The introductory essay presents a locally-grounded theoretical framework for studying youth and everyday peace(building). Drawing on examples from fieldwork as well as insights from the articles to follow in the journal, the essay highlights three interrelated and overlapping spheres of inquiry. First, it makes the case for examining the age-specific as well as gender-, and other contextually-specific roles of youth as they relate to everyday peacebuilding. Second, the essay draws attention to how everyday peace is narrated by or through youth. It poses questions about what values, policies, and governmental structures are specifically being resisted and rejected, and how peace is conceptualised and/or hidden in the narratives of youth. Third, along with these concerns, the nexus of global and local (including discursive and institutional) structures that facilitate, curtail, and curtain everyday peace (building) practices are important to identify and evaluate for their impacts on the roles and ideas of youth. In proposing this theoretical framework that recognises the complex and multiple ways youth are engaged in their everyday worlds, this essay asks how we can engage this recognition within knowledges and practices of everyday peace(building).

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The roles of popular books and films in influencing beliefs and teaching both awareness of injustice and the costs of violence are important to consider by contemporary peace educators. These media are powerful in cultural reproduction, shaping young people's identities, and, potentially, in social and transnational bridge building. This paper discusses a popular fiction series about children and armed conflict and its implications for peace education. A massive fandom has grown up around Suzanne Collins' young adult (YA) trilogy The Hunger Games (Collins, 2008), Catching Fire (Collins, 2009), and Mockingjay (Collins, 2010). Describing economic inequality, government oppression, torture, war, revolution, and children as combatants, The Hunger Games series explores harsh realities of contemporary world politics and its impact on children. But these novels also point to sources of resilience and healing and a vision of peace rooted in gender equity, rejection of violence, and remembering the costs of war. This paper explains how educators can draw out these themes through classroom discussions and activities. The paper shows how The Hunger Games series can be taught as a vehicle for coming to terms with "the other in ourselves" (Reardon, 1996, p. 51), recognizing our own capacity for violence, but also our capacity for empathy and for transcending violence, polarization and gender stereotypes. Additionally, it shows that the series has inspired and been used by young activists involved in struggles for social justice, and argues that a potentially important but underutilized vehicle for peace education is found in such fandom practices.