Critical edge and legitimisation in peace studies

Abstract

Peace Studies, constituted historically as critical and, therefore, alternative knowledge to normal science in International Relations, had come, by the Nineties, to be co-opted by the regulating structures of the international system as the basis of many of the options put into practice, above all in the framework of the processes of post-war reconstruction. In this context, rescuing the critical heritage of Peace Studies implies two radical options today. The first is the qualification of intended peace as sustainable peace. The second is the epistemological decolonisation of Peace Studies.