Book Talk “The Face of Peace: Government Pedagogy amid Disinformation in Colombia”
University of Oxford Gwen Burnyeat
March 29, 2023 · 12:00 pm—1:20 pm · 216 Aaron Burr Hall
Program in Latin American Studies
Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas sought to end fifty years of war and won President Juan Manuel Santos the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet Colombian society rejected it in a polarizing referendum, amid an emotive disinformation campaign. Gwen Burnyeat joined the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, the government institution responsible for peace negotiations, to observe and participate in an innovative “peace pedagogy” strategy to explain the agreement to Colombian society. Burnyeat’s multi-scale ethnography reveals the challenges government officials experienced communicating with skeptical audiences and translating the peace process for public opinion. She argues that the fatal flaw in the peace process lay in government-society relations, enmeshed in culturally liberal logics and shaped by the politics of international donors. The Face of Peace offers the Colombian case as a mirror to the global crisis of liberalism, shattering the fantasy of rationality that haunts liberal responses to “post-truth” politics.
ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER
Gwen Burnyeat is a Junior Research Fellow in Anthropology, Merton College, University of Oxford. She is also a winner of the 2023 Public Anthropologist Award.
DISCUSSANT
Catalina Muñoz, History, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia; PLAS Visiting Research Scholar
Open to students, faculty, visiting scholars, staff and specially invited guests. A boxed lunch will be provided while supplies last.
