Improbable Dialogues: Participatory Research as a Strategy for Reconciliation

哥伦比亚武装冲突旷日持久、错综复杂。它的多原因、多行为者和多层次性质使和平建设复杂化。此外，《谈判和平协定》中的正式规定与受冲突影响社区的日常生活经历之间确实存在脱节。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，出现了新的冲突。我们通过“冲突”一词来捕捉这些冲突，这是一个西班牙语单词，描述的是容易发生冲突的情况，不一定与武装对抗有关。这一项目旨在探索《和平协议》的制定与三个社区的日常生活现实之间的脱节，并促进和加强在这些社区实现和平与和解方面的地方专门知识和机构。这一参与性行动研究项目(法尔斯-博尔达，1987年)致力于通过在理解持续冲突的根源方面优先于外部视角的方法，使当地社区优先于外部观点，并认识到社区本身拥有必要的知识和专门知识，以克服冲突。因此，作为研究和干预，该项目的精神是与社区合作，促进和利用他们的专业知识，而不是强加来自外部的模式或想法。这将通过利用我们的参与性方法来实现，以了解冲突的根源并促进“不太可能的对话”(Lederach，2016)，从而将通常不会在研究社区内外合作解决这些主题的社区成员聚集在一起。作为与社区就持续冲突的原因和解决进行接触的起点，我们将沿着三条调查路线工作，这三条调查路线在世界各地许多正式定义的“冲突后”环境中构成了持续不断的冲突的经常性地点。它们是：i)领土开发；ii)提供基本服务；以及iii)媒体。我们的方法将使三个研究界围绕这三个问题进行反复的思考和对话，绘制日常冲突的亲身经历，并根据这些见解促进社区间和社区内的对话。将在这一进程中利用和加强当地的和解能力。由于这些问题，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：对建设和平的民主开放(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、参与性媒体分析)以及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格的学术方法结合起来。该项目汇集了谢菲尔德大学(英国)和哈维利亚纳大学(哥伦比亚)的学者与哥伦比亚主要和平与发展组织CINEP的合作伙伴关系。这三个组织在很长一段时间里一直在发展合作伙伴关系，最终共同设计了这个项目。同样重要的是与将在其中开展该项目的三个社区的当地伙伴组织建立牢固的关系。通过与社区本身共同制作，该项目旨在产生重要的能力建设成果，使他们能够实现稳定和持久的日常和平，同时促进产生新的学术知识。

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.