Everyday Peacebuilding through Democratic Political Education: The Need for Radical Poise (Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies)

By: Stephen L. Esquith

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Synopsis: Everyday peacebuilding through democratic political education is a necessary but not sufficient condition for limiting negative political emotions such as anger, fear, and resentment, and for cultivating the political virtues needed for an alternative, more democratic orientation towards power: one that values and exercises power with other members of emergent political communities, not power over them. These demotic political virtues include self-restraint, resistance, humility, respect for the civic dignity of others, non-violent protest, and the radical poise needed to cultivate and coordinate this constellation of political virtues. For those who have been forcibly displaced or are only dimly aware of their complicity in this type of political violence, to maintain a radically poised stance is a continuing process of democratic political education. This book demonstrates how this notion of Radical Poise in theory and practice can be developed through a hybrid process of political education in one country, Mali, to contest the growth of violence and fear there and elsewhere.