Ethical disconcertment and the politics of troublemaking: Land mines, humanitarian demining, and ecologies of trouble in rural Colombia

In Colombia, I once heard a farmer reject a humanitarian demining project operating in her community. “Land mines are our smallest problem,” she said. Creating a moment of ethical disconcertment, she sought to slow down humanitarian imperatives. I place her in conversation with local pleas for “demi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American ethnologist 2023-08, Vol.50 (3), p.462-473
Main Author: Pardo Pedraza, Diana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ethics
Farmers
Feminism
Gestures
Humanitarianism
Peace
Peace negotiations
Politics
Rurality
Time
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Summary:In Colombia, I once heard a farmer reject a humanitarian demining project operating in her community. “Land mines are our smallest problem,” she said. Creating a moment of ethical disconcertment, she sought to slow down humanitarian imperatives. I place her in conversation with local pleas for “demining with development,” illustrating how they challenge the logic and temporality of humanitarian mine action, drawing attention to the complexity of the violence that silently stalks rural life despite peace gestures and accords. By making such ecologies of trouble apparent, farmers enact what I call a politics of troublemaking. Offering a feminist take on the pacifying label of “troublemaker,” I understand this politics as a demand to recognize the troubles of the living and dying in abandoned and occupied landscapes. These places are currently objects of a peace process that seeks to recuperate them, but they are also haunted by the dangers of dispossession, development, and postconflict.
ISSN:0094-0496
1548-1425
DOI:10.1111/amet.13198