Whose Peace Counts in German Classrooms? On the Mobilization of School Peace (Schulfrieden) and the Policing of Palestine Solidarity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21975154 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mahdis Azarmand (0000-0002-3096-771X, University of Canterbury, corresponding author), Maryam Sharifkhani (0009-0000-9380-3475, University of Canterbury) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Pages | 418 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-25 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2076-0760 • E-ISSN: 2076-0760 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/socsci15070418 |
| OpenAlex | W7165951115 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
School peace, or Schulfrieden, is often portrayed in German education as a neutral condition enabling learning. Yet this study interrogates how peace itself becomes a tool of governance, selectively policing who can safely occupy the classroom. Examining the Berlin Senate’s October 2023 directive, which banned symbols showing solidarity with Palestine, we show that school peace is less about conflict resolution than about shaping affective hierarchies. Fear, anticipation, and symbolic association circulate to mark some bodies as threats while leaving others unexamined. Through the lens of Sara Ahmed’s affective economies and Zembylas’s affective ideology, we argue that the directive transforms political expression into a site of emotional correction, preemptively disciplining marginalized students and rendering their solidarity politically suspect. Peace, in this framing, is primarily rule and order: it secures institutional comfort while curtailing engagement with global injustice. The classroom becomes a laboratory of anticipatory governance, where ethical awareness is unevenly distributed, and dissent is contained before it emerges. By tracing how school peace operates affectively, the study reveals the subtle mechanics by which liberal education reproduces racialized hierarchies under the guise of neutrality
Directive · Dissent · German · Mobilization · Negotiation · Palestine · Peace Education · Politics · Solidarity · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Peace and Human Rights Education · Peacebuilding and International Security
Engaging with Carol Bacchi
The Sage Handbook of Decolonial Theory
Deutschlands konfrontativer Umgang mit dem Kopftuch der Lehrerin
The Intimacies of Four Continents
On Being Included
Erasing Palestine in Germany’s Educational System
Education and the new imperialism
Affective ideology and education policy
Cloth on her Head, Constitution in Hand
Affective Economies
Intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, and the Primacy of Racism
| Highly cited | No |
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