Mobilizing Against Violence: An Ethnography of Peace Activism in Post-Agreement Colombia

• In Event: 20861 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2: Contested Narratives and Discursive Battles

Abstract

War-to-peace transitions are fraught processes and social movements can play a decisive role in whether they succeed or fail. Yet, the conditions under which civil society can effectively mobilize to secure peace in transitioning societies remains poorly understood. This article addresses this gap by studying how Colombian activists mobilized to secure peace-agreement implementation and counter persisting political violence in the “not-war-not-peace” period (Nordstrom, 2004) following the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP.

Mobilization in war-to-peace transitions faces critical but often overlooked challenges, including wartime legacies of antagonistic social identities and conflicting narratives of past violence. In Colombia, these challenges have been particularly acute, as mobilizations against violence have long been fragmented along political, regional, and class lines. How do social movements against violence persist despite these challenges? What explains their ability to coordinate across social and political divides?

To answer these questions, this paper examines how activists negotiate the meanings of past violence and victimhood in claim-making processes, enabling inter-group coordination. The paper draws on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Bogotá’s antiviolence activist networks conducted intermittently between 2020 and 2023; and 50 audio recordings from meetings and in-depth interviews with activists.

Contrary to dominant literature on civil society participation in peace processes, I argue that mobilizing against violence is not merely a response to grievances or opportunity structures; it also involves processes of collective meaning-making. People must come to see violence as illegitimate, recognize themselves as potential victims or connected to its consequences, craft narratives explaining why violence happened, assign responsibility, and find organizational contexts that enable collective action in a polarized society.

By bridging social movements scholarship and peace and conflict studies, this paper sheds light on the cultural processes sustaining activism in war-to-peace transitions.

Author

• Frédéric Guillaume Gass-Quintero, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales