (for the debate on decolonial peace and resistance theory, see entry in this Encyclopedia). Resistance can take many forms, from epistemic resurgence and knowledge building (Berenstain et al., ), community organizing, embodied identity work, critical literary and pedagogy, and everyday forms of resistance to sabotage, direct action and armed struggle. Many of these forms of contestation are essential elements of democracy.
Current Heated Debates
Since the unprecedented terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel on 7 October, 2023, pro-Palestinian demonstrations at European and North American university campuses have been criticised as being antisemitic. Participants were accused of glorifying terrorist violence, framed as necessary elements of liberation and decolonisation, and of calling for the destruction of Israel. As the intensity of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza increased, including the use of starvation, calls to label the action genocide became louder and louder,4 In early December 2024 Amnesty International released a report on Israel’s acts in Gaza, entitled “‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza”. Earlier that year the report of a UN Special Committee to investigate Israeli practices raised serious concerns about the possibility of genocide in Gaza (United Nations, 2024), and the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. but the protesting students were still accused of propagating postcolonial ideology and terrorism. The protests typically gave significant visibility to slogans accusing Israel of being a regime characterised by settler colonialism and apartheid. From the perspective of peace research this discursive escalation is extremely dangerous, because the simple formula ‘decolonialism = terrorism’ discredits the whole field of research described here.
In Germany these developments have moved the debate on settler colonialism quickly from silence to scandalisation, but mostly without understanding the concept in depth; this is true for all sides of the argument. Globally there have been bitter disputes, with some calling for the end of occupation and colonisation of Arab lands and others highlighting that Jews have always been present in Israel and that they returned to their “historic homeland to achieve self-determination” (American Jewish Committee, ).
In light of these debates, one must recognise that “settler colonialism” is above all an interpretative paradigm that serves to understand historical and structural situations (Veracini, ). It is difficult to draw demarcating lines between Palestine Studies, International Relations, Postcolonial and Settler Colonial Studies, and Peace and Conflict Studies, but I would suggest that peace researchers engage above all in examining the root causes of conflict, critically assessing peace processes, and elaborating perspectives for reconciliation and solidarity. There are important writings on feminist critique, Palestinian and Israeli collaborative projects, and reconciliation efforts (e.g. Daniele, ; Hassouna, ; Kelman, ; Ihmoud, ), while other authors have focused on education and peacebuilding (Sarsar, ) or graffiti and art as everyday forms of resistance (Hasan & Bleibleh, ).
“From the perspective of peace research this discursive escalation is extremely dangerous, because the simple formula ‘decolonialism = terrorism’ discredits the whole field of research described here.”
The peace process in Israel-Palestine has encountered many setbacks over the years, and a decade ago Aggestam and Strömbom () observed peace fatigue, disempowerment and marginalisation among local peace NGOs both in Israel and Palestine. However, the more recent increasing visibility of a radical discursive flank is also part of the story of peace research and the case of Israel-Palestine; the writings of Todorova () on decolonial solidarity, settler colonialism and resistance, Ihmoud () on Palestinian feminism, and Atallah and Dutta () on decolonial and community-based struggle, re-making and remembering are only a few examples of texts that are more radical in the sense that they look forward to the destruction of the existing system of spatial-political segregation. It is worth noting, however, that it is often unclear whether these writers see violence as a viable political strategy, which raises the question of whether this more radical discursive flank still forms part of the diverse movement of de-/postcolonial peace research.
Ways Ahead
In presenting the heterogeneous intellectual field situated in the nexus between de-/postcolonialism and peace research I have often moved sideways like a crab, to borrow Foucault’s (, 116) expression. It was critical to show that this field involves three levels: the analysis of historical continuities; the recognition and promotion of Non-Euroamerican forms of knowledge production; and resistance and world-making. I have shown that these three levels can be approached in very different ways, and they may have different epistemological, methodological and political implications. It is also crucial to note that this text was written at a specific time, at a specific place, and in a specific situation characterised by a global shift to far-right authoritarianism.
In this global constellation, the de-/postcolonial turn in peace research is having an impact on processes of knowledge production, practices of research and knowledge circulation, as well as the ethical standards underpinning our research. As described above, this impact can take many forms. From my own point of view and specific position, the most important contribution of this heterogeneous intellectual field has been the broadening of horizons in various directions. The field of peace research forms part of what Appadurai (, 296) has termed “ideoscapes”, i.e. cultural flows in an uneven process of globalisation that are “deeply perspectival constructs, inflected very much by the historical, linguistic and political situatedness of different sorts of actors” (). These flows include the key themes of the Euro-American tradition of enlightenment, but also those of counter-narratives that have to be translated from context to context.
With the proliferation and circulation of de-/postcolonial approaches, however, the morphology of these fluid ideoscapes is beginning to change. For instance, while there are growing debates on the restitution and repatriation of heritage from European museums (McAuliffe, ) or Europe’s colonial possessions in the Caribbean (Boatcă, ), other debates focus on ambivalent phenomena such as the strategic appropriation of marginality by the Indian government led by the Bharatiya Janta Party (Tripathi, ) or Latin American reactions to the war in Ukraine (Castro Alegría & García Pinzón, ). These are but a few examples of an accelerated production of knowledge that is informed by de-/postcolonial approaches, and which is entering the global academic publishing market.
“It was critical to show that this field involves three levels: the analysis of historical continuities; the recognition and promotion of Non-Euroamerican forms of knowledge production; and resistance and world-making.”
Most importantly, there is a diversification not only of topics but also of the global academic workforce, including greater visibility of Non-Euroamerican authors in leading journals. As books by Dietrich et al. (), Kulnazarova and Popovski (), Te Maihāroa, Ligaliga and Devere () and Fontan () demonstrate, important steps toward the decolonisation of peace and conflict studies have been taken. This decentring of peace and conflict studies is also taking place with regard to teaching and the formation of professionals (Zembylas, ); volumes by de Jong, Icaza and Rutazibwa () on decolonisation and feminism in global teaching and learning and by Davey, Toffolo and Unigarro Alba () on experiences of teaching peace amid conflict and postcolonialism (in New Zealand, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Uruguay, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burundi, Colombia, Myanmar and Northern Ireland) testify to this trend.
It is important to note, however, that there must be discursive opportunity structures that allow for knowledge to be built in dialogue with other forms of knowledge, whether Western or not. While knowledge spaces have widened, channels of knowledge circulation have opened and actors have diversified, we should be careful not to celebrate these developments too early. There are still significant structural and institutional asymmetries in global knowledge production and circulation (Rudling et al., ), and unfortunately there are still very few contributions from scholars around the globe that examine peacebuilding processes in postcolonial contexts from a comparative perspective, regardless of their own geographical position. The book by Weerawardhana on decolonial peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka and beyond is a very notable exception, suggesting a nascent development in the global structure of knowledge production.
For those of us in metropole contexts, the question arises as to whether Connell’s description of knowledge production in the Global North also applies to the field of de-/postcolonial informed peace research. Is our work also a “project of constructing a model of the world from the metropole, while imagining one is taking a global perspective” (Connell , 59)? In acute and active conflicts where armed groups fight to control territories and populations, “Northern” ideas, theories and methods that improve our understanding of how to resolve and overcome violent conflicts are of key importance. These include conventional approaches to diplomacy, negotiation, conflict resolution, human rights and transitional justice. However, the added value of de-/postcolonial approaches within the social worlds of diplomats, negotiators, practitioners and civil society representatives engaged in conflict resolution constitute a vital broadening of horizons.
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“Mainstream […] strategic adaptation narrows the attention of researchers and practitioners to managing future risks and immediate problem-solving solutions, with limited potential for the holistic transformation required for political and social change.”
How to cite this entry:
Oettler, A. 2025: “Against Simplification: De-/Postcolonial Thought, Peace and Conflict Studies and the Circulation of Knowledge”, Virtual Encyclopaedia – Rewriting Peace and Conflict, 06.02.2025. https://rewritingpeaceandconflict.net/against-simplification.
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