Positive Peace, Global Transformations, and U.S. Contestations: Decolonial, Ecological, Economic, and Democratic Pathways in Education (Part 1)

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Panel 1 Overview:
In a moment of accelerating global crises—ranging from climate collapse to deepening inequality and persistent colonial legacies—the pursuit of peace demands urgent reconsideration. Building on Johan Galtung’s foundational distinction between negative peace (the absence of direct violence) and positive peace (the presence of justice and equity), this panel engages the question: What does it mean to pursue positive peace in the twenty-first century, and what transformations are necessary to achieve it?
This first panel of a planned double session focuses on global and conceptual dimensions of positive peace. It brings together three papers that reframe peace as inseparable from struggles for justice, ecological balance, and systemic transformation. Collectively, these papers argue that positive peace is not merely a philosophical aspiration but a practical and necessary framework for guiding education, governance, and social systems in a time of multiple, interlocking crises.
Paper 1 interrogates dominant liberal theories of justice, arguing that they perpetuate Eurocentric frameworks that limit the possibilities for genuine peace. Instead, the paper advances decolonial approaches that foreground indigenous agency, relational epistemologies, and pluriversal worldviews as central to realizing peace rooted in justice. Paper 2 explores how regenerative education offers both a theoretical framework and an emerging set of practices for responding to the climate emergency. Drawing from an environmental scan of more than 100 organizations worldwide, the paper demonstrates how regenerative education cultivates ecological and social interdependence, extending the meaning of positive peace to encompass ecological sustainability and collective flourishing. Paper 3 turns to the economic dimension of positive peace, surveying global movements and practices that contest neoliberal capitalism’s “there is no alternative” (TINA) mantra and advance “there are plenty of alternatives” (TAPAS) in the form of solidarity economies, participatory democracy, and post-capitalist systems.
By addressing the philosophical, ecological, and economic foundations of peace, the panel highlights that positive peace cannot be achieved within existing systems of domination, extraction, and inequality. Instead, it requires deep transformations that are already underway across diverse movements and practices.
Thematic Contribution
The panel makes three key contributions to comparative and international education scholarship:
1. Decolonial Justice as the Foundation of Peace
Drawing from Fanon, Quijano, Mignolo, Tuck & Yang, and other decolonial scholars, Paper 1 argues that mainstream liberal conceptions of justice reproduce rather than dismantle colonial and capitalist structures of domination. The paper demonstrates that decolonial approaches—rooted in indigenous epistemologies, relational practices, and pluriversality—offer essential pathways for conceptualizing peace beyond Eurocentric paradigms. By situating justice as both the foundation and the ongoing practice of peace, the paper underscores that positive peace requires confronting structural violence at its colonial and epistemic roots.
2. Education for Regeneration and Ecological Balance
Paper 2 positions education as a central arena for cultivating positive peace in the context of the climate emergency. The paper argues that education systems shaped by industrial and extractive logics undermine peace by preparing learners to participate in exploitative economies. In contrast, regenerative education advances a critical and ecological approach to learning that emphasizes balance with the natural world, interconnectedness across human and nonhuman life, and collective thriving. By analyzing curricula, pedagogical strategies, and institutional designs from a global sample of regenerative education organizations, the paper identifies emerging practices that connect climate education with food sovereignty, community engagement, and activism. These practices expand the boundaries of positive peace to include ecological sustainability as a core condition for justice and human flourishing.
3. Systemic Economic Alternatives for Peace
Paper 3 turns attention to the structural economic barriers that undermine peace, particularly neoliberal capitalism’s concentration of wealth and perpetuation of inequality. The paper surveys a wide range of transformative alternatives, including solidarity economies, doughnut economics, participatory democracy, and ecofeminist approaches, drawing from initiatives such as the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, and the Doughnut Economics Action Lab. By challenging the inevitability of capitalism’s TINA narrative and foregrounding TAPAS—There Are Plenty of Alternatives—the paper argues that positive peace requires structural transformations that create economies oriented toward equity, sustainability, and the common good. This analysis reveals that pathways to peace are inseparable from struggles for systemic economic change.
Relevance to the Conference Theme
This panel speaks directly to the conference’s emphasis on confronting intersecting crises of racial capitalism, patriarchy, militarism, and ecological collapse. By reimagining peace as a multidimensional construct that requires justice, ecological regeneration, and economic transformation, the panel demonstrates how education and comparative analysis can contribute to global efforts to build just and sustainable futures. The cross-disciplinary insights shared by the three papers resonate with CIES’s mission to engage comparative education as a space for addressing urgent global challenges through critical, plural, and transformative scholarship.
Connection to the Double Panel
This panel serves as the conceptual and global foundation for a two-part session. Panel 1 (this panel) foregrounds theoretical, philosophical, and global analyses of positive peace across decolonial, ecological, and economic dimensions. Panel 2, in turn, will shift the focus to U.S.-based empirical research, exploring how these concepts manifest in American contexts where education systems are entangled with systemic inequalities, privatization, and resistance movements. The double panel structure highlights the interdependence of global theorizing and local empirical realities: understanding positive peace requires both expansive conceptual frameworks and grounded analyses of how these frameworks play out in practice.
Conclusion
By centering positive peace as a framework for decolonial justice, ecological balance, and systemic transformation, this panel reimagines what peace requires in the twenty-first century. It challenges dominant paradigms that equate peace with the absence of violence, instead insisting on a more expansive vision grounded in justice, sustainability, and plurality. As the first of two interlinked panels, it lays the intellectual groundwork for an integrated exploration of positive peace that moves from global theorizing to local practice, offering a holistic contribution to comparative and international education scholarship.

Sub Unit

• 21st Century Educational Alternatives: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Patriarchy, Militarism, and the Climate Crisis

Organizer

• Frank Adamson, California State University, Sacramento

Chair

• Carol Anne Spreen, New York Univesity

Individual Presentations

• No Justice, No Peace: Towards a Decolonial Turn - Rezan Benatar, Independent Scholar

• Through the Positive Peace Prism: Engaging the Climate Emergency with Regenerative Education Theory and Praxis - Frank Adamson, California State University, Sacramento; Michael Gibbons, The Alternatives Project

• Economic Justice: A Prerequisite to Peace - Steven Klees, University of Maryland

Discussant

• Michael Gibbons, The Alternatives Project