Diana Pardo Pedraza

¡Hola!

I’m an ethnographer of contemporary Colombia interested in researching (de)militarized rural landscapes, post-conflict politics and economics, and multispecies relations of aid and care.

I’m also an assistant professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at George Washington University.

My book manuscript, Landscapes of Suspicion: Making Peace in Rural Colombia’s Minefields is an ethnography about a “peace laboratory”: The Pilot Project of Humanitarian Demining. Framed by the recent peace negotiation process between the Colombian State and the left-wing FARC-EP guerrilla, this was an initiative where Army and guerrilla soldiers lived and worked together to clear two remote villages: El Orejón and Santa Helena.

Grounded in eighteen months (2015-2016) of multi-sited ethnographic research, the book follows military deminers, rebel soldiers, war-affected peasants, and humanitarian practitioners in their experimental efforts to demilitarize landscapes and forge relationships of trust and reconciliation in spaces where war is provisionally suspended.

Throughout my research, I pay special attention to the material-affective impacts of the presence and absence of improvised landmines and framed them in terms of “non-explosive events.” I argue that landmines have the power to activate and orchestrate the emergence and consolidation of certain conditions of life (as well of death, disability, and debility) in the Colombian countryside, even when they do not explode or are physically absent, which this is the case of recently demined and so-called released rural areas. This capacity, I show, relies on the production of “landscapes of suspicion,” an environmental and political reality that characterizes the ambivalent times of armed conflict, violence-laden postwar and peace in Colombia.

My work is inspired by diverse scholarly fields, especially ethnographic theory, feminist science and technology studies, critical humanitarian studies, and political ecology.

My research has been supported by grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the University of California President’s Office, the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), and the Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies Dean’s office at UC Davis.

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Curriculum Vitae; Cultural Studies at UCD; Academia Profile; Research

Explosive & Toxic Legacies of Warfare; Practices & Politics of Humanitarian Demining; Ethnographic Theory; (Post-)Conflict & Development in Latin America and Colombia.

Anthropology of Violence & Peace; Feminist Geographies & Political Ecology; Critical Humanitarian Studies & Human Rights; Feminist Science & Technology Studies; Colombia & Latin American Studies.

Landscapes of Suspicion: Making Peace in Rural Colombia’s Minefields

My current project, Landscapes of Suspicion: Making Peace in Rural Colombia’s Minefields, is an ethnography study of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and mine clearance in times of political uncertainty. With the aid of ethnographic concepts, I explore experimental practices of political reconciliation built around humanitarian efforts to demine territories formerly ravaged by wars. Empirically, I study the relations between anti-personnel mines, former foes (guerrilla members and soldiers from the Colombian army), war-affected peasant communities, and demining experts –including mine-sniffing dogs.

This research is based on two years of fieldwork among participants in a Pilot Project for Humanitarian Demining. Touted as a ‘peace laboratory,’ the Pilot Project was an initiative to experiment “on the ground” the possibility of an alliance between enemies that were still at war. It hoped to create relations of trust, collaboration, and reconciliation among them and peasants trapped in the middle of the crossfire. Through this joint work, they were to create and escalate relations of trust, collaboration, and reconciliation among them. The humanitarian and political goal of the demining project was to remake rural landscapes and re-enable peasant life. My research demonstrates that these efforts were fraught with tensions, challenges, and aporias. Troubles abound, and (war) residuals may remain. What reconciliation, development, and peace may become is, therefore, still at stake. The possibilities are unfinished.

Check my future research project, Senses in Translation.

Senses in Translation: Multispecies Assemblages for War Remnant Detection

Based primarily in Colombia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, two countries with growing dog demining industries, this project is a comparative analysis of the limits and possibilities of perception that enable human–dog assemblages to clear heterogenous war-contaminated territories. Empirically, I will conduct participant observation with various lay practitioners and their canines at the International Canine Demining Center of the Colombian National Army and the Global Training Center of the demining organization Norwegian People’s Aid. I will follow these practitioners and their dog partners as they experiment with practices, infrastructures, and technologies for the detection of explosive devices. Specifically, my project will address how humans and dogs use this set of apparatuses to translate and communicate the sensory worlds that each of them inhabits to optimize their joint detection labor. Through this ethnographic research, I am interested in exploring the emergence of a shared multispecies sensorial sphere.

Check my current research project, Suspicious Landscapes