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Competing (In)Securities

Frictions of Violence Transformation and Peacebuilding in the Colombian Peace Process

This project examines the current Colombian peace process and the accompanying transformations of violence and conflict based on three socio-culturally diverse micro-regions heavily affected by the armed conflict. After the signing of the peace treaty in 2016, Colombian society is facing a long and complex transformation process. Implementing the agreed upon measures is an administrative, political, and social challenge given the country's strong regional and political fragmentation.

Based on theoretical approaches of the anthropology of conflict and security, this project examines the local dynamics and frictions (Tsing 2005) of this peace process and the agency of civil actors in three microregions (Cauca, Cesar, and Urabá). Drawing on the conflict anthropological assumption of a war-peace continuum (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2004), Bigo's (2014) concept of (in)security serves as an analytical tool to make visible the frictions of the Colombian peace process and alternative, local peace potentials through ethnographic descriptions of changing local (in)security concepts and practices. To this end, we examine existing (in)security conceptions and practices in the three microregions, their interconnectedness with the historical experiences of local civil actors, and ask which (in)security dimensions are changing as a result of the current peace process and how.

The aim of the project is to make the insights generated from the comparison of the empirical case studies productive for peace anthropological theory building and to contribute to their consideration in the peace building process.