The HDCA Ethics and Development Thematic Group is pleased to invite you to a webinar discussion of Everyday Peacebuilding through Democratic Political Education: The Need for Radical Poise, a new book by Stephen Esquith. The book was recently published by Palgrave Macmillan as part of the ‘Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies’ series, edited by Oliver P. Richmond, Annika Bjorkdahl, and Gezim Visoka.

Date & Time: Monday, September 29, 2025, 12:00–13:30 UTC
Format: Online (Zoom)
Registration: Please contact kelvinchiweshe01@gmail.com to receive the Zoom link.

Synopsis

Everyday peacebuilding through democratic political education is a necessary but not sufficient condition for limiting negative political emotions such as anger, fear, and resentment, and for cultivating the political virtues needed for an alternative, more democratic orientation towards power: one that values and exercises power with other members of emergent political communities, not power over them. These demotic political virtues include self-restraint, resistance, humility, respect for the civic dignity of others, non-violent protest, and the radical poise needed to cultivate and coordinate this constellation of political virtues. For those who have been forcibly displaced or are only dimly aware of their complicity in this type of political violence, to maintain a radically poised stance is a continuing process of democratic political education. This book demonstrates how this notion of Radical Poise in theory and practice can be developed through a hybrid process of political education in one country, Mali, to contest the growth of violence and fear there and elsewhere.

Main Speaker: Stephen Esquith (Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University)

Discussants: Melanie Walker (Professor of Higher Education and Human Development at University of Freestate South Africa), David Crocker (Professor in the School of Public policy and peace at the University of Maryland), Melis Cin (Associate professor at Lancaster University) and Paul Michael (Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Higher Education and Human Development research group at University of Free State South Africa)

Chair: Kelvin Chiweshe, Junior Lecturer at University of Zimbabwe and Coordinator of the HDCA Ethics and Development Thematic Group