‘We were not emotional enough’: Cultural liberalism and social contract imaginaries in the Colombian peace process

Abstract

The 2016 Peace Accord signed between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP guerrilla was narrowly rejected by the public in a polarising referendum. This article focusses on government officials in the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, the government institution in charge of peace negotiations, and explaining the peace process to society in an innovative strategy called ‘peace pedagogy’. These officials resorted to rational communication about peace and repudiated the accord’s opponents, whom they perceived as right-wing populists. They then self-critically analysed the referendum loss as due to their strategy being ‘too rational’ and ‘not emotional enough’. Drawing on the anthropology of liberalism, this article characterises these officials as ‘culturally liberal’: liberal ideology was enmeshed in their cultural worldviews, including a perceived binary between rationality and emotions, and a contractarian imaginary of state-society relations as above politics. This both contributed to the loss of the referendum, and confounded their attempts to analyse the result. The normative model of the social contract, enmeshed in real-world interpretations of state-society relations, thus creates inexorably political effects.

The face of the government: presence and responsibility in the Colombian peace process with the FARC‐EP

“…I spent thirteen months embedded with the OACP between the referendum and the 2018 elections, observing officials’ everyday work and lives and travelling with them to peace pedagogy sessions around the country. I also reconstructed the emergence and evolution of peace pedagogy through interviews with government officials, FARC members, international donors, and civil society organizations (Burnyeat 2022 a ; 2022 b ). In this context of political tensions, I witnessed the OACP officials’ politically, emotionally, and ethically fraught labour of representing the government to sceptical audiences and translating the peace process for public opinion – a high‐stakes job with profound political implications.…”

An anthropology of the social contract: The political power of an idea

“…In this way, contractarian thinking occludes the confrontationality of social and political life, with two effects: first, the belief that society should be rational and harmonious often means that outlets are not created for processing conflict in a peaceful (or agonistic) way (Mouffe, 2005). Thus, contractarian thinking can contribute to generating further conflict (Burnyeat, 2022, this volume). Second, governing through the notion of consensus enables the hiding and bracketing off of discontent.…”

“…Social contract theory had its heyday in the Enlightenment. Although not all contractarians were liberals, it was a major cornerstone of liberalism, which, as a practice of politics and philosophy rooted in the 17th century, has had an enduring influence over global political and moral thought, and over our contemporary political forms – including the ideal of society as a common agreement among rational individuals, governed by a neutral state (Burnyeat, 2022, this volume).…”

“…Similarly, Gwen Burnyeat, (2022, this volume) article explores the Colombian government’s assumption that rational communication about a complex peace accord would convince society of its benefits, and, after the public rejected the deal in a referendum, the officials’ analysis that they had failed because their communication was ‘not emotional enough’. She shows how these officials held a contractarian ideal of state–society relations as above politics, which both contributed to the loss of the referendum, and confounded their attempts to analyse the result.…”

Exclusion Despite Nominal Inclusion: A Critical Analysis of Participatory Development Programmes in Post‐War Colombia

“…The failure to include a collective participation approach for all PDET communities may thus also be interpreted as a weakness of ‘[neo‐]liberal peacebuilding in Colombia’ (Vélez‐Torres et al, 2022). It is a weakness which also shaped the Santos administration's view of peace (Burnyeat, 2022: 293).…”