Youth Perspectives on Peace

Drawing on conversations with Brazilian high school and undergraduate students, this entry explores how young people understand peace, violence and power in their everyday lives. While peace is often imagined as tranquillity or an inner state, students also highlight the importance of respect, recognition and dignity in social relationships. Their reflections reveal violence as a multidimensional phenomenon rooted in inequality, racism and gender discrimination. At the same time, many perceive power primarily as domination, raising important questions about youth empowerment and the possibilities for collective social change that may foster peace.

Epistemic Violence

Coined by Gayatri Spivak at the end of the so-called Cold War, the concept of epistemic violence is today a powerful tool of analysis and critique. It draws our attention to the cognitive and epistemic infrastructure of what we believe to know about the world, including about (non-)violence, conflict, war – and peace. Taking epistemic violence into account has the potential of changing the entire research agenda of Peace and Conflict Studies, because it invites us to re- and unthink violence from a groundbreaking perspective: the Euro- and androcentrist nature of our knowledge (and our ignorance) that is grounded in the sustaining colonial condition of the world – and vice versa.

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