Beyond Fragile States: Statecraft, Educational Policy and Armed Conflict in Arauca, Colombia.

• In Event: States in transition: education policy and politics in postconflict societies

Proposal

At the nexus between development, humanitarianism and security is the notion of fragile state -- a state that fails to live up to regular expectations (Stepputat & Engberg-Pedersen 2008). Even though the concept has been widely critiqued (see Saeed 2020), international organizations still distribute world populations along fragility lines (see OECD 2020; World Bank 2021). UNICEF, for example, estimates that 800 million children live in fragile areas, and 1 in 10 live in extremely fragile contexts (UNICEF 2019). The field of education in emergencies has extensively embraced the term. Fragile state has provided humanitarian workers with a framework to raise funds and explain to policymakers education’s potential role in transforming broader socio-political structures (Winthrop & Matsui, 2013); and scholars an explanation for attacks on education (see GCPEA 2020). But, what dimensions of state power emerge when state fragility is not taken for granted?

Situated in Colombia, a country identified by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as a state with high fragility levels (2018), this study reveals how state power within the education sector is organised and exercised through concrete human relationships. At the intersection of contemporary theories of the state, educational policy, and conflict and peacebuilding research I ask:
- How is the state configured in war-affected areas, specifically within the education sector?
- How do these engagements configure students' educational experiences?

Through these questions I pay attention to how education stakeholders engage in relational activity as a statecraft practice. The idea of a fragile state that fails to protect educators and students has obscured the social relations that emerge within and between schools and the different state institutions that operate in armed conflict zones. Thus, I analyze the web of relationships that exist between various educational actors to account for the concrete mechanisms through which the state gains or loses preponderance in armed-conflict settings. Aware that schools operate in a web of social forces, I designed this study as a comparative case study of the Ramón Baralt school in the province of Arauca -- an oil-rich province categorised as one of the most militarised and violent regions in the country (Schmidt & Durán 2022). I combined archival work and document analysis of armed conflict and school-wide policies with in-depth participant observation and interviews with policy makers, civil employees, educators, caregivers and youth.
To analyse the relationships between education stakeholders, armed conflict, and the state, I move away from the notion of a fragile state as an explanatory framework. Instead, following Trouillot (2001) and Aretxaga (2003), I approach the state as an open configuration -- an ensemble of discourses and practices that, through social relationships, concentrates various forms of power and struggle. While I recognize that war entails devastating effects that include cycles of disruption, destruction, and death, I understand war as a productive force (Arjona, 2016; Schwartz, 2022) where “civilians do not only suffer from war but they also cope with it, adapt to it, and shape it” (Arjona, 2016, p. 2). From this perspective, I conceive war as a particular site of statecraft where new local realities and new orders emerge.
Findings from this research suggest the existence of a comprehensive bureaucracy connecting decision-making processes in Bogotá (Colombia's Capital) with education provision in Arauca. This bureaucracy feeds on social relations and adapts to new and sometimes contradictory circumstances. For instance, while the military arm of the state took over the school farm to set up a military camp, the educational sector paid the salaries of administrators and educators and managed the expansion of the educational institution. Finally, bypassing the dichotomy between legality and illegality, within the education sector, state and guerrilla orders co-exist and overlap. Findings show how the school principal works hard to navigate and satisfy the demands of these two orders and mediate between them.

The findings of this research demonstrate that the term fragile state fails to account for the state configurations with which educational administrators interact in areas affected by armed conflict. The history of the school I have presented today accounts for the co-existence of different governance orders, one bureaucratic, one plural, and one relational. While it is true that aspects of the bureaucratic order are mediated by neoliberal logics, particularly the concern with accountability and transparency in the management of resources. Other logics also organize this state. These include: liberalism, militarization and securitization. Finally, by placing the school in a broader socio-political context and assuming that war produces certain forms of order, I tried to move away from the paralyzing logic that fragility or neoliberalism is all there is to see when looking at the state in armed conflict settings. By understanding, the state not as a unitary center of power but as a contradictory ensemble of practices and processes of power and control, it is possible to pay attention to individuals and how they adapt institutions to current forms of government. From this perspective, citizens are not seen only as victims but also as expert agents of change. Through this research I aim to "think harder about how the state can act to mobilize the power of others" (Stears, 2012) and contribute to more comprehensive approaches that help us grasp what the state can do for the people.

Author

• Diana Rodríguez-Gómez, University of Wisconsin-Madison