Abstract
When the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) concluded a peace treaty in 2016, it was seen as a major step toward ending one of the world’s most enduring civil conflicts. The promise of this agreement, however, has yet to be fulfilled. Former combatants—with the FARC and with other armed groups—have fared unevenly in a system that has delivered benefits slowly or, in some cases, not at all. Crime and violence have also continued to plague the country. This is a legacy of power vacuums the FARC and the state have left behind, allowing for the emergence of new violent and/or criminal groups.
Framing a Revolution enters a larger conversation among scholars of international relations and comparative politics about conflict termination, post-conflict processes, and identity politics in post-2016 Colombia. Drawing on over 100 interviews with experts and former combatants and following the lives of 11 individuals over a longer term, Schmidt seeks to engage with some of the weightiest questions about post-conflict transformation. These include the role of gender, the different experiences of deserters and “loyalists” (i.e. former combatants involved in collective demobilization), and (as the title suggests) how victimhood and the conflict itself are framed.
The book’s major argument is that the narrative battles that surround Colombia’s war are important to understanding the conflict and to creating sustainable peace. The book centers around four rhetorical struggles surrounding the conflict and the peace process—the framing of victimhood, of revolution, of loyalists and deserters, and of reintegration. Examining contestation over each of these themes, the author ultimately concludes that framing determines how potential combatants understand the cost–benefit analyses of war, but also the options combatants have after conflict. Those labeled as deserters specifically are found to face substantial social stigma. This population becomes exposed to a greater risk of harm and tends to face limited options for successful reintegration into society.
Overall, this engaging title sometimes raises as many questions as it resolves. This is not necessarily a critique. In many ways, the book shines as an example of interpretive research that embraces the feminist ideal of reflexivity. Some of the most impactful moments come when Schmidt makes herself visible in the analysis, alluding to her discomfort over how elites facilitate (or fail to facilitate) access to data and interview subjects, what impact her identity (or the financial compensation offered to interviewees) has on the stories combatants tell, and what ongoing moral or emotional obligations she may have to her interlocutors. These are real and relatable questions for any scholar from the Global North (and/or from elite institutions) who engages in the process of extracting knowledge from individuals who come from marginalized communities.
In that sense, the work serves as a thought-provoking example of feminist methodology. One suspects that early career scholars with an interest in fieldwork could benefit from seeing the ways Schmidt resists veneer, exposing the ethical messiness of interview-based research in post-conflict contexts. The book also makes substantive contributions to the literature on Colombia. These include an insightful discussion on the role of campesino identity—referring to Colombia’s rural lower class, a group that tends to be classed but also racialized—and an exploration of the simplistic and/or essentialist ways in which the concept of gender and the topic of gender-based violence are deployed by all sides in the conflict.
The interview research in the book is so rich; it signposts many directions for future work on conflict and transition in Colombia. Among these are the complex ways in which masculinities interact with combatant and/or campesino identities and questions about queer identity and LGBTQ+ rights (themes only briefly touched upon in the text). If there is a weakness, it is that the text could be strengthened in some places by creating more direct engagement with research in feminist security studies and/or other recent work on Colombia. The National Liberation Army (ELN), for example, remains a tertiary interest in the book behind the FARC and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. Given that the ELN has become the next focus of the country’s peace process, its role in the conflict is probably underexplored in English-language scholarship on Colombia. The book’s interest in framing and narrative, likewise, suggests an opportunity for further dialogue with feminist authors in international relations, especially those who have advanced a narrative approach to understanding security. Overall, this title is certainly a worthwhile addition to the library of anyone interested in feminist or interpretive approaches to understanding Colombia’s peace process.