| 1. |
|
|
| 2. |
|
|
| 3. |
- Magalhaes Teixeira, Barbara, et al.
(author)
-
Transforming environmental peacebuilding: addressing extractivism in building climate resilient peace
- 2024
-
In: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 29:3
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We examined the role of anti-extractivism as environmental peacebuilding through a conflict transformation framework. Environmental peacebuilding aims to foster peace through addressing environmental issues to remedy root causes of conflict; such efforts must further account for and respond to the changing climate. To this end, we explored how community-level movements encounter structural constraints, oppressions, or opportunities. Rather than relying on existing structures as a means to resolve conflict, we suggest that environmental conflict transformation presents an opportunity to foster climate resilient peace responding to differing needs of various groups, extending beyond the absence of war, and responding to the realities of climate change. We conducted case studies with the organizations Casa Pueblo in Puerto Rico and Movimento Bem Viver in Brazil to explore how conflict transformation helps shift environmental peacebuilding toward both being able to respond to destructive patterns and to achieve a more peaceful future through a process of change. We argue that the act of negating extractivism is a positive action toward transformation for peace. We thus contribute theoretical and empirical insight to the study of environmental peacebuilding, broadening ongoing discussions on building climate resilient peace that is beneficial to both humans and the environment.
|
|
| 4. |
- Marrero, Abrania, et al.
(author)
-
Food laborers as stewards of island biocultural diversity : Reclaiming local knowledge, food sovereignty, and decolonization
- 2023
-
In: Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. - 2571-581X. ; 7
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Creating nutritious and ecologically regenerative food cultures depends on the local knowledge of food system laborers. Food producers in small island developing states center socioecological interdependence in their livelihoods and, as such, conserve biocultural diversity. Amid burgeoning health, economic, and climate crises brought on by colonialism, reclaiming food sovereignty requires a critical and embodied scientific approach, one that considers what traditional ecological knowledge is and who creates and sustains it. This study positions laborers as the primary sources of knowledge in island food systems; discusses declines in nutrition and agrobiodiversity as consequences of food labor loss; and proposes laborers' stewardship as essential to regenerating self-determination. Using critical quasi-ethnographic methods, this report synthesized primary data from narrative interviews in Guam (Guåhan, n = 13) and Puerto Rico (Borikén, n = 30), two former colonies of Spain and current territories of the United States, as specific examples of place-based knowledge production, interwoven into critical discussion of broader literature in this space. Our findings show that local food laborers combine intergenerational, ecosystem-specific knowledge with robust human value systems, negotiating across competing economic, cultural, and ecological needs to sustain livelihoods and regenerate biodiversity. As well-connected nodes in family and community networks, laborers serve as the scaffolding on which compassionate and relational care can thrive. Trade policies and the market dominance of transnational food corporations have severely reduced local food production in favor of food import dependence in islands, aggravating labor shortages and augmenting food insecurity. Through waves of out-migration and cash remittance, social care relationships have become monetized, reinforcing mass-produced food consumption and dietary diversity loss as islanders, both at home and in the diaspora, transition to an industrialized diet. The loss of local labor similarly poses threats to agrobiodiversity, with export-oriented agribusiness simplifying landscapes to streamline extraction. This study demonstrates that to reclaim food systems in Guam, Puerto Rico, and similar island settings, laborers must be valued as stewards of cultural and agrobiodiversity and can be integral to efforts that preserve cultures, agroecosystems, and health.
|
|
| 5. |
|
|
| 6. |
- Nicoson, Christie
(author)
-
Climate transformation through feminist ethics of care
- 2024
-
In: Environmental Science and Policy. - 1462-9011. ; 155
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Aiming to mitigate negative impacts of climate change, climate adaptation policy and practice increasingly engages with nuanced and differentiated impacts of climate change. Existing adaptation approaches and research informing them largely focus on outcomes of climactic events, but lack consideration of power structures shaping these phenomena and experiences of them. From a feminist peace perspective, I posit that tackling intersectional violences of climate change necessitates greater engagement with underlying knowledge. This paper explores how ways of knowing climate change impact ways of living with it: analyzing the ground on which climate action interventions stand and the paths on which they set us.I theorize ‘climate transformation’ as processual shifts in ways of knowing a problem and solution toward norms of a feminist peace. Theory is developed abductively, based on original fieldwork in Puerto Rico and drawing on conflict transformation theory and elaborating knowledge production through feminist ethics of care. The model developed here enables analyzing orientations of current situations and change processes in relation to desirable futures. I find that actors involved in peace work and climate action in Puerto Rico foster transformation based on: caring in current relations and experience; caring through change processes affectively and reciprocally; and caring for a vision of the future through prefigurative and historicized imagination. The framework advances academic study and policy development on transformative climate action for tackling historic and intersectional violences to influence and enact particular visions of peace.
|
|
| 7. |
- Nicoson, Christie
(author)
-
Peace in a Changing Climate : Caring and Knowing the Climate-Gender-Peace Nexus
- 2024
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Scholars and practitioners argue that climate change poses particular challenges for peace. In order to understand what these challenges are and how to tackle them necessitates attention to gender, since experiences and processes of peace are gendered, as are experiences and drivers of climate change. For instance, women and men may experience conditions after a ceasefire differently, or climate hazards may impact transgender people differently than others. Rather than biological differences, these disparities are shaped by factors like labor norms, access to political power, or socioeconomic conditions. An agenda for peace is always changing and depends on how people experience the world and perceive problems from different positions. However, it is not only the impacts of climate change that are gendered, but also the way that we know what climate change is in the first place. The problem of climate change is something we each may experience in our day-to-day life: a particularly hot day in the middle of a cold season, wildfires that seem to come more and more frequently, or rains that used to reliably fall at the same time but now feel erratic. Climate science aggregates data and runs scenarios that allow us to look past the distinct times and locations of these events to see long-term changes, and to understand the global processes driving this change. Yet the tools and tricks that help us make sense of the problem of climate change rely on logic that divides women and men, emotion and reason, nature and society. How can we expect solutions derived from violent logics and its technologies to not only ‘fix’ the problem of climate change, but to create peaceful solutions? I show that climate, gender, and peace are connected in a nexus by care, and that what we do with that knowledge – in care labor, values, affection, or politics – impacts how we imagine and create peace amidst the ever-growing challenges of climate change. Based on field research with community groups in Puerto Rico, this thesis demonstrates not only that it matters what knowledge is used to understand climate change, but also what this knowledge does. I find that care-based knowledge (knowing informed by caring values and practices) allows study of the nexus as experiential relations of different beings with specific histories and values. It allows study of how affect works reciprocally – how emotions affect people back-and-forth as part of experiencing climate change. This thesis identifies values, practices, and hopes of peace – not a goal or blueprint for some ‘right’ or ‘best’ peace, but rather, what kind of situated knowledge and judgements people use to strive for both ecological and social well-being in different contexts of climate change.
|
|
| 8. |
- Nicoson, Christie, et al.
(author)
-
Re-Imagining Peace Education: Using Critical Pedagogy as a Transformative Tool
-
In: International Studies Perspectives. - 1528-3577.
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Existing studies demonstrate that although peace and conflict studies (PCS) emerged from a deep connection between political activism and research, the field has increasingly moved toward promoting liberal ideals of peace that sustain the status quo. Amidst this trend, many scholars have pushed research and education programs to explore beyond a hegemonic liberal peace, for example by diversifying reading lists and drawing on decolonial frameworks. This paper adds to such efforts: through the case study of a higher education PCS classroom, we use narratives from two course conveners and a student to explore challenges and opportunities of realizing a critical pedagogy approach to peace education. This approach recenters the classroom not necessarily in terms of what students ought to think, but how; critical theory provides a basis for fostering curiosity, using query as a tool of learning, and focusing class structure on students’ needs. Our findings suggest that using critical pedagogy in PCS addresses calls for a greater understanding of peace beyond the absence of violence, fosters active envisioning of peace, and works toward decolonizing and demystifying peace work. Ultimately, we call for PCS classrooms to foster critical thinking and radical imagination for a pedagogy of peace praxis.
|
|
| 9. |
- Nicoson, Christie
(author)
-
Towards climate resilient peace : An intersectional and degrowth approach
- 2021
-
In: Sustainability Science. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1862-4057 .- 1862-4065. ; 16:4, s. 1147-1158
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- How can peace be climate resilient? How can peace and environmental sustainability be advanced simultaneously? To address these questions, I develop a new conceptual and theoretical framework for climate resilient peace through degrowth. This paper calls for stronger consideration of positive conceptualizations of peace and of intersectionality and degrowth in pursuit of peace and resilience. Not only does climate change make planetary limitations more salient, but it also highlights rising inequalities. In light of this, peace necessitates transforming societal power structures that are both driving climate change and influencing people’s experiences of climate impacts. Addressing imbalanced power structures then is key to understanding and fostering climate resilient peace. This paper conceptualizes climate resilient peace based on an intersectional understanding of positive peace, highlighting that peace depends on the negation of structural violence experienced at the intersection of political and social identities. In relation to this, I argue that a process of climate resilient peace must address underlying power structures influencing people’s experience of climate harms, and driving climate change so as to mitigate further damage. This paper demonstrates such a process through degrowth, wherein growth is no longer the central economic goal, exemplifying social and ecological means for disrupting structural violence within climate limitations. I discuss and give examples of three key degrowth processes—redistribution, reprioritized care economies, and global equity—as opportunities to foster peace in a changing climate. This framework, thus, contributes a new approach to climate resilient peace that addresses challenges of both social and environmental sustainability.
|
|
| 10. |
- Peters, Katie, et al.
(author)
-
Climate change, conflict and security scan : December 2018–March 2019
- 2020
-
Reports (pop. science, debate, etc.)abstract
- In the third climate change, conflict and security scan, covering the period from December 2018 to March 2019, we show that this quadrimester has witnessed the release of an astonishing array of new publications – reviewed through our summary of academic articles and grey literature, debates and announcements, and also conveyed through our summary of the blogosphere, and opinions found on Twitter.Many new authors appear in our bibliography, publishing on different aspects of the intersection of climate change, conflict and security. There is also a completely new list of top five individuals tweeting, which reveals that the breath of individuals and agencies engaging in the topic continues to expand.Prominent institutions continue to feature widely in the policy discourse, publication of grey literature and the blogosphere, with reporting from the World Economic Forum (WEF), United Nations (UN) Security Council debates on the security implications of disasters, and the fourth Planetary Security Conference. However, these high-profile forums are increasingly being complemented by evidence on the local experiences of the intersection of climate change, conflict and security. For example, through articles exploring the ‘double vulnerability’ of climate and conflict risk, with implications for humanitarian, development, peacebuilding and climate communities.Across the blogosphere, debate rages about the place of climate change in US national security priorities, and there is continued academic analysis of the political discourse of climate change found in policy documents and statements. This complements analysis on international and transboundary dimensions of the climate security nexus, with literature pointing to potential ways forward for such challenges in the context of:territory allocation in the Arcticregional cooperation around shared natural resources in Africa and Asiaunderstanding and responding to changing patterns of human mobility across borders. Themes less prominent in previous scans that appear here include urban landscapes, human mobility, and rights and justice. This complements new evidence on the intersection of disasters with conflict and violence, this time drawing on themes of poverty, inequality and marginalisation.As with the previous two scans, we aim to provide time-poor policy-makers, practitioners and academics with a summary of the new knowledge and evidence that has emerged over a four-month period. As described in the methodology for each section, the scan is not exhaustive but in featuring 25 top blog posts, 39 publications from grey literature and 66 articles from the academic articles, we believe this provides a good starting point for anyone wanting to better understand the nexus.
|
|
| 11. |
-
PRAXIS : Critical reflections on violence, justice and peace
- 2023
-
In: ; 1
-
Other publication (pop. science, debate, etc.)abstract
- Praxis is born out of critical discussions and reflections on violence, justice, and peace, taking place in a classroom at Lund University in a course led by Barbara Magalhães Teixeira and Christie Nicoson (shoutout!). It is the result of frustration linked to the current global state of affairs, as well as the colonial and patriarchal legacies and continued practices within the field we seek a place in. Mostly, it is created from our optimism and sentiments of solidarity in our quest to find viable ways forward and our aspiration to take concrete action in order to contribute to change. Each and everyone of us are students of global politics in some form. Whilst we are an international class, of various backgrounds, we also note that we are all students of the Global North and we acknowledge the perspectives, biases, and privileges which that entails. We do not always agree with each other on these topics, but what we do agree on, and what we strive for, is to create a space for discussions, to engage in critical reflections, and learn from both each other and others. We have different understandings of concepts such as violence, justice, and peace and our communal goal is to widen the debates on these matters in order to break past patterns of narrow conceptualizations. Praxis is our attempt to look beyond our worlds of imagination and to engage with broader critical peace studies and practices. This is our attempt to act, instead of to react.We refer to Praxis as a creative, illustrative academic paper. It is filled with our reflections on violence, justice, and peace from wide-ranging perspectives. It includes critical reflections on the origins of peace research, case studies on conflicts as well as peace practices, in-depth examinations of various forms of violence, practical educational materials, and anything else we find informative, inspiring, or fun. We view the premise of our contribution in line with a feminist, critical approach that rather than attempting to once again write authoritative stories, make hard-edged conclusions, and decide what qualifies as valid knowledge, we partake in open-ended conversations and we hope to never quit doing so. With that in mind, our creation is also an encouragement, to listen and to learn. It is an invention to question our assumptions about the world and how it is allowed to be considered and studied.
|
|
| 12. |
|
|
