ABSTRACT
The core and fundamental notion of dialogue in the peace education programs is a seemingly innocuous and often taken-for-granted method. In the academic realm, peace education has only recently moved from a marginalized discipline into a more accepted and legitimized field, evidenced by the multitude of peace education programs, as well peace and conflict studies, worldwide. Despite this exponential increase, peace education is often described as a field that is elusive and lacking concrete definition. Many scholars in the field of education have used Foucauldian notions of power not only to examine how conventional and accepted educational initiatives create subjects that are both disciplined and monitored. Encounter programs and peace education, like critical pedagogy, also utilize dialogue as one of the tools for transformation. Peace dialogues among ordinary members of civil society, however, are often not met with the same cynicism, at least in mainstream imagination.
