The Colombian Peace Agreement signed in 2016 was saluted internationally by scholars, policy makers and practitioners for encompassing the concept of territorial peace as a means of ensuring local participation in the strengthening of state institutions. Based on engaged research conducted in the Department of Cauca and Bogotá between 2017 and 2020, we critically analyse territorial peace, exploring its ideation, implementation, and subsequent decline in favour of security and stabilisation. We argue that the government’s peacebuilding rationale and mechanisms sought to reinforce the neoliberal state through a constrained participation model, which marginalised the progressive struggles of local communities living in former conflict affected areas. Without a radical breakdown of pre‐existing power structures of exploitation and domination, community participation in peacebuilding runs the risk of legitimising state‐led initiatives that ensure the political rule of capital, strengthen the bureaucracies of the centralised state, and create new violent disputes without resolving existing ones.

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Although stabilisation has been widely debated by the recent literature, there has been relatively little discussion about how the governments of countries affected by armed violence have themselves engaged with the concept. This article looks at Colombia where, since the election of president Iván Duque in 2018, the government has increasingly emphasised stabilisation. We argue that stabilisation is for the Duque administration a discursive device that allows them to navigate the contradiction between their critical position towards the peace process and the necessity to fulfil internal and international obligations. We also argue that, in spite of its apparent novelty, the concept of stabilisation has long roots in Colombia, going back to the policies of consolidation developed under the presidencies of Álvaro Uribe and Juan Manuel Santos. The analysis of the antecedents of consolidation raises doubts about the appropriateness of Duque's stabilisation for tackling Colombia's post-conflict challenges. The case of Colombia highlights the risk that stabilisation might displace more transformative approaches to peacebuilding and the continuity between contemporary stabilisation and previous interventions.

Resumen Este artículo analiza cómo los activistas del movimiento Afro‐venezolano participan en las instituciones del Estado Bolivariano con el fin de promover agendas en contra de la discriminación racial y en pro del reconocimiento étnico. Con la intensión de trascender los conceptos clásicos de institucionalización, examinamos los logros, ambigüedades y desafíos que experimentan estos actores en su incorporación a las diferentes esferas institucionales. Proponemos que este proceso identificado por el movimiento como “cimarronaje institucional” abre oportunidades para la creación de nuevos espacios de participación en las instituciones nacionales y locales. Sugerimos que esta práctica política se encuentra moralmente interpelada por una “ética del cimarronaje” —un marco de acción colectiva que sintetiza ideologías de resistencia histórica ante la exclusión racial y social. Argumentamos que la institucionalización no necesariamente conlleva a la paralización de la acción colectiva, sino también representa una fase más en la relación entre los movimientos sociales y el Estado.

This paper proposes a novel political pedagogic approach to conducting engaged research. Drawing critically on elements of Participatory Action Research and popular education, this approach - Engaged Pedagogic Research (EPR) - generates processes of collective co-learning and empowerment for local communities and activist researchers. Central to conducting EPR are five processes: generating situated learning practices, recognizing alternative knowledges, engaging in inter-cultural and inter-ethnic dialogue, deconstructing power relations, and promoting empowerment and social action. The experiences of engaging in EPR through developing and running a Diploma in Territorial Planning to support peacebuilding in Colombia are discussed. Different social groups living in conflict areas gained new knowledge and built social relationships that strengthen collaborative action, while activist academics achieved a deeper understanding of how members of these cultural groups manage their territories, relate to each other, and develop visions for collaborative futures in the context of peacebuilding. By developing participatory, decolonized and transformative bridges to connect and engage universities with communities, EPR facilitates learning that is collectively created and has the potential to contribute to more just and egalitarian societies.

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