Culture, Conflict, and Peacebuilding

This book explores the complexity, multiplicity, intersectionality, and dynamism of cultures in connection with critical and emancipatory peacebuilding. It includes diverse voices to emphasize local and everyday peacebuilding within a narrative that links the personal to the political. It is a valuable resource for students, educators, and practitioners in peace and conflict studies, cultural studies, sociology, and related disciplines.

Introduction.- Part I — Theory-Building.- Chapter 1.Connections between critical peacebuilding perspectives and Southern and liberation theories.- Chapter 2. No peace until we decolonize and return to our roots: Culture and peacebuilding in Sub-Saharan Africa.- Chapter 3. The war against Tigray’s women and girls: Resistance in the face of grave atrocities.-Part 2 — culture, Power, and Resistance.- Chapter 4. A heritage of stars: The dangerous business of being a woman and what to do about it.- Chapter 5.Culture and resistance: Home, exile, belonging and the representation of women in the posters of the Medu Art Ensemble.- Chapter 6. Cultural versus personal agency: Willpower close to madness—charting my own path toward my dreams.-Part 3 — (RE-)Creating Cultures of Peace .-Chapter 7.Aki gakinoomaagewin [Teaching from the earth] as peace education.-Chapter 8.Reckoning with racism: Critical education and community museums.- Chapter 9.Reinterpretation of the world: Transformative learning through experience and reflection.- Chapter 10. Creating a culture of “being peace”: From listening to trauma stories to peacebuilding .- Conclusion.

Christina Beyene has worked for several years in the settlement and postsecondary sectors advocating for equitable educational policy. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Manitoba.

Leonardo Luna is Professor in the Department of Psychology at Corporación Universitaria Iberoamericana, Colombia, and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Manitoba.

Nkwazi Mhango teaches Swahili and African culture to Canadian diplomats and government workers posted to East Africa through Graybridge Malkam, and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Manitoba.

Jessica Senehi is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Manitoba. She is Editor of Storytelling, Self, Society: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Storytelling Studies. She holds a PhD in Social Science from Syracuse University.