Performing peace, obscuring power: state rationalities and grassroots resistance in post-accord Colombia

A significant body of recent literature has explored the importance of the 2016 Colombian peace accord, hailed as the most inclusive peace accord ever signed. The tendency to focus on the advancements in gender-inclusive language and provisions for ethnic group inclusion, however, can close down spaces for interrogating the complexities of relational dynamics between actors. This review essay engages with two recent books which examine state-based peacebuilding in Colombia through a critical lens, exposing the ways in which maintaining state-based peacebuilding practices requires the consistent exercise of control and force. Both Gwen Burnyeat’s The Face of Peace: Government Pedagogy amid Disinformation in Colombia and Angela Jill Lederach’s Feel the Grass Grow: Ecologies of Slow Peace in Colombia highlight the disjunction between the state’s supposed intentions and the effects of its peacebuilding practices. The works also illustrate the importance of recognising the ongoing work undertaken by networks of grassroots peacebuilders.