Stories of Divided Politics: Polarisation and Bridge-Building in Colombia and Britain

哥伦比亚和英国都在2016年举行了公投——哥伦比亚就和平协议举行了公投，英国就脱欧举行了公投——留下了持久的身份分歧，并助长了有关两国社会比以往任何时候都更加分裂的普遍说法。该项目旨在重塑学术界和大众对人们如何与政治分歧共存的理解，并在他们之间建立桥梁。它将以政治人类学为基础，研究文化在人们的政治观点、意识形态和身份认同中的作用，并将借鉴两极分化的政治学研究，研究社会分裂的更广泛图景。它将用两种互补的方法记录和分析人们通过日常故事经历和（重新）产生政治分歧的方式。首先，在每个国家的社会经济、种族和政治多样化的地方进行民族志案例研究，以了解不同部门如何看待他们在社区中经历的差异和分裂，以及他们如何将这些地方经验与他们对国家政治的看法联系起来。第二，与那些寻求在政治分歧之间建立桥梁的组织进行民族志实地考察，对他们在全国各地的活动进行参与者观察，并与他们共同召开对话和研讨会，以发展更广泛的跨领域观点，了解不同地区和部门的政治分歧和人们的故事。通过分析故事在两极分化和桥梁建设中的作用，该项目将为当前关于分裂社会的理论增加细微差别和复杂性，为政治分裂的比较研究开发一个开创性的多尺度框架，并为日益紧迫的两极分化问题及其可能产生的多种暴力和敌意提供全球政策信息。

Colombia and Britain both held referendums in 2016-in Colombia on a peace accord, in Britain on Brexit-leaving enduring identity divides, and fostering widespread narratives about each society being more divided than ever. This project aims to re-shape academic and popular understandings of how people live with political divisions and build bridges across them. It will be anchored in the anthropology of politics, which studies the role of culture in people's political opinions, ideologies and identities, and will draw also on political science studies of polarisation, which examine broader pictures of societal divisions. It will document and analyse the ways that people experience and (re-)produce political divisions through everyday stories using two complementary methods. First, an ethnographic case study in a socio-economically, racially and politically diverse locality in each country, to understand how different sectors perceive the differences and divisions they experience in their community, and how they connect these local experiences with their view of national politics. Second, ethnographic fieldwork with organisations that seek to build bridges across political divides, doing participant observation at their events around the country, and co- convening dialogues and workshops with them, to develop broader cross-cutting views of political divisions and people's stories about them in different regions and sectors. By analysing the role of stories in polarisation and bridge-building, the project will add nuance and complexity to current theories about divided societies, develop a ground-breaking multi-scale framework for comparative research on political divisions, and inform global policies on the increasingly urgent problem of polarisation and the many kinds of violence and hostility it can engender.