Bureaucracy, Justice, and The State in a Post-Accord Colombia: Emergent Conversation 11

Edited by Erin K. McFee

Women who left the FARC guerrilla in Colombia demonstrate to remember their husbands and loved ones killed after the peace process agreement between the government and the guerrilla was signed in 2016, in Bogota, Colombia on November 2, 2020. Photo by Sebastian Barros/NurPhoto via Getty Images.

The fourth anniversary of the signing of the Havana Peace Accord (November 24, 2016) provides an apt moment to reflect on the historic peace process between the Government of President Juan Manuel Santos Calderon and the leadership of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP). It is towards this end that several members of the Laboratory for Anthropology of the State in Colombia (LASC)[1] and our colleagues have assembled this essay collection, which offers empirical and theoretical contributions not only to scholars of Colombia and Latin America, but also to those investigating post-conflict transitions and organized violence worldwide. Taken together, it is our hope that this collection is received as an invitation for scholars and practitioners to think together about what such research during a time-of-not-war-not-peace (Nordstrom 2004) can teach us about larger questions related to transitional justice, identity-making practices, and state- and society-building.