Exploring Edu-peace as a space of resistance and the agency of the edu-peace worker in countering violence

• In Event: Navigating violence, trauma and safety

Proposal

Lindsey K. Horner (Presenting author); Emraan Azad (non-presenting author, not attending conference); Elizabeth Maber(non-presenting author), Emo Yango (non-presenting author, not attending conference)

Edu-peace describes the reciprocal and interconnected fields of education and peace that are inherent in transformative work in conflict affected contexts. For the purposes of this paper ‘education’ and ‘peace’ are understood in the broadest sense and go beyond, and are sometimes oppositional to, normative assumptions of formal schooling or liberal peace. The multiplicity found within just one of these fields alone allows for numerous manifestations of what ‘education’ or ‘peace’ might mean. Using Deluze and Guattari’s (2004) notion of the plateau may be helpful here. A plateau is a pattern of multiplicities with inter-relating, connected and simultaneous parts. By using Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) term plateau our intention is to highlight how particular intensities of meaning, far from standing alone, inform each other and connect through multiple and simultaneous lines of flight. The plateau metaphor highlights the instability, contradiction and difference within each field while simultaneous recognising a pattern that unifies them – patterns of either peace or education.

Drawing on our collective experiences on living and working in conflict and post-conflict settings we suggest that the edu-peace worker occupies a distinctive ambiguous space where they traverse the uncertain contours of conflict and peace. The notion of Edu-peace emerged through collaborative work with multiple scholars as a way to build connections between the variety and particularities of transformative educative work in situations of conflict. In this paper we explore and expand this concept as a site of resistance/protest. With theory as our guide we explore in this paper the hyphenated space performed in edu-peace: its nature, its characteristics and its potential. In what Loytard calls the “trait d’union” (1993), in edu-peace we have a composition that is at its core de-composed, thus performing a dis/union. The hyphen works to separate the very thing it is merging and therefore while at the centre of the term it actually unsettles and decentres it. The bridge then, between the two concepts, works to network between different communities in a hyphenated space that houses an interpretive processes. This creates a third space of edu-peace that is liminal in nature, opening up possibilities and a performative agency where the role of the edu-peace worker is to facilitate the movements and possibilities in the “interstitial passages and processes of cultural difference that are inscribed in the ‘in-between’” (Bhabha 2004: 310). Thus the edu-peace worker can be considered a political subject, their very agency derived from this decentred space. Furthermore through understanding the two fields brought together in the hyphen as the plateau(s) of education and the plateau(s) of peace we can highlight how the themes within them “communicate with each other across microfissures” (Deleuze and Guattari 2004:24) , enacting multiple and simultaneous connections.

We offer a theoretical exploration of practice around aspects of hybridity; borderline negotiations; its in-betweens and becoming; and the third space it creates. We bring varying perspectives to the conversation of working in and with edu-peace through both theoretical and experiential knowledge, drawing out the qualities and the means of the edu-peace worker, with reference to the Philippines and Bangladesh.

About the Authors
Emraan Azad
I am an early career researcher based in Bangladesh and teach the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) at Bangladesh University of Professionals where I currently hold the position of Assistant Professor in Law. I also coordinate the research work of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Justice, Liberation War Musuem Bangladesh, specially leading its researches on atrocity crimes prevention and justice for the victims through civic engagement and legal mechanisms. I have a five-year long experience of working with the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, mainly collecting their testimonies and analysing them for judicial intervention.
Lindsey K. Horner
I am a researcher and educator specialising in critical peace education, peacebuilding education and participatory research. I am particularly interested in the interactions of a multifarious understanding of peace and practices to facilitate moving these understandings forward (the work of translating peace) and co- designed/constructed/produced research. I am a lecturer in Education and International Development at the University of Edinburgh.
Elizabeth Maber
I am Assistant Professor in Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge where my research and teaching focus on gender and education in situations of conflict, displacement and transition. I have worked for over 15 years in contexts affected by conflict, militarisation, authoritarianism and legacies of violence (particularly having lived in Tunisia, Chile, Myanmar and Thailand), as well as with civil society and refugee communities in Bangladesh, Thailand, Australia and the UK, first as a teacher and trainer and then as an academic and researcher.
Emo Yango
Presently a staff at the General Council Office of the United Church of Canada, and also facilitating a translation project and facilitating interfaith engagement in southern Philippines with Canadian Baptist Ministries. When time is available I also facilitate training and teaching via online courses for theological schools in Asia. While teaching is enjoyable, combining "grassroots" research and intercultural pedagogy is much more rewarding. My key words are decolonizing, deconstructing and re-storying.

Authors

• Lindsey K Horner, The University of Edinburgh

• Elizabeth Jane Tregoning Maber, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education