Confronting the Giants of Neoliberalism, Managerialism, and Positivism: Emancipatory Praxis and the Pursuit of Peace

Abstract While conflicts, wars, and structural violence compromise all of the sustainable development goals, the corollary argument is that without reducing environmental degradation, patriarchal power, poverty, hunger, and inequality there can be no peace. This means cutting to the chase of how social criteria such as race, class, ethnicity, and nationality intersect to reproduce exclusions, othering , and structural violence. Explosive inequalities, linked with neo-colonial imperialism, neoliberal racialised capitalism and gendered racism, and unprecedent migration flows as people are forced to flee from their homes on account of conflict, poverty, and climate-induced disasters, reflect the world’s crisis of values. Spinoza’s popular refrain “Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice” links personal dispositions, attributes, and morality to the macro states of peace, violence, and war. So, does Gandhi’s assertion that peace between countries rests on the foundation of love between individuals, Bauman’s call to being for the Other , and Mandela’s demonstration of how love, compassion, forgiveness, and understanding of one’s oppressor can be transformed into broad socio-political forces of reconciliation and peace. In this article, I argue that the core values of social work, supported by an emancipatory social work theoretical approach, have much to contribute to peace at personal, inter-personal, community, and global levels. At the heart of emancipatory praxis lies the dialectical relationship between self and society, the transformation of societies through politicization of the self, characterized by an evolutionary consciousness that recognizes inter-connectedness and the inherent divinity of humanity.