Peace building with the body: resonance and reflexivity in Colombia’s Legion del Afecto

ABSTRACT

Youth in Medellín, Colombia have been recognized as potential peacebuilders through initiatives for urban peace and non-violence, including the initiative Legión del Afecto. This paper explores the development of the Legión del Afecto in order to ask questions about the peace building potential of specific frames (e.g. coexistence) and specific strategies of mobilization (e.g. embodied). We describe how differences between the earlier and later years of the Legión have come to highlight tensions between affective versus market-based relationships in motivating youth. These tensions may be productive, but without serious attention to reflexivity, may also derail peacebuilding efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Visceral politics
• body
• peacebuilding
• coexistence
• Colombia

Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful for the valuable suggestions of Lynn Staeheli, Sasha Davis, and two anonymous reviewers. We are indebted to our friend and colleague Cesar Buitrago for his continued support of our research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Allison Hayes-Conroy is an assistant professor of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. Her work has examined the role of bodily feelings, sensations, and sensorial experience in mobilization and motivation. More broadly, Hayes-Conroy has pushed for the interdisciplinary study of bodily phenomena, understood as bio-social. Her work on motivation and her work on the bio-social have both been funded by the National Science Foundation.

Alexis Saenz Montoya is a doctoral student in the Geography and Urban Studies Department at Temple University. His work focuses on community-based social movements and the value of GIS for social transformation. He also worked for many years as a youth leader in Medellín, Colombia.

Notes

1 Preparatory work for the Legion del Afecto began in 2003. The founding group was often referred to by a different name.

2 The ‘social wage’ was originally based on the work of Jeremy Rifkin (1995), but also bears similarity to Ferguson (2015).

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under [grant number 1452541]. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.