Research Project

Discourses, practices and instrumentalisation of ethnicity and identity in processes an scenarios of socio-political negotiation between 1980-1995: The armed movements and the National Constitutional Assemby ("Asamblea Nacional Constituyente" -ANC) in Colombia of 1991.

The research project investigates the process of how and why several armed movements have demobilized and integrated themselves into the ANC scenario in 1991 in Colombia. The political and cultural practices as well as the symbolic forms in connection with the ANC will be analyzed concentrating on the constellation of the guerilla groups M-19, MAQL, PRT and EPL in the period between 1980 and 1995. It will be looked at their form of organization, which resources they  mobilize, their strategies, their relations to other groups and at how they maintain themselves as movements. Furthermore, the role and instrumentalisation of new concepts like "collective identities", or new ones, like "ethnicity" or "citizenship", will be investigated to get an understanding of how these have permitted the concerned groups to sustain their political legitimacy and their collective actions, to position themselves better in opposition to the traditional political parties and to better represent popular demands - thereby reaching their aims to a certain degree whilst staging new cognitive models, values, ideologies or politics of identiy.