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Accepted Paper:
The anthropologist as Scheherazade: polarisation as/and storytelling in Colombia and beyond
Gwen Burnyeat
(University of Oxford)
The 2016 peace referendum in Colombia created a widespread narrative that the country was polarised. I combine storytelling with commentary to explore how people experience politics through stories, using the Colombian case, and I propose storytelling as a political intervention by anthropologists.
Paper long abstract:
In 2016, Colombia voted “No” to a peace agreement that sought to end 50 years of war, by just 50.2%. Subsequently, it has become common to say that Colombia is “polarised” and that this has been a major factor in spiralling violence in the wake of the peace process. This is a widespread emic story, which I call the “polarisation narrative”. This narrative, which resonates far beyond Colombia amid global concerns about polarisation, tends to simplify the divisions common to any society, and produces the very rift it describes, shaping how people live together with difference. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with diverse sectors of Colombian society, this presentation explores the ways that people experience and narrate macro-level politics and political divisions in their everyday lives through stories: stories told by politicians and institutions, the media, stories shared around the family dinner table, and via social media. It also considers storytelling as a political intervention that anthropologists are particularly well suited to, given our practices of both story collecting and telling, and suggests it can be used as a tool to contribute to bridge-building in politically divided societies. The presentation combines performative storytelling with theoretical commentary in an experimental creative format that seeks to exemplify the argument very argument it makes.