Peer-reviewed articles

Magalhães Teixeira, Barbara (2021) Underdevelopment, extractivism, and conflict in the Global South and the role of systemic alternatives. Conjuntura Austral 12(59) https://seer.ufrgs.br/ConjunturaAustral/article/view/113853/64277

Nilsson, D, Svensson, I, Magalhães Teixeira, B, Martínez, L & Ruus, A (2020) In the Streets and at the Table: Civil Society Coordination during Peace Negotiations. International Negotiation 25(2) http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15718069-25131241

Magalhães Teixeira, Barbara (2018) Water and climate change: a sign of war or a chance for cooperation? Conjuntura Internacional 14(2) http://dx.doi.org/10.5752/P.1809-6182.2017v14n2p92-100

Book chapters

Magalhães Teixeira, Barbara (2021) “The environment of lasting peace: natural resources and climate change in peace negotiations” in: Swain, A, Öjendal, J, and Jägerskog, A (eds) Handbook of Security and the Environment, Edward Elgar Publishing. https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781789900651/9781789900651.00028.xml

Blog posts & other texts

Magalhães Teixeira, Barbara (2023) The importance of ‘territory’ in the struggle against climate change and ecological breakdown. https://rwi.lu.se/blog/the-importance-of-territory-in-the-struggle-against-climate-change-and-ecological-breakdown/

Magalhães Teixeira, Barbara (2021) The potential of degrowth and buen vivir in addressing underdevelopment and conflict in the Global South. https://www.degrowth.info/en/blog/the-potential-of-degrowth-and-buen-vivir-in-addressing-underdevelopment-and-conflict-in-the-global-south

Ongoing work

The continuum of violence in environmental conflicts.

Re-imagining peace education: using critical pedagogy as a transformative tool. With Christie Nicoson and Alva Mårtensson.

Existing studies demonstrate that although peace and conflict studies (PCS) emerged from a deep connection between political activism and research, the field has increasingly moved toward promoting liberal ideals of peace that sustain the status quo. Amidst this trend, many scholars have pushed research and education programs to explore beyond a hegemonic liberal peace, for example by diversifying reading lists and drawing on decolonial frameworks. This paper adds to such efforts; through the case study of a higher education PCS classroom, we use narratives from two course conveners and a student to explore challenges and opportunities of realising a critical pedagogy approach to peace education. This approach recenters the classroom not necessarily in terms of what students ought to think, but how; critical theory provides a basis for fostering curiosity, using query as a tool of learning, and focusing class structure on students’ needs. Findings suggest that using critical pedagogy in PCS addresses calls for greater understanding of peace beyond the absence of violence, fosters active envisioning of peace, and works toward decolonizing and demystifying peace work. Ultimately, we call for PCS classrooms to foster critical thinking and radical imagination for a pedagogy of peace praxis

Transforming environmental peacebuilding: addressing extractivism in building climate resilient peace. With Christie Nicoson.

In this paper, we examine the potential of anti-extractivist movements to facilitate climate resilient through a conflict transformation framework. It is well-established that the structures which rely upon and uphold extractivist economies lie at the root of systems exploiting humans and the environment through structural and physical harm. We explore how anti-extractivist movements resist and challenge the system in a process of conflict transformation. Rather than relying on existing structures as a means to resolve conflict, we suggest that transforming systems presents an opportunity to foster climate resilient peace that is both intersectional and positive. Climate resilient peace extends beyond the absence of war; such peace entails a process of addressing societal power structures driving both climate change and structural and physical violence. We conduct multiple case studies of anti-extractivist movements in communities experiencing environmental conflict. Through these case studies, we explore how conflict transformation helps respond to destructive patterns and to achieve a more peaceful and sustainable future through a process of change. This paper thus contributes theoretical and empirical insight to the study of climate resilient peace, broadening ongoing discussions on resistance to extractivism and building peace that is beneficial and sustainable for both humans and the environment.

Building peace through resource extraction: post-conflict economic growth, natural resources governance, and the challenge to sustainable peace. With Jakob Molinder.

Economic growth and high levels of GDP have been shown to correlate with decreased likelihood of civil war. This has informed not only research but also policy, instructing how growth-oriented strategies and conflict prevention initiatives should be mutually reinforcing. The field of environmental peacebuilding also places great importance on economic development in post-conflict societies, and argues that natural resources can help build peace by jump-starting the economy and promoting sustainable development. Natural resources exploitation holds the great potential of being drivers of economic growth by generating revenues that can be used to finance the construction of infrastructure, provision of education and other public goods. However, recent studies show that some main recommendations found in this literature might be counterproductive to achieving peace. The focus on the financial benefits of natural resources to jump-start post-conflict countries’ economies often circles back to the initial causes of conflict over natural resources, as the larger population is not benefitted from production revenues and high levels of inequality persist. Conflicts over natural resources are never only over the resources itself, but the economic prosperity and political power that they represent, as they act as an indicator for the level of redistribution and inequality in a society. 

This study looks at strategies promoting economic growth as a way of achieving prosperity for societies coming out of armed conflict to analyse whether natural resources extraction helps achieve the goal of sustainable development. This article employs quantitative and qualitative methods, provides new data on natural resources exploitation and peace, and new theoretical understanding on how to advance into sustainable peace while providing a good life for all.

The Global South as a theoretical and methodological marker for scientific inquiry: researching and teaching decolonial peace.

How can we teach, research, and learn peace from a decolonial perspective? Geographers have pointed to an ‘Orientalist’ (Said 2003) tendency within peace and conflict literature and practice; wherein the Global South is seen as violence prone and unruly. The way current theories of armed conflict theorize the causes of war in the Global South is tied to this idea that underdeveloped countries lack control over both their populations and their natural resources. Indeed, this idea of development as a process of ‘ordering’ is connected to the vision that a world outside the Western/Eurocentric rule would be doomed to total and complete chaos (Smith 2020). Current theories in peace and conflict studies prescribe peace and strategies for peacebuilding based on a hegemonizing impulse of controlling and oppressing different societies in the Global South into adopting neo-liberal agendas and democratic institutions. This not only does not solve the root causes of violence and conflict in the Global South, but it perpetuates structures of violence and oppression.

In order to explore the possibilities for peace as created and experienced in the so-called Global South, I first consider the ‘creation’ of the Global South and how this might shape how possibilities of peace are made (im)possible. I build on the categorization by Jaramillo and Vera Lugo (2013) to argue that the Global South should not be reduced to its geographic and economic marker, or as a heuristic for the “Other” in relation to rich and (over)developed countries of the Global North. Instead, the Global South is understood dialectically, produced through the material structures of capitalist systems that shape and are shaped by the symbolic modes of domination and exploitation (Quijano 2000, Mignolo 2002, Grosfoguel 2007). It is, thus, necessary to understand of how processes of capitalist market expansion through the exploitation of both people and environment have not only shaped the material and symbolic conditions of domination, but also the organization of resistance. Here, it is important to highlight that this encounter creates friction between the structural constraints of domination and the organization of social movement that aim at destabilizing hegemonic power relations in the capitalist world-system. In this sense, the Global South emerges as not only a geographic and economic space constrained by structural and material realities, but also as a geopolitical site of domination and resistance. Building on Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed, I argue for a relational approach to peace and peacebuilding centered on the agency of Global South communities and peoples and their power to transform the world. This means that the construction of knowledge around the concept and possibilities for peace are situated in concrete and real struggles of marginalized groups that have been resisting the expansion of violent and oppressive systems, and whose existence and struggles for alternative worlds are an example of peacebuilding beyond the neoliberal-Western constraints. The aim of understanding peace from a decolonial perspective is to rescue the emancipatory power and history of the idea of peace away from a neo-liberal agenda of control and oppression, and towards a liberatory strategy for people and planet.