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This paper explores how Black women entrepreneurs in Cali, Colombia confront racism and sexism, as they engage in the expanding neoliberal beauty market. We argue that anti-racist entrepreneurial experiences in Cali are shaped by four interconnected processes: First, changes in gender and development policies, aligned with inclusive neoliberal development projects. Second, the limitations of state neoliberal multicultural policies, which has made activists aware of the need to address racism and sexism. Third, activist's appropriation of the intersectional turn, allowing them to recognize articulations between racism, classism and sexism. Fourth, the adoption of anti-neoliberal discourses supporting distributive and solidarity practices. Our analysis suggests that while entrepreneurial anti-racist actions do not generate radical or permanent changes in the beauty industry, they do have material and symbolic effects in Black women's experiences of racial justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore what campesino [peasant] livelihoods in the rural Andean mountains of Colombia offer to understandings of more-than-human co-existence and care. For, while new conservation paradigms promise to transform economic and social horizons, being "paramuno" [resident of the "paramo," or high moorlands] in the small community of Monquentiva is already characterized by becoming-with-other-beings-and-practices; a disposition toward incorporation of elements that are at-hand, and an ethics of care toward other beings in the landscape. We draw on ethnographic data to present this case study, emphasizing the forms of social organization and persistence that have enabled the emergence of economically and ecologically sustainable livelihoods. We explore these processes in terms of what we call world-making practices, showing how relationships with Indigeneity and collectivity are being renegotiated, and arguing for modes of conservation that engage with existing forms of peasant innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the purpose of ending wars, international organizations and governments promote reintegration projects that seek to transform combatants affiliated with illegal armed groups into citizens through education. The assumption behind these efforts is that through education, ex-combatants will become economically independent, overcome marginalization, experience personal transformations, and integrate into communities. This paper questions this optimistic narrative of education by highlighting the differentiated meanings of education for ex-combatants reintegrating in urban Colombia. Listening to the voices of ex-combatants who have engaged in technical and vocational education programs, this paper compares policy narratives with ex-combatants' narratives regarding the role of education in the reintegration process. The analysis reveals how for ex-combatants, education is a complex social practice that redistributes resources and contributes to positive psychosocial and empowerment transformations. At the same time, it is a process of insertion into an individualistic system and adaptation to unequal participation within the country's socio-economic hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The informal transport sector has various ambivalent characteristics and often a negative connotation since it commonly operates unauthorized and illicitly and is not part of the official transport sector. However, the informal sector provides a mix of legitimate transport offerings as well as important complementary services. The paper focuses on these 'new mobilities' and aims to understand informal transportation systems not only as a service coverage in specific areas lacking formal transit, but also as an activity that arises as a popular form of struggle and a covert and unorganized form of resistance against the political power embedded in dominant transportation systems. Through an empirical study conducted in the region of Urabá in Colombia the paper explores how the dominant agricultural industries in the region are causing huge challenges related to the overlap of transportation scales, congestion and risks of accidents in urban areas, affecting urban development, and how injustices of the existing public transport services and insufficient road infrastructures trigger the production of informal transportation. The paper mobilizes the theory of 'everyday forms of resistance', which draws attention to certain common behaviour and activities of subaltern groups as tactics to survive and undermine repressive domination. As such, this paper questions through its case study to what extent the informal transportation actions in Urabá are in a way challenging oppression and can be called an everyday form of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people in Colombia present high rates of mental health problems, to which the country’s history of armed internal conflict contributes in complex ways. Mental health services in Colombia are fragmented, inadequate, and difficult to access for many. Young people’s help)seeking is often hindered by mental health stigma and/or poor experiences with services. This paper presents a thematic analysis of qualitative data from a mixed-methods study aimed at developing and testing a mental health intervention for Colombian youths. We draw upon theoretical lenses from scholarly work on stigma and Sen’s ‘capabilities approach’ to inform our analysis of interviews and group discussions with staff and young people involved in the state-funded human capital building programme ‘Jovenes en Acción’ (JeA). By illustrating how study participants talked about stigma, vulnerability, mental health services organisation, and the challenges of discussing mental health topics in a learning environment, we illuminate aspects of mental health support and anti-stigma interventions that might need enhancing. In particular, we suggest that more emphasis on ‘community competencies’ as complementary to and interrelated with individual competencies would strengthen young people’s individual and collective resources for mental wellbeing while being in line with the sociocritical principles of existing human capital-enhancing programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to suggest a mathematical model of unpaid housework and empirically test its main predictions using data from Mexico (2014) and Colombia (2017) time-use surveys. The model, based upon the Marxist-feminist approach, suggests that the magnitude of unpaid housework is determined by the super-exploitation of labor, i.e. the gap between wages and the value of labor-power. The outcome is an equation that relates positively the magnitude of unpaid housework with the super-exploitation of labor. The parametric and nonparametric regression estimates applied in both countries show preliminary empirical support for the theoretical model. The theoretical and empirical findings have several implications for Marxist-feminist literature as well as for empirical research on unpaid housework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Genocide” is a key frame through which death is given social significance. Scholars have argued that genocide sits at the top of a hierarchy of grief – signalling it as the most profound paradigm through which those killed can be mourned. How does the mourning of life unfold when legal and social conceptualizations of genocide diverge? And what does this divergence tell us about the power of “genocide” as a label for violence? Focusing on the extermination campaign against Colombia’s Patriotic Union (UP) political party, this paper examines how recent transitional justice programmes have interpreted the question of genocide and violence against political groups. I specifically trace the development of two separate, discursive registers of genocide: one legal and one of “common parlance.” In so doing, I contribute to scholarly concern with the question of genocide and political groups in two ways. First, I interpret the exclusion of political groups from legal definitions of genocide as a question of grieveable life. Secondly, scholarly debate has focused on whether or not political groups ought to be protected under genocide law. I diverge from these questions to trace how emergent genocide discourses include political groups as a socially but not legally included within the term’s purview. I thus argue for scholarly attention to how political groups are interpellated in a manner that neither fully recognizes nor denies their status as victims of genocide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the ways in which women victim/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence and other human rights abuses in Colombia are co-facilitating repair and regeneration in their wider social ecologies – including their families, communities, built and natural environments – through their physical and emotional work. I begin by exploring the concept of co-facilitation which is used in socio-ecological resilience literature to designate the process through which individuals and communities cooperate with their social ecologies to make positive development possible after stressful/traumatic experiences despite systemic inequality and oppression. Using empirical data and following a growing corpus of literature which recognises that during war people are not only harmed but also build life alongside violence, I argue that victim/survivors and women-led organizations cooperate to co-facilitate positive change in women's lives and their communities. The paper concludes by reflecting on the role of these organizations as central resources in women's lives and the need to strengthen them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes some indicators of the Colombian educational system considering the effect of the pandemic and assesses the causal effect of an alternation plan between face-to-face and remote education, conducted in 2020, on the results of an achievement test. Indicators reveal that the pandemic caused a greater demand for education services in public schools, increased dropout, and repetition rates, and widened the gaps in academic performance. The causal empirical exercise indicates that the students who participated in the experiment obtained, on average, better results in the achievement test compared to students who remained in the non-face-to-face scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a case study from southwest Colombia, this paper provides hopeful example of an intercultural social movement popular education initiative which brings together social movements across territorial, political and cultural borders in order to generate unity and collaboration between these counter-hegemonic forces in the southwest of Colombia. It examines the learning and knowledge which have emerged from this initiative, led by a small, radical human rights organisation called Nomadesc, which over the course of two decades has brought together activists from diverse movements and territories across southwest Colombia in order to empower them to deal with the violent context, reimagine alternatives, and strengthen and interweave their struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper, we explore Colombian secondary students’ views on Venezuelan migration. Despite contradictory feelings on the topic, our findings show the prevalence of (perceived) economic and security threats associated with migrants. Tensions emerged over perceptions that Venezuelan migration has shifted attention from unresolved domestic issues, contributing to nationalist and xenophobic sentiments. Young people also exhibited concerns about xenophobic discourse and showed efforts to resist the harms of mainstream narratives. We suggest that critical openings for curricular inquiry and dialogue in classrooms are needed to engage explicitly with young people’s concerns and to mitigate potential discrimination Venezuelans experience in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important pillar of building sustainable peace after protracted violent conflict, security sector reform (SSR) has the objective to prepare state security actors, who often have been active conflict participants, for work within the frameworks of democracy, adherence to human and civil rights, and civilian rule. A major component of SSR is the re-training and re-education of local police to improve their relationship with the local communities. This relationship has often been severely strained by human rights abuses committed by police against community members during the conflict, and it continues to be put to the test in fragile post-accord environments by persisting high levels of violence. However, research on how to improve that relationship, particularly from a bottom-up perspective, remains scarce. This study analyses the dynamics of the relationship between the police and communities in the transition period from war to peace in Colombia, a country tormented by continued violence even after the signing of the 2016 peace agreement that was to set an end to the country's decades of internal conflict. Based on semi-structured interviews conducted during the fall of 2019, it applies the theoretical lens of the relational peace framework that approaches peace in terms of relationships between different sets of interdependent actors. The findings indicate that the relationship between the communities and the police has not reached satisfactory levels of relational peace, suggesting a set-back in security-related peacebuilding. The paper concludes with recommendations, including from interviewees, on how to improve that relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study used the capability approach (CA) to explore the English learning experiences of 10 economically vulnerable higher education (HE) students in Colombia in order to better conceptualise English from a capability perspective. In doing so, this paper builds on the empirical and theoretical work of capability scholars which has looked at the role of English in educational settings. It highlights the importance of viewing linguistic capabilities as inchoative since viewing them as fully formed can obscure injustices. These injustices can include poor quality English language education (ELE), an unfavourable financial situation, and a lack of opportunities for exposure to and practice of English. This last-mentioned injustice foregrounds another important dimension of linguistic capabilities: their inter-subjective, relational nature. To aid in this conceptualisation, the paper also draws on Phillipson's [1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press] theory of linguistic imperialism to better illustrate how English is implicated in asymmetrical power relations which give rise to oppression and domination. However, this paper also shows how some injustices can be navigated by educationally resilient individuals. The findings of this thesis are therefore of interest not only to language policy experts and other language education stakeholders in developing contexts, but also to capability scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades several Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) have been implemented to interrupt the intergenerational transmission of poverty. More recently, they have also been used as a policy response to provide support to households hit by the COVID crisis. CCTs are being deployed as a development tool to reduce local communities' vulnerability, increasing their resilience and capacity to adapt. In this context, this paper investigates if CCTs can reduce vulnerability to climate change by increasing the adaptative capacity of local communities. Indeed, while some literature has found that CCTs can reduce specific dimensions of vulnerability to socio-economic shocks, we argue that more research is necessary to understand their impact on vulnerability to climate change. Empirically, we use a panel of household survey data collected in Colombia in 2002 and 2006. We employ a difference-in-differences approach to analyse the impact of the CCT programme Familia en Acción (FA) CCTs on rural households. We consider seven components of vulnerability linked to climate change aggregated in an index: wealth, health, access to information, access to basic facilities, financial vulnerability, resilience to natural disasters, and nutrition. Our results differ from previous research and indicate that CCTs provided by the FA program do not decrease vulnerability to climate change. This finding suggests that CCTs are not a universal solution to reducing vulnerability to climate change and may be ineffective in specific contexts. The literature often assumes that CCTs can have a mitigating effect on vulnerability to climate change. Our research shows that in the context of Colombia, this assumption is incorrect. The idea that providing monthly payments to households can reduce vulnerability to climate change should be considered with caution, given limited empirical evidence. Policy makers and scholars should consider the multidimensional nature of vulnerability and design targeted interventions and avoid considering CCTs as a panacea to all aspects of vulnerability to climate change. Our models show that the FA programme failed to have a significant impact in reducing vulnerability to climate change using several different specifications. We show that CCTs do not have an impact on numerous essential components such as wealth, health, access to infrastructure, information and knowledge, financial coping mechanisms, food consumption, and exposure to natural disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the impact of Venezuelan migration on the female labor market in Colombia. Following the economic crisis in Venezuela, more than 1.5 million Venezuelans arrived in Colombia in the period 2016–2019. Using an instrumental variables approach, we find that the sudden influx of millions of migrants reduced the labor force participation of less-skilled native women due to a disproportionate increase of competition in economic activities in which they were more concentrated. On the other hand, migration positively affected the labor force participation for high-skilled women with children. When testing the underlying mechanisms of this latter result, we find a reduction in the time spent on childcare and an increase in the probability of hiring domestic service, explained by a decrease in the cost of this service due to the Venezuelan exodus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers and practitioners recognise the importance of context when implementing healthcare interventions, but the influence of wider environment is rarely mapped. This paper identifies the country and policy-related factors potentially explaining the country differences in outcomes of an intervention focused on improving detection and management of heavy alcohol use in primary care in Colombia, Mexico and Peru. Qualitative data obtained through interviews, logbooks and document analysis are used to explain quantitative data on number of alcohol screenings and screening providers in each of the countries. Existing alcohol screening standards in Mexico, and policy prioritisation of primary care and consideration of alcohol as a public health issue in Colombia and Mexico positively contributed to the outcome, while the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact. In Peru, the context was unsupportive due to a combination of: political instability amongst regional health authorities; lack of focus on strengthening primary care due to the expansion of community mental health centres; alcohol considered as an addiction rather than a public health issue; and the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare. We found that wider environment-related factors interacted with the intervention implemented and can help explain country differences in outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to agricultural credit contributes to rural development by allowing farmers to carry out profit-maximising investments that increase productivity and income, underlining the importance of exploring ways to increase access to this resource. This paper analyses the role of Rural Producer Organisations (RPOs) in easing access to formal agricultural credit. We build an original dataset comprising 15,000 municipality-year observations of RPO creation and credit allocation in Colombia to estimate a fixed effects model. We show that when the number of RPOs increases in a municipality, aggregate access to credit increases. This positive relation also holds at the individual level, with RPO membership increasing both the likelihood of a farmer requesting credit and of receiving the requested credit. We discuss demand and supply-side mechanisms that plausibly explain these results, and we further show that the relation between RPOs and access to credit is heterogeneous according to the source of credit (public vs. private bank) and the type of farmer to whom it is allocated (low-wealth, mid-wealth or high-wealth farmers). Our results point to the potential of RPOs to improve access not only to input and output markets but also to financial markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the determinants of terrorism at the sub-national level in Colombia during 2001–2014. In order to establish robust relationships, a Bayesian model averaging framework has been implemented using departmental data. We find that the violence suffered by this country is linked to economic factors, especially labor market outcomes. The results obtained are not significantly altered by the use of relative measures of terror, the specification of alternative parameters and model priors or the presence of spatial dependence. The main conclusion drawn from our analysis is that an appropriate strategy to fight against terrorism in similar contexts is to increase its opportunity cost. This might be achieved through the promotion of inclusive socioeconomic development, primarily in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, the Colombian Ministry of Education introduced the Cátedra de Paz (CdP), a national policy that seeks to contribute to human rights, citizenship, violence prevention, and peaceful conflict resolution. In the context of a decentralized education system, schools have significant autonomy to adapt the policy to local contexts. Relatively little research to date has documented the enactment, evaluation, or impact of the CdP. This study aims to understand how educators have interpreted this national mandate, and the extent to which the policy has prompted and expanded teaching and learning opportunities about conflict, peace, and justice. We explore the perspectives of 46 teachers working in public schools across 19 of Bogotá's 20 localities, several years into the creation of the CdP and in the midst of a contentious national peace process. The paper shows a range of enactment formats and uneven impact on teachers' existing commitments to peace education. We conclude that the CdP has had a contradictory effect on school-based practices, legitimizing the importance of peace education as a national imperative, while marginalizing efforts within schools as individualized and bound to the social sciences subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoted by the peace process between the Santos administration (2010–2018) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which resulted in the signing of a peace accord in November 2016, peace education at Colombia's higher education establishments and schools is gaining momentum. Educators have seized upon the opportunity afforded by the peace process and the associated legislation, particularly Law 1448 (2011) on victims and Law 1732 (2014) on the Peace Chair (Cátedra de la Paz), to energise peace education. Yet this is proving to be difficult. Among the challenges are the persistence of high levels of political, criminal and other types of violence following the termination of the armed conflict affecting learners' attitudes, behaviours and values; little relevance for peace education of established education in ethics and democratic citizenship competences; limited concrete knowledge on tertiary peace education as a pedagogical field; a vague legal framework; and little institutional guidance. Based on the author's first-hand experience as a conflict analyst and university lecturer in Colombia and a discussion of the 'conventional' and 'critical' orientations of peace education, this paper addresses these challenges and presents ideas on how tertiary peace education in Colombia could be enhanced through a focus on historical memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how coal extraction activities in La Guajira and Cesar, Colombia, are confronting the territorial claims of the local communities with the land claims of the coal companies. I argue that for the communities affected, this is not just a matter of land; it is also a matter of place. The paper introduces the concept of "territorial grabbing" as a way of understanding our spatial surroundings beyond considerations of land tenure, ownership, use, and occupation, taking into consideration symbolic and emotional structures, power relations, and social configurations involved in contexts of social occupation and appropriation. The paper presents how the actions and activities of the mining companies triggered processes of territorial grabbing, thus, confronting the communitieś spatial understandings with the spatial logic of the mining companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 2017, the community of Buenaventura, Colombia's main port and the city with the largest Afrodescendant population, went on a general strike. By scrutinising this event, this article reveals some shades of the entanglements of race, class, political subjectivity, security, capitalist development and histories of colonialism that structure the racial dynamics of space. Relying upon discourse analysis of policy papers, legal regulations and secondary sources, coupled with informal interviews and direct observation, it is argued that violence and coercion have been central techniques for harnessing the local poor population in accordance with the needs of the port as the emblem of capitalist development. The article pays particular attention to how law is implicated in the violence deployed in the city-port either as a legitimising factor or as discursive formation which portrays the local population as dangerous and thereby as a security threat to the port. This narrative about the insecurity of the poor, created and recreated by the law, reinforces the image of the Black population as undeserving poor, while at the same time legitimising the coercive interventions that have characterised the control of criminality and social mobilisation in the city-port. However, the strike allows us to see that precarity and violence have resulted in a politically active population and sophisticated levels of mobilisation which have managed to stop capitalist development, at least for a while. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to look at the Colombian case of secularisation, touching on the current state of religion and Religious Education from three perspectives: the law, the Catholic Church, and the wider society, to determine the challenges acquired by the gap developed between religion, religiosity and secular legislation. With this in mind, the article recognises that Religious Education an Colombian law have fallen short from addressing the issues presented by the Colombian situation. Finally, it introduces some ideas on what the focus of RE and law should be for the subject to be able to respond to some challenges particular to this South American country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of physiotherapy in Latin America has received little attention thus far in the English-speaking literature. In this paper, we draw on narratives from activists, educators, and professional leaders who have been instrumental in shaping the development of physiotherapy in Argentina, Colombia, and Ecuador. Physiotherapists in the Latin American countries faced many similar challenges, including developing physiotherapy in the shadow of medicine, overcoming conservative attitudes toward women professionals, and frequent social upheaval. The paper explores the disputed story of physiotherapy's origins in the polio epidemics, the influence of Swedish remedial gymnastics, and the educational colonialism of North American and European educators. We examine some of the effects of social unrest and trauma, military rule, and economic instability on the professions attempts to establish itself in the face of competition from other professions allied to medicine. And we consider the efforts taken to establish the profession's autonomy and its shifting relationship with the state. We employed two different methods for data collection to explore aspects of physiotherapy's history in Latin America from a political and socio-cultural context: 1) A reconstruction of memories from activist physiotherapists in Colombia, Ecuador, and Argentina, who have seen, lived, and promoted the development of physiotherapy in their own countries, gleaned from in-depth interviews; and 2) Analysis of secondary sources. Data were analyzed following the method described by Maynes, Pierce, and Laslett (2008), exploring personal narratives. Textual data were analyzed using documentary research (Prior, 2003) using thematic analysis, to inductively discover, and describe relevant themes about the two main guiding study questions. A constant comparative method as outlined by Boeije (2002) was used to form categories, establish boundaries, and discerning conceptual similarities between participants' narrative. Five physiotherapists were interviewed. One from Colombia, two from Argentina and two from Ecuador. Three main themes were identified: 'A Female Profession?', 'training and education', and 'Present Day in Argentina, Ecuador, and Colombia'. Tensions between the interests of the State, professionals, patients, cultures, urban and rural services, and practices are prevalent throughout physiotherapy in Argentina, Colombia, and Ecuador. Operating within these tensions is very much the reality for physiotherapists in Latin America today. Multiple histories emerge from the research, opening up a space for a more nuanced, polyphonic reading of physiotherapy in Colombia, Ecuador, and Argentina than has been heard to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of three independent qualitative case studies that examined interactions with feedback as L2 listeners worked in self-regulated environments. Data on high-intermediate learners of English were collected from case studies conducted in Australia, Colombia and Chile. Results show that L2 listeners across case studies used feedback to assess performance, to ease task completion, and to regulate listening comprehension processes. We discuss reasons along with integrated data and propose a three-level preliminary framework for conceptualizing feedback in computer-based L2 listening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I want to analyze bullying and cyber bullying for the Colombian case. I want to show the role social media plays in the dissemination of hurtful words and symbols, especially emoticons and memes. This paper analyzes the long history of social mobilization where Courts have played an important role to advance their rights, and how, in some cases, social media, memes and emoticons have been used to express agreement or disagreement with this struggle. At the end, I want to analyze whether these emoticons, symbols, pictures or expressions fall within the reach of freedom of expression, according to Colombian Constitutional Court and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2002 and the election of Álvaro Uribe as president, national pride and sentiment have grown substantially in Colombia. While it is possible to understand this as a positive phenomenon, given Colombia's historical difficulties in constructing itself as a nation, this paper develops the notion of nationism (distinct from nationalism) and on that basis argues that the figure of the nation is actually central to constructing an enduring right-wing hegemony in Colombia. I focus on the Victims' Law of 2011, an important achievement for the country, crucially understood as part of the process designed to help Colombia move beyond the violence that has dominated its history since the middle of the twentieth century. The Victims' Law prioritizes memory and remembering for overcoming the divisiveness of Colombia's recent past and enabling it to enter a peaceful future. I develop a reading, however, that favours comprehending this project more fruitfully as an attempt to create memories that, in turn, will lead to the recognition of the existence of a reconciled nation, the subject of such memories: for collective memories require collective subjects (nations) to be their bearers. But the nation so-created, I then argue, is not what it purports to be: a collective subject supporting the collective aspirations of all Colombians. Rather, banefully, I contend that the figure of the nation being developed in Colombia is, more pragmatically and indeed more fundamentally, a symbolic means by which dominant social actors repudiate and repress internal dissent and dissenters, induce historical amnesia about the actual causes of Colombia's conflict and its history of violence, and thus, rather than serve as a prerequisite to usher in a future of peaceful and widespread social development, it aids and abets the prorogation of right-wing hegemony: apparently ending it theory while doing nothing to discontinue it, in fact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international community is a key actor in fostering, establishing and maintaining peace in conflict-affected regions through multiple forms of cooperation. Official development assistance (ODA), for example, is one of them. It encompasses peacebuilding initiatives and includes diverse actors and partnerships. This paper provides a better understanding of such stakeholders' relationships by analysing 85 successful peacebuilding ODA projects that donors have implemented in Colombia. Together with international donors, we examined the projects' databases to classify the modality of cooperation, based on whether it focussed on development assistance, humanitarian aid or transition and on the way in which the key actors' involvement varied, depending on the projects and modalities. We bridge multidisciplinary findings from peacebuilding and international cooperation literature in light of the Colombian case. Using empirical and theoretical evidence, we found that non-governmental organisations and civil society are key actors in most of the projects; and that, with Colombia holding a middle-income country (MIC) status, donors do not avoid cooperating with the government, as they do with low-income countries (LIC), which lack governmental capacities. The private sector was not recognised as a key actor by the donors, who question its role in international peacebuilding-oriented assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By ignoring how conflict and displacement disrupt the location of home for those who flee within national borders, studies on displacement have largely failed to fully understand the material and symbolic impacts of living without a place called home. Drawing on the experiences of internally displaced people in Colombia, this paper argues that following conflict and displacement home becomes neither an entirely fixed place those who escape conflict unequivocally want to return nor an entirely mobile space they necessarily experience on the move. Rather than ambiguously attached to the place left behind or refashioned on the move, the empirical findings reveal that home is consistently experienced by the displaced as a tension between 'here' and 'there' or 'nowhere'. Although many displaced people do find a physical place to live following displacement they experience the sense of being trapped in a liminal space where they feel emotionally and existentially homeless. Analysis of detailed interviews shows that most of them continue to search for a sense, rather than a place called, home. A home which is emotional and affective rather than purely physical. The paper concludes by highlighting how sedentarist and non-sedentarist understandings of home coexist in the displaced location of home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws from Silencios – a photography series by the Colombian artist Juan Manuel Echavarría. Silencios comprises more than 120 portrayals of abandoned schools due to armed conflict in Los Montes de María, Colombia. Sharing Echeverría's belief that 'these chalkboards have lessons to tell us about war', the author of this paper advocates for the pedagogical use of Silencios to promote and support memory works in Colombia. The present analysis acknowledges that hegemonic memories and narratives have a negative impact on conflict-affected societies due to their authoritarian and oppressive character. Therefore, the pedagogical use of Silencios seeks to ignite multiple narratives and counterhegemonic memories that might emerge as the public interacts with the photography. The visuals, in this sense, become an educational opportunity to stimulate reflection and resistance against the monopoly of the past in a country that is currently emerging from conflict. In this paper, the abandoned schools are considered as memory sites, and as renewed learning spaces to stimulate reflections and debates upon the armed conflict. Silencios can contribute to peacebuilding efforts by bringing up the possibility to reconsider essentialist conceptions of peace, memory, and pedagogy, that might hinder potential venues for enduring peace in Colombia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After decades of internal conflict, Colombia is experiencing economic growth and urbanization. It remains, however, one of the most socially unequal countries in Latin America. Medellín, acclaimed the most innovative city, implemented large-scale transport infrastructures to link socially excluded areas to the city; new educational and cultural facilities; new public spaces and housing projects, rooted in the Barcelona model. This so-called ‘social urbanism’ has shifted local perceptions, though its socio-economic impact has been questioned. This paper focuses on the less analysed transformations in planning policy and management through two instruments: the Land Use Plan (Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial - POT) and the ‘Plan Parcial’. The research, based on a desktop review, interviews and site visits, examines the application of these instruments in Medellín, reflecting on how they contribute to achieving the aims of ‘social urbanism’. The paper explores the differences between ‘rhetoric’ and practice that are reflected in those between the city’s overarching plan (POT) and the implementation of ‘planes parciales’, focusing on redevelopment, urban renewal and urban expansion. Such differences mirror the deficiencies in the adaptation of the ‘urban project’ Barcelona model in Medellín, and provide the basis for a call to develop ‘social urbanism’ that is genuinely more socially, territorially comprehensive and inclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous movements in southwestern Colombia have shifted their focus from their original goals of asserting indigenous identities, reclaiming land, and uniting the country's diverse indigenous communities. The Autonomous Indigenous Intercultural University (UAIIN) reasserts indigenous identities by appropriating a western educational model but returning education to processes of cultural reproduction among peers, by requiring all students to engage in community investigation and popular education within their own communities. In this paper, I argue that the UAIIN strives to be a pluriversity that builds on the diversity of its participants in order to foster thinking-feeling students who engage Mother Earth through deep and spiritual connections. These efforts are contradicted, however, by the UAIIN's administration's desire to meet the Colombian Ministry of Education's requirements for universities and to gain official recognition for its degree programmes. In practice, the UAIIN is a pluriversity within a university. Through its pedagogy, the UAIIN seeks to build indigenous solidarity across cultural difference, connects students to Mother Earth through action-oriented education, and strategically universalizes a pan-indigenous national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the 2008 triple crisis (finance, food, environment), large-scale land investments raised concerns about their negative impacts on local populations. To counter risks to agribusiness' reputation, sustainability certifications legitimize investments fulfilling certain production criteria. But do such certifications ensure local populations' land access? This paper investigates the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and argues that its definition of sustainability fails to ensure such land access for two reasons: (1) It refers to land rights instead of recognizing the human right to land (2) It promotes contract farming as win-win. By focusing on local contexts and practices in Colombia, field research provides evidence that to ensure local populations' land access, the RSPO should opt for a human rights approach. For the Colombian peace process, this result means that the RSPO's current definition of sustainability is not in line with the integral rural reform planned in the peace agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Santa Catalina is a Caribbean island in the Colombian archipelago of Providencia y San Andrés, which has been at the centre of a recent territorial dispute between Colombia and Nicaragua that has made the islands central to the geostrategic agenda of the Colombian state in its attempt to reaffirm political alliances with the United States. Within this context, our investigation explores recent processes of archaeological research, heritagisation and tourism promotion on Santa Catalina Island that triggered a conflict between the local raizal population (Afro-descendant, Caribbean, Puritan and English-speaking) and the State (white, Andean, Catholic and Spanish-speaking) around the meaning of two key sites of memory—Fuerte Libertad (Fort Warwick) and the Cabeza de Morgan (Morgan's Head). Drawing on long-term ethnography, this paper reveals how the neoliberal, multicultural state of Colombia has functioned as an investment facilitator and a key actor in transforming ethnic-racial differences into class inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical peace education literature has focused attention on how programmes that promise to teach peace contribute to and contest existing power relations. However, using social theory to work out the relationship between peace education programmes and their context is only beginning. This paper uses a document review and interviews with experts to examine the expectations for peace education in Colombia and the challenges these programmes face. It finds there is a coherent set of demands that constitute peace education, which primarily focus on developing empathy and critical thinking. These aims face material restrictions of a lack of time and space in the curriculum, but also the problem of embedded competitive behaviour between pupils. Bourdieu's toolkit of habitus, field and capital frames this obstacle as part of the struggle to determine what constitutes legitimate capital within a field. This framing has two benefits. It prevents the problem of competitive inter-pupil relations being located within the actions of individual teachers and students. It also allows for solutions that address the structural challenges facing peace education. This use of Bourdieu focuses attention on the systemic obstacles facing peace education and so helps move the literature away from problem-solving and individualised analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The small body of scholarship that examines the intersection between forced displacement and physical disability draws important attention to the material difficulties simultaneously disabled and displaced people experience. Instead of focusing on disability as a condition lived against the spatial backdrop of forced displacement, this paper approaches disability and displacement as mutually referential spatial conditions. Based on fieldwork with internally displaced landmine victims in Colombia’s Magdalena Medio region, this research highlights how the intersection between physical impairment and forced displacement produces both disabling spatial imaginaries of fear as well as painfully embodied rhythms of daily life. Nonetheless, this paper draws attention to urban agricultural projects’ enabling potential to produce grounding rhythms of labor for landmine victims. Finally, this paper suggests that contexts of forced displacement require close consideration of spatial imaginaries of fear as well as experiences of direct structural violence as key factors underpinning the social production of disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory planning is widely promoted to restore democratic legitimacy and inclusion. Based on interviews in marginalised neighbourhoods in Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia, this paper shows that, while participatory planning can generate neighbourhood upgrades, limited flexibility and participation made citizens feel marginalised and dependent rather than included and empowered. Participants felt discriminated against based on income and challenged expectations of compliance and gratefulness. The potential causes for conflict and misunderstanding highlighted in this paper have relevance for participatory planning strategies that seek to include previously marginalised neighbourhoods and their residents into the social and physical fabric of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Minamata Convention on Mercury, which entered into full force in August 2017, was signed by more than 100 countries, including several where artisanal and small-scale gold mining is practised, such as Brazil, China, Ecuador, Ghana, Peru and Colombia. Focused on Colombia, the country that likely faces the most difficult challenges to implement this convention, this paper discusses the extent of mercury pollution in the water sources of the country and the barriers Colombia must overcome to comply with the Minamata Convention. Many of these same barriers are also present in other countries impacted by artisanal and small-scale gold mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colombia has joined the international movement of countries which, under the impulse of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), are looking to integrate global citizenship education (GCED) into their educational system. However, being a recently emerging initiative, the characteristics and possible effects of GCED have not been discussed sufficiently in academia, nor among policy makers. This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of the most recent antecedents of GCED to be found in Colombian education policy. It thereby contributes to the national and international debate surrounding the integration of GCED in contexts that differ from those of Western and 'developed' countries, which have been the main focus of GCED research and interventions to date. It is argued that, in the case of Colombia, educational initiatives that are based on critical approaches to GCED should be recuperated and strengthened, since these initiatives provide powerful clues for a truly transformative integration of GCED in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After more than 50 years of war, in 2016, the Colombian government signed a historic peace accord with the country's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Although the cessation of hostilities between the rebel group and the government is a monumental step, violence remains rife in the country. By drawing attention to the correlation between neoliberal economic development in the country and militarism, this paper sheds light on several structural issues that have been left potentially unresolved by the peace negotiations, each with the potential to ignite further violence. We introduce the concept of militaristic neoliberalism to argue that there is a fundamental link between Colombia's neoliberal development and a culture of militarism, which relies on gendered and racialized constructions of 'self' and 'other', that exacerbate structural inequalities and severely hampers prospects for achieving peace for many of Colombia's citizens post-conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countries that sign a peace agreement to emerge from protracted violent conflict often begin reconstructing their societies amidst continued high levels of violence. Responding to this situation, national security policies often identify core threats primarily from a state perspective, disregarding local community perceptions of threat and insecurity. This paper is based on interviews conducted in Colombia with members of three rural communities that have undergone and still suffer from different forms of post-accord violence. Differentiating between measurable and lived security threats, it identifies the communities' perceptions of threats to their current security situation and compares them to those of the state security actors stationed in the communities. Embedded in the call for more pragmatic, bottom-up peacebuilding, we argue that security is context-specific and stress the importance of understanding the diversity of local community perspectives on security for building sustainable peace under conditions of ongoing violence. Final policy recommendations thus underline the need for a more differentiated approach towards improving security levels that meets the specific threat perceptions and security concerns of local communities and improves cooperation between the communities and state security actors to bring sustainable, localized peace to context-specific security environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption is a long-standing feature of governance in Latin America. Recently, numerous governments have been caught up in a major bribery scandal operated by a major Brazilian building company. Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, is interesting because, in the 1990s and early 2000s, it introduced new processes aimed at preventing corruption in the allocation of public contracts. These processes clearly failed because, between 2008 and 2010, the city's mayor offered major contracts to some extremely dubious companies. Unusually for Latin America, the guilty mayor has been jailed, along with numerous local Councillors and the contractors. This paper explains how attempts to prevent corruption failed and what steps have been taken since to prevent it happening again. Bogotá's experience is important because it is one of the best-run cities in Latin America and, if it cannot control corruption, few cities in the region will manage to either. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Colombia, the engagement of Afrodescendants in the political field opened up by multiculturalism has generated sociopolitical realities that require a careful examination of the relations among ethnoracial 'minority' groups and between them and state institutions. Guamal, a town in the Colombian Andes, has been seen as mainly populated by descendants of enslaved Africans who have had history of sociocultural and economic interactions with indigenous communities, including disputes over land ownership. This paper examines the use of various 'multicultural' legal instruments and institutional mechanisms in disputes provoked by multicultural recognition. It focuses on a series of litigations between the town's Afrodescendant community council and the indigenous authorities of cabildo Cañamomo-Lomaprieta. In 2013, the indigenous authorities filed a legal action claiming that the state should have consulted their communities prior to recognition of the Afrodescendant council because such administrative measure directly affected their well-being. Through analysis of the formalization of the Afrodescendant community council and the tutelage claim filed by an indigenous governor in the case, this article shows how, after 28 years of multiculturalism, ethnoracial minorities have developed a wide range of skills and politico-legal strategies that allow them to claim rights and legitimize their forms of authority and organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Colombia has experienced a renewed interest in social, political, and humanitarian issues, within a stormy political climate marked by the signing of a peace agreement in 2016 and the polarizing presidential elections of 2018. Trying to forge alliances within a politically polarized nation, social and political movements have focused on the need to end a long-lasting internal conflict; the desire for the safe reallocation and reparation of victims of forced displacement; and the rejection of gender-based violence. Fashion, as a rightly sensitive social barometer, has taken active part in the debates around these issues. From members of the fashion elite openly supporting a certain presidential candidate, to brands taking inspiration from social issues in their collections, it is evident that recent political happenings are central to the Colombian fashion industry. Studying a number of collections, images, and social media communications of major fashion brands of international renown, smaller, local designers, and celebrated fashionistas, this paper studies the ways in which members of the Colombian fashion industry have taken to political participation and social activism within the current political climate. It provides insight on how fashion, among other cultural processes, becomes political in times of uncertainty and transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of affordable housing agendas in Latin America, specifically in São Paulo, Brazil and Bogota, Colombia. These cities were pioneers in the conception of 'inclusionary housing policies', which use urban planning instruments to produce affordable housing by capturing the land value generated by real estate dynamics. In these cities land values are stimulated by incentives that incorporate affordable housing into market-rate developments using different models of public-private partnerships. The paper analyses the use of urban instruments such as land reserves and those that require percentages of land, building rights or financial resources to go to private builders willing to produce affordable housing. It shows the unquestioned incorporation of international affordable housing agendas. From a struggle to guarantee the right to housing, the issue of creating affordable housing has been appropriated to expand frontiers for real estate-financial markets. The dimension and complexity of housing needs have been ignored, raising serious questions about the sole solution currently provided (housing as private property) and the effects of federal anti-cyclical housing policies on socio-territorial inequalities. Some proposals are progressive, while others deepen the submission of policy to real-estate financial logics and are beset with contradictions: to provide land and financial resources for the production of new units, these public -private partnerships often lead to further socio-spatial segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the introduction to this special issue on Latin American housing policies, we address the common elements evident in this collection of papers with the aim of enabling a better knowledge exchange between the 'global North' and the 'global South' on potentially common issues. These include the changing relationship between state and capital, with special emphasis on the new role adopted by the State as a facilitator for financial private capital in an increasingly privatised housing sector; the need to address precarious housing conditions among vast sectors of the population, including international migrants; and the various innovative roles played by civil society in housing provision. Notwithstanding these similarities between world regions, our editorial introduction highlights a number of particularities in housing research in the Latin American region, underscoring the need to reflect critically on the applicability of concepts and models created in different geographical contexts with different historical, social and political realities. Within this editorial, we also introduce the main themes discussed in the specific articles and attempt to place them within the more general scope of earlier research on housing policies in the region. We conclude by acknowledging that a solution to long lasting housing inequality in Latin America remains an unfulfilled promise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neoliberal reforms of the early 1990s in Colombia, mainly labour and social security reforms, transformed capital-labour relations and contributed to the erosion of working conditions and health protection at work, with devastating impacts on workers' health. In the context of these dramatic changes, Colombian workers mobilised around collective identities that have shaped new forms of workers' struggle and resistance. Since 2006, associations of workers suffering work-related illnesses have been active in Colombia. The associated workers engaged in collective actions have demanded from employers, the Ministry of Work, occupational risk administrators, disability rating boards and the judicial system the recognition of certain diseases as being of occupational origin and that these entities guarantee corresponding labour, economic and social security rights. This paper describes and analyses the dynamics of the struggle for the right to health at work undertaken by these associations in Colombia, adopting an analytical perspective inspired by collective action theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the complexity of contemporary struggles for collective health in Colombia, by analysing the efforts of different actors to inscribe abortion as a matter of public health and as a human right. In 2006 the Colombian Constitutional Court (Sentence C 355 of 2006) partially decriminalised abortion in specific circumstances. Such a change in regulation was the result of the strategic coordination of international organisations, researchers and women's social movements. These groups produced a powerful network of international regulation and epidemiological data about abortion's mortality and burden of disease in order to move the discussion from the moral field to public health and international law. Despite the significance of the sentence in terms of civil rights, ten years after the regulation there is no clarity about its impact. Conservative sectors within the government have limited the operation of the regulation, through eliciting convoluted rules for hospitals and care providers. On the other hand, data about safe abortions are weak and precarious. Recently groups opposed of abortion have exploited such weakness to undermine the impact of the decriminalisation and to criticise the justification of legalising abortion as a matter of public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International cocaine trafficking has been well-studied, but little is known about cocaine flows within Colombia, the largest producer and exporter of cocaine in the world. Using a unique dataset on the monthly wholesale prices of cocaine across 32 municipios in 2016, this paper estimates patterns of flows of cocaine within Colombia. For the 496 possible resulting pairs of municipios, price differentials are used to infer direction of flow, and price correlations are used to infer connectedness. Among the new findings, 38 suspected municipio-to-municipio flows that are new to the literature are identified. Interestingly, cocaine is inferred to flow through two distinct networks: one that originates in Buenaventura and the other in three points in southern and eastern Colombia. These networks may correspond to distinct criminal trafficking systems, a finding that has potential implications for drug control policies and measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a content analysis of 532 programs screened on various national television networks in Colombia, this paper examines in the country's narconovelas, fictional series derived from the telenovela genre that resonate forcefully with the public. We do so in order to gain a better understanding of their role in representing gender in Colombia. Relevant topics include: the widespread violence against women in a traditional, patriarchal country, the ineffectiveness of policies targeting gender discrimination, and ideologies of machismo and Marianismo. These practices are discussed as factors that may prevent women's social empowerment and participation in the workforce and politics of the country. Our results show that, as per Colombia's prevailing social relations, narconovelas demonstrate a gendered power imbalance and mestizo heteronormativity via macho plots that glamorize violence against women. Women are rarely key characters in narconovelas, and when they appear, they are dependent on men, and attain status through men or their families. In addition, the genre represents continuous verbal and physical aggression against women, especially if they belong to ethnic or racial minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]