The Face of Peace: Government Pedagogy Amid Disinformation in Colombia (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780226821603)

A multi-scale ethnography of government pedagogy in Colombia and its impact on peace.

Colombia's 2016 peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas sought to end fifty years of war and won President Juan Manuel Santos the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet Colombian society rejected it in a polarizing referendum, amid an emotive disinformation campaign. Gwen Burnyeat joined the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, the government institution responsible for peace negotiations, to observe and participate in an innovative "peace pedagogy" strategy to explain the agreement to Colombian society. Burnyeat's multi-scale ethnography reveals the challenges government officials experienced communicating with skeptical audiences and translating the peace process for public opinion. She argues that the fatal flaw in the peace process lay in government-society relations, enmeshed in culturally liberal logics and shaped by the politics of international donors. The Face of Peace offers the Colombian case as a mirror to the global crisis of liberalism, shattering the fantasy of rationality that haunts liberal responses to "post-truth" politics.

Author: Gwen Burnyeat
ISBN-10: 0226821609
ISBN-13: 9780226821603
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 09/30/2022
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.39lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.88d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2023