Chocolate, Politics and Peace-Building
An Ethnography of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, Colombia
Authors: Burnyeat, Gwen
Free Preview- Provides a fresh perspective on a grassroots community that has been both glorified and condemned by human rights activists and academia
- Focuses on an area that has experienced extreme levels of violence - over 60 years of war, where a number of different peace-building initiatives have failed to produce desired results
- Speaks through the voice of someone who is closely familiar with this community, the author having done extensive field research there, focusing on the socio-political reality on the ground and the creative coping mechanisms that different communities have developed
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- About this book
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This book tells the story of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, an emblematic grassroots social movement of peasant farmers, who unusually declared themselves ‘neutral’ to Colombia’s internal armed conflict, in the north-west region of Urabá. It reveals two core narratives in the Community’s collective identity, which Burnyeat calls the ‘radical’ and the ‘organic’ narratives. These refer to the historically-constituted interpretative frameworks according to which they perceive respectively the Colombian state, and their relationship with their natural and social environments. Together, these two narratives form an ‘Alternative Community’ collective identity, comprising a distinctive conception of grassroots peace-building. This study, centered on the Community’s socio-economic cacao-farming project, offers an innovative way of approaching victims’ organizations and social movements through critical, post-modern politics and anthropology. It will become essential reading to Latin American ethnographers and historians, and all interested in conflict resolution and transitional justice.
Read the author's blog drawing on the book here:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2018/06/07/colombias-unsung-heroes/
- About the authors
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Gwen Burnyeat is a Wolfson PhD Scholar in Anthropology at University College London, UK. She has worked in Colombia for eight years, has a Masters from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia where she also lectured in Political Anthropology, and her prize-winning documentary ‘Chocolate of Peace’ was released in 2016 (see http://chocolatedepaz.com/english for a trailer).
- Reviews
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“The book as a whole remains a fascinating and well-researched exploration of resistance against terrible odds. Thoughtful and well documented, it is an indispensable addition to the body of ethnographic work on political conflict in what continues to be a violent and deeply polarised polity.” (Nick Morgan, Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 52 (2), 2020)
“While the book centres on the politics of chocolate in the midst of Colombia’s war, it is also about much more. Chocolate, politics and peace-building is an important rumination on one of the most high-profile community-based attempts to create peace in Colombia amidst structural forces that pull towards violence. Burnyeat’s ethnography is as urgent as ever now that much of the country is living in a tattered peace, hounded by similar structural forces.” (Alexander L. Fattal, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 26 (2), 2020)
“Burnyeat’s sophisticated, grounded approach and valuable research about peace communities and sustainability will contribute to future discussions about the state, the importance of Community members’ identity narratives, and how to achieve sustainable, positive peace.” (Suzanne Wilson, Maguaré, Vol. 33 (2), 2019)
“Wonderfully insightful and spiritually uplifting, this beautifully written book tells the amazing story of a Colombian rural community that, against all odds, has been able to carve out an autonomous space of peace in the midst of paramilitary, state, and guerrilla violations. Conceptually sophisticated and based on long-term ethnographic research, it evokes a better future for us all in these dark times.” (Michael Taussig, Class of 1933 Professor, Columbia University, USA)“This is ethnography at its best. A non-extractive, participatory accompaniment of an extraordinary community, revealing the everyday costs and creativity behind the many struggles for peace in Colombia and their relationship to the formal peace process in Havana.” (Jenny Pearce, Latin America and Caribbean Centre, London School of Economics, UK)
- Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Introduction: The Chocolate-Politics Continuum
Pages 1-35
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The Roots: Of Cooperatives and Conflict
Pages 39-65
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The Founding of the Peace Community
Pages 67-94
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The Cultural Change of ‘Organisation’
Pages 95-109
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The Genealogy of the Rupture 1997–2005
Pages 113-148
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- Chocolate, Politics and Peace-Building
- Book Subtitle
- An Ethnography of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, Colombia
- Authors
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- Gwen Burnyeat
- Series Title
- Studies of the Americas
- Copyright
- 2018
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Copyright Holder
- The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
- eBook ISBN
- 978-3-319-51478-9
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-3-319-51478-9
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-3-319-51477-2
- Softcover ISBN
- 978-3-319-84661-3
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- XXVIII, 263
- Topics
