The Many Faces of the State in Colombia: Implications for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation

In most peace processes, the state implements a peace agreement. This public dialogue aims to help understand the state afresh, as human beings in institutions engaging in multiple activities, and will discuss the challenges facing the Colombian state today. Three members of the Laboratory for Anthropology of the State in Colombia (LASC) will share their long-term participant observations alongside the people of different state institutions and activities: the bureaucrats of the Victims’ Unit, the peace pedagogy team of the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, and institutional interventions, to promote reconciliation in Caquetá.

Laboratory for Anthropology of the State in Colombia (LASC) is a transnational research network created in 2017, whose members comprise academics and doctoral researchers based at universities in Colombia (Universidad de Los Andes), the USA (Tufts University, Harvard University, the University of Chicago) and the UK (University College London, St Andrew’s). The network work on the anthropological study of the state in Colombia from a variety of different perspectives, rooted in ethnographic engagement, permanent exchange between Colombian, British and American anthropological traditions, and long-term ethical commitment to peacebuilding in Colombia.

Speakers

Erin K. McFee is a political anthropologist and obtained her doctorate in 2019 in Comparative Human Development from The University of Chicago. Her work focuses on mistrust, reconciliation, and peacebuilding interventions in Colombia.

Gwen Burnyeat is a Wolfson scholar and PhD candidate at the Anthropology department of University College London. Her book ‘Chocolate, Politics and Peace-Building: An Ethnography of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, Colombia’ (Palgrave Macmillan 2018) and award-winning documentary ‘Chocolate of Peace’ (2016) are both based on her master’s research in anthropology at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where she also taught political anthropology.

Roxani Krystalli is a Program Manager at the Feinstein International Center in Boston, MA. She is a humanitarian practitioner and researcher, who works on issues of gender, war, and peace-building. Roxani has spent a decade focusing on understanding people’s experiences of violence and justice in the aftermath of armed conflict, including working with former combatants, refugees, victims and survivors of violence in Colombia, Guatemala, Uganda, South Sudan and other areas

Andrei Gómez-Suárez is a Honorary senior research associate at UCL Institute of the Americas; associate researcher in memory and reconciliation in Colombia at the University of Bristol, co-founder of Embrace Dialogue.