Peace Education and Peace Education Research: Toward a Concept of Poststructural Violence and Second-Order Reflexivity.

AbstractPeace and conflict studies (PACS) education has grown significantly in the last 30 years, mainly in Higher Education. This article critically analyzes the ways in which this field might be subject to poststructural critique, and posits Bourdieusian second-order reflexivity as a means of responding to these critiques. We propose here that theory-building within PACS education is often limited by the dominance of Galtung and Freire, and that, while the foundational ideas of positive and negative peace, structural and cultural violence, conscientization, reflexivity and critical pedagogy are still relevant today, they nevertheless need to be combined in new ways with each other, and with Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and field, to adequately respond to poststructural critique. Thus, we call here for greater field-based reflexivity in twenty-first century PACS.