The art of plurality: participation, voice, and plural memories of community peace

Abstract

This article’s central focus is on exploring the interplays between plurality and methodological approaches in peace research, through engaging with insights from arts methods and participatory action research (PAR). Specifically, engaging with these insights suggests that they have significant potential to aid plural dialogue, intergenerational memory, and young people’s active participation in post-conflict communities, and thus can further extend understandings of plurality in peace research. Furthermore, the article proposes that this creative and participatory methodology can contribute to three central parts of plurality in peace research, namely, facilitation, ‘voice’, and intergenerational participation. This article also draws connections between arts methods, PAR, and decolonising knowledge production, specifically in relation to peace research attempting to prioritise local forms of knowledge production. In doing so, the article also critically reflects on some of the challenges and limitations of this methodological approach and attempts at decolonising knowledge production in peace research. The article, engaging with illustrated examples of arts methods, argues that this methodological approach to peace research allows individuals and groups to understand multiple past experiences and events, can allow for a shared acknowledgement of frictional experiences of these events, and aid young people’s participation in conversations about the present and future.