What are they writing for? Peace research as an impermeable metropole
Ragandang, Primitivo Cabanes. 2022. Peacebuilding 10, no. 3: 265-277.
This piece discusses the interactions between academic peace practice and practitioners who work in the field building peace. The author discusses the unidirectional flow of information and work within the peace space, describing how academics utilise data from the field and benefit from practitioners’ work but offer very little in return to help develop peacebuilding practices. The author utilises qualitative data to build an argument against red tape and hierarchical structure in academic peace studies, stating that the discipline should be more open to peace practitioners and other types of thought in order to reflect and aid real-world situations. The piece is compelling, with examples from the author’s experiences. It lays out an argument which demonstrates the limitations of peace studies in its current form. I felt that the points about the topic being less accessible to actors in the global south were especially compelling. However, the article is written to critique the practices of academics in the peace space, and at times I felt that it could benefit from further empirical data to back up its arguments. I really enjoyed this piece and think it highlights a critical point in how we think about and build peace. I would recommend it to anyone who wishes to further understand the difficulties of peace implementation by learning from one who has experience in the field. It has encouraged me to read further into peace education theory, looking at the relations between academic and practical solutions.