Improbable Dialogues: Participatory Research as a Strategy for Reconciliation

哥伦比亚的武装冲突长期而复杂。其多原因、多行为体和多层次的性质使和平建设复杂化。此外，谈判达成的《和平协定》的正式规定与受冲突影响社区的日常生活经验之间确实存在脱节。在许多社区，各种形式的冲突仍在继续，在一些社区，由于国家一级的和平进程而出现了新的冲突。我们通过“冲突vidades”一词来描述这些冲突，这是一个西班牙语词，描述了容易发生冲突的情况，不一定与武装对抗有关。该项目旨在探讨《和平协定》的拟订与三个社区的日常生活现实之间的脱节，并促进和扩大当地的专门知识和机构，以便在这些社区实现和平与和解。这个参与性行动研究（PAR）项目（Fals-Borda 1987）致力于通过在理解持续冲突的根源时优先考虑当地社区而不是外部观点的方法实现和解，并认识到社区本身拥有克服冲突所需的知识和专业知识。因此，该项目的精神，作为研究和干预，是与社区合作，促进和利用他们的专业知识，而不是从外部强加模型或想法。这将通过利用我们的参与式方法来理解冲突的来源并促进“不可能的对话”（Lederach, 2016）来实现，从而将通常不合作的社区成员聚集在一起，在研究社区内外解决这些主题。作为与社区就持续冲突的原因和解决方案进行接触的起点，我们将沿着三条调查线开展工作，这些调查线在世界各地许多正式定义的“冲突后”环境中构成了持续冲突的经常性场所。它们是：i)领土发展；Ii)提供基本服务；iii)媒体。我们的方法将使三个研究社区围绕这三个问题进行反思和对话的迭代过程，绘制日常冲突的生活经验，并从这些见解中建立促进社区间和社区内对话的见解。将在这一进程中利用和加强当地的和解能力。由于这些调查方向，该项目与《哥伦比亚和平协定》的三个领域特别相关：全面农村改革（第1点）、政治参与：向建设和平开放民主（第2点）和受害者（第5点）。在方法上，该项目将采用一系列参与性方法（包括参与性视频和照片项目以及参与性媒体分析），同时采用更传统的社会科学技术，如焦点小组和关键线人访谈。因此，该项目将把社区参与研究的创新方式与经过验证和严谨的学术方法结合起来。该项目将谢菲尔德大学（英国）和蓬蒂西亚大学（哥伦比亚）的学者与哥伦比亚和平与发展问题主要组织CINEP联合起来。这三个组织在很长一段时间内一直在发展合作关系，最终共同设计了这个项目。同样重要的是，在项目实施的三个社区中，与当地合作组织建立牢固的关系。通过与社区本身共同生产，该项目旨在为他们实现稳定和持久的日常和平创造重要的能力建设成果，同时为产生新的学术知识作出贡献。

The Colombian armed conflict has been protracted and complex. Its multi-causal, multi-actor and multi-level nature complicates the construction of peace. Furthermore, there are real disconnects between the formal provisions in the negotiated Peace Agreement and the daily lived experiences of communities affected by conflict. In many communities various forms of conflict continue, and in some, new conflicts have emerged as a result of the national-level peace process. We capture these conflicts through the term conflictividades, a Spanish word describing conflict-prone scenarios not necessarily related to armed confrontation. This project seeks to explore the disjuncture between the Peace Agreement's formulation and the daily realities of life in three communities, and to facilitate and amplify local expertise and agency in moving towards peace and reconciliation in those communities.This participatory action research (PAR) project (Fals-Borda 1987) works towards reconciliation through approaches that give primacy to local communities over external perspectives in understanding the roots of ongoing conflict, and recognise that communities themselves have the necessary knowledge and expertise to overcome conflict. The ethos of the project, as both research and intervention, is therefore to work with communities to facilitate and harness their expertise rather than to impose models or ideas from outside. This will be achieved through utilising our participatory approaches to understand the sources of conflictividades and to prompt 'improbable dialogues' (Lederach, 2016), thereby bringing together community members who may not normally work together to address these themes within and beyond the study communities.As a starting point for engaging with communities over the causes and resolution of ongoing conflictividades, we will work along three lines of enquiry that constitute recurrent sites of ongoing conflict in many formally-defined 'post-conflict' settings around the world. These are: i) territorial development; ii) provision of basic services; and iii) media. Our approach will engage the three study communities in iterative processes of reflection and dialogue around these three issues, mapping lived experiences of everyday conflict and building from those insights towards prompting inter- and intra- community dialogue. Local capacities for reconciliation will be harnessed and augmented in the process. As a result of these lines of enquiry, the project has particular relevance for three areas of the Colombian Peace Agreement: comprehensive rural reform (point 1), political participation: democratic opening to peacebuilding (point 2), and victims (point 5).Methodologically, the project will deploy a range of participatory approaches (including participatory video and photo projects, and participatory media analysis) alongside more conventional social science techniques, such as focus groups and key informant interviews. The project will consequently combine innovative ways of community involvement in research with proven and rigorous academic methods.This project brings together a partnership of scholars from the University of Sheffield (UK) and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Colombia) with CINEP, the leading Colombian organization on issues of peace and development. These three organisations have been developing a partnership over a significant period of time, culminating in the co-design of this project. Equally important are the strong relationships with the local partner organisations in the three communities in which the project will be carried out. Through co-production with the communities themselves, the project aims to generate important capacity-building gains for them to move towards a stable and lasting daily peace, and at the same time to contribute to the generation of new academic knowledge.