What are they writing for? Peace research as an impermeable metropole

Abstract

This article explores peace research as a field of knowledge production and the experience of peace practitioners when accessing this field. It aims to challenge the idea that peace research should only deal with knowledge production and not necessarily require scholars to directly engage in peace work as the practitioners do. The current knowledge-making space in peace research is impermeable to the practitioners. This impermeability emanates from the practitioners’ training for urgent and practical solutions for distressed communities and not on knowledge production. Such impermeability creates a metropolic tendency for peace research, which practitioners have difficulty accessing. This paper argues that there is a need for peace research to transcend from its current approach of knowledge production for purposes of describing a phenomenon. Knowledge production should include advocating for direct community engagement as a moral obligation and ensure that the discipline makes sense to the community it operates.