ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects the response of peace and conflict studies (PACS) to the rapidly changing nature of times and compel consideration. There are numerous issues vital to the forward movement of theory building, praxis, epistemologies, and pedagogy in PACS. The universal liberal technocratic values, expectations, and assumptions of neoliberal democratic peacebuilding have failed to nurture positive peace or social justice. The neoliberal universalist model of aid, democracy, elections, human rights, liberal organizations, legal and security reform, and a free market economy has used prescriptive models to cope with and manage conflicts in fragmented societies. In societies attempting to transition out of violent conflicts, competing stories of victimology, sectarianism, ethnocentrism, and the control of knowledge production are legacies of ethnopolitical conflicts, which persist as obstacles to deep reconciliation and sustainable peacebuilding. Young people are facing many hardships in terms of finding livelihoods and being saddled with debt and environmental catastrophe.
