Project description
Peacebuilding and intersectional politics of antagonism in Colombia
The Colombian peace agreement signed in 2016 includes measures that target structural inequalities considered as the main reasons for the conflict. However, many social groups that are supposed to be the main beneficiaries of the agreement oppose it. The EU-funded IPAP project will examine how peacebuilding institutions can execute a peace agreement that encounters opposition and includes groups that were involved in adversarial activities against the agreement. The project will identify the structure of these antagonistic forces and delve into their relationships with political actors, examine the intersectional systems of power through which such antagonism emerges, explore possibilities for peacebuilding institutions to gain sustained legitimacy and explore methods to engage antagonistic groups in dialogue.
Objective
The Colombian peace process signed in 2016 has shown that even when peace agreements include comprehensive measures to tackle structural inequalities seen as the root causes of the conflict, they may still be rejected by the very societal groups meant to benefit from such transformative provisions. IPAP addresses this dilemma by exploring how peacebuilding institutions can implement a peace agreement that is contested and work to include groups who have engaged in antagonistic actions against the peace accord. The research counters a tendency in the literature to treat resistance against peacebuilding as deviance or abnormality or as a mere manifestation of political and economic elites’ fear of losing power, by including the intersectional politics which explains these groups’ undermining or rejection of the peace process. The objectives of IPAP are: 1) to identify the fabric of antagonistic forces to peace and map their relations with political actors; 2) to examine the intersectional systems of power differentials through which antagonistic subject positions emerge and analyse how they transform into agonistic, i.e. constructively conflictive, relations with the work of peacebuilding institutions; 3) to explore possibilities for peacebuilding institutions to gain sustained legitimacy among the local population; 4) to identify ways in which peace institutions might engage with difference and create spaces where adversaries can engage in agonistic dialogue. To achieve these objectives, IPAP uses a feminist intersectional lens to peacebuilding, and an ethnographic fieldwork approach, to empirically study Colombia as a rich case of antagonism to peacebuilding. The innovative approach of IPAP consists in advancing the notion of antagonistic subject positions to peace to identify the intersecting relations of power through which groups of population who resist peacebuilding processes are organized and how they can commit to agonistic dialogue.
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
SY23 3BF Aberystwyth
United Kingdom