Crafting Stories, Making Peace? Creative Methods in Peace Research
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298211063510 |
| Author | Christine Andrä |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298211063510
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2022, Vol. 50(2) 494 –523
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/03058298211063510
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Crafting Stories, Making
Peace? Creative Methods
in Peace Research
Christine Andrä
Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
Abstract
This article examines the analytical and political potentials of creative methods for peace
research. Specifically, the article argues that creative methods can textile, i.e. render material and
irregularly textured, (research on) post-conflict politics. Grounded in a collaborative research
project with former combatants in Colombia, the article takes this project’s methods – narrative
practice, textile-making, and a travelling exhibition – as examples to demonstrate how creative
methods’ element of making contributes to the development of post-conflict subjectivities and
relationships. Casting the data generated by creative methods as crafted stories, the article
also shows how in these stories, semantic meaning becomes entangled with material traces of
emotional, affective, and embodied experiences of violence and its aftermath, effecting a shift in
the post-conflict distribution of the sensible. By exploring creative methods’ capacity for textiling
peace (research), the article contributes to research on creativity, the arts, and peace and on the
post-conflict trajectories of former combatants.
Keywords
peace research, creative methods, textile(d) politics
Débattre du développement inégal et combiné/Débattre des relations
internationales
Ce forum est issu d’un événement en ligne sur la théorie du développement inégal et combiné
(DIC). Après une introduction qui suggère l’existence d’une « affinité particulière » entre le DIC
et les RI, quatre intervenants de l’événement présentent leur point de vue « extérieur » au DIC,
en adoptant notamment une perspective de sociologie historique globale, de réalisme, de théorie
décoloniale et de marxisme gramscien. En parallèle, quatre membres du public apportent leurs
points de vue : sur le DIC et la disciplinarité, le besoin de pluralisme dans la méthodologie du DIC,
le DIC et la « blanchité », et l’apport potentiel du DIC à la théorie et à la pratique écologiques.
Corresponding author:
Christine Andrä, Technische Universität Dresden, Institut für Politikwissenschaft, von-Gerber-Bau,
Bergstraße 53, 01062 Dresden, Germany.
Email: christine.andrae@tu-dresden.de
1063510MIL0010.1177/03058298211063510Millennium – Journal of International StudiesAndrä
research-article2022
Original Article
Andrä 495
1. Jhonatan, former FARC combatant, author’s interview, 20 November 2019, Dabeiba. Unless
otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
2. Anika Oettler, ‘Introducción. Imaginando la reconciliación’, in Imaginando la reconcili-
ación: Estudiantes de Bogotá y los múltiples caminos de la historia colombiana, ed. Anika
Oettler, (Bogotá, Colombia: Fundación Heinrich Böll Oficina Bogotá, 2018), 4–11.
3. Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz (INDEPAZ), Informe Especial: Registro
de líderes y personas defensoras de DDHH asesinadas desde la firma del acuerdo de
paz. Bogotá, 15 July 2020; United Nations Security Council, United Nations Verification
Mots-clés
développement inégal et combiné, théorie internationale, disciplinarité
Debate sobre el desarrollo desigual y combinado/Debate sobre las
relaciones internacionales
Este debate surge de un evento en línea sobre la teoría del desarrollo desigual y combinado
(DDC). Después de una introducción que presenta una «singular afinidad» entre el DDC y las
RRII, cuatro ponentes de este evento discuten su «visión desde fuera» del DDC, incluyendo
perspectivas de la sociología histórica global, el realismo, la teoría decolonial y el marxismo
gramsciano. Al mismo tiempo cuatro participantes del público aportan sus visiones sobre el DDC
y la disciplinariedad, sobre la necesidad de un pluralismo en la metodología del DDC, sobre el
DDC y la «blanquitud» y sobre su potencial contribución a la teoría y a la práctica ecológicas.
Palabras clave
desarrollo desigual y combinado, teoría internacional, disciplinariedad
Introduction
‘I did it thinking about saying to the people that [. . .] really, if they take the time to get to
know us, and. . . and then once they have gotten to know us, we’ll see whether we are dif-
ferent, whether we are these monsters that they say we are’.1 Jhonatan is a demobilised
combatant living in the Espacio Territorial de Capacitación y Reincorporación (Territorial
Space of Training and Reincorporation, ETCR) in Llano Grande, a village in the Colombian
Andes. He and I were sitting in the open-air space of the educational centre in Dabeiba,
about an hour’s drive on gravel roads from his village, besides the small exhibition of tex-
tiles that my colleagues and I had mounted the previous day, and which featured his
embroidery of a human heart (Figure 1). Next to the anatomically rendered heart, Jhonatan
had stitched a message: ‘We, the FARC, are human beings who love and feel like
EVERYONE ELSE’. In the Colombian media and among parts of the country’s urban
population, dominant narratives about the conflict and its aftermath paint demobilised
combatants like Jhonatan as enemies, terrorists, delinquents, or indeed, non-human mon-
sters – with grave real-world consequences. The idea that the FARC constituted a terrorist
group was one of the main reasons for the narrow win of the ‘no’ vote in the 2016 referen-
dum on the peace agreement between the government and the FARC-EP (Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo).2 Since the referendum, more than 200
demobilised FARC fighters and another 40 members of their families have been killed.3 In
this context, Jhonatan intended his textile as an invitation: ‘That people take a moment to
get to know [us], that was [. . .] what I have wanted to reflect in my embroidery’.
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