The face of the government:Presence and responsibility in the Colombian peace process with the FARC-EP

The face of the government is the interface through which citizens come into contact with and perceive the government via representation and face-to-face encounters. This article focuses on Colombian government officials in charge of delivering ‘peace pedagogy’ to explain to society the peace negotiations with the FARC guerrillas, before and after a polarizing referendum which narrowly rejected the 2016 peace agreement that sought to end fifty years of war. It builds on their idiom of ‘giving face’ (dar la cara), denoting the work of representing the government to society in face-to-face encounters and assuming responsibility as the government, and explores its resonance with academic and popular discourses about the state having many ‘faces’. It brings this idiom, and theories of the face, into the anthropology of the state, calling for the study of governments as discrete entities within states, and examining the way that a government's overarching character or ‘face’ is interactively co-produced in the public gaze through embodied acts of representation by officials with their audiences, and intertwined with people's macro-political opinions. It offers a framework for analysing government-society relations, giving insight into how all governments ‘face’ society, and highlights presence and responsibility as key dimensions of this relationship

The Face of Peace: Pedagogy and Politics among Government Officials in Colombia's Peace Process with the FARC-EP

This thesis studies officials in the government of Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos (2012-2018), a liberal politician whose central policy was a peace process with the FARC-EP guerrilla (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army), which sought to end fifty years of war. Based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork inside the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, the government department responsible for peace negotiations and for explaining the peace process to society, called ‘peace pedagogy’, plus interviews with government officials, international advisors, activists and FARC ex-combatants, it asks how the Santos government communicated the peace process to Colombian society, and how the culture of government officials shapes their work. Building on anthropology of the state, it calls for studying governments ethnographically, as dynamic ecosystems within the wider state, and draws on peace pedagogy officials’ perspectives about their struggles ‘giving face’ (dar la cara), in representing the government to sceptical audiences, to conceptualise how governments ‘face’ society. It also advances the anthropology of liberalism, by showing how liberal world-views are reproduced through ‘cultural liberalism’, the intertwinement of cultural values with political ideology. After a polarising referendum which narrowly rejected the peace accord signed with the FARC, government officials blamed themselves for being ‘too rational’ and ‘not emotional enough’, in contrast to opponents of the accord whom they perceived as right-wing populists. I pinpoint their belief in an imagined binary between rationality and emotions and explore how it shaped their work, showing that while the Santos government spent great efforts negotiating with the FARC, they failed to dedicate the same efforts to communicating with Colombian society, ultimately undermining the peace process. By analysing how this culturally liberal binary shaped the Santos government’s ‘face of peace’, this thesis offers new light from Colombia onto the crisis of liberalism in the global North

El escéptico en su lugar y su tiempo.

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Toward Plasmon Enhanced Organic Photovoltaics: A Study of Nanoparticle Size and Shape

This thesis reports the functionalization of metal nanoparticles to allow for solubility in organic solvents used in solar cell fabrication. Functionalization of the nanoparticles using poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether thiol (PEG-SH) allows for the phase transfer of the nanoparticles from aqueous solution to organic solvents. Once functionalized it was found that nanoprisms will undergo a shape change. This change in morphology was investigated using UV-Vis measurements, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (XANES) measurements and a mechanism for the shape degradation is presented. The PEG functionalization procedure can be applied to other types of metal nanoparticles and once soluble, these particles were incorporated into the active layer of the BHJ cells. It has been found that the PEG functionalized particles do not improve the cell efficiency, but they do affect the cell performance. The addition of the particles does not influence the open circuit voltage, but it does affect the current density of the devices. This suggests that the particles may be acting as electron traps, not allowing current to flow efficiently through the device. This shows that while the PEG-ylation of the particles is effective at solubilising them into useful organic solvents, the thickness of the PEG layer on the nanoparticles may not provide protection from electrons and allow for effective charge transfer throughout the solar cell

The Social Contract under Scrutiny

Sociopolitical expectations and actions continue to be shaped by normative ideas about social contracts

An anthropology of the social contract:The political power of an idea

The idea of the social contract resonates in many societies as a framework to conceptualise state–society relations, and as a normative ideal which strives to improve them. Policy-makers, development organisations, politicians, social scientists (including anthropologists), and our interlocutors all live with contractarian logics. While generations of political philosophers have debated the concept and its usefulness, the term has also travelled beyond academia into the wider world, shaping expectations, experiences, and imagined futures of state–society relations. An anthropology of the social contract explores ethnographically how this pervasive concept, laden with assumptions about human nature, political organisation, government, and notions such as freedom, consensus and legitimacy, impacts state–society relations in different settings. In this way, the social contract itself – its many emic instantiations, and its political effects – becomes the object of study

An anthropology of the social contract: The political power of an idea

The idea of the social contract resonates in many societies as a framework to conceptualise state–society relations, and as a normative ideal which strives to improve them. Policy-makers, development organisations, politicians, social scientists (including anthropologists), and our interlocutors all live with contractarian logics. While generations of political philosophers have debated the concept and its usefulness, the term has also travelled beyond academia into the wider world, shaping expectations, experiences, and imagined futures of state–society relations. An anthropology of the social contract explores ethnographically how this pervasive concept, laden with assumptions about human nature, political organisation, government, and notions such as freedom, consensus and legitimacy, impacts state–society relations in different settings. In this way, the social contract itself – its many emic instantiations, and its political effects – becomes the object of study

Colombia's unsung heroes

The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó shows that victims of armed conflict are also producers and creators whose knowledge could contribute to a future-oriented understanding of peace-building that would benefit all Colombians, writes Gwen Burnyeat (University College London)

El escéptico en su lugar y su tiempo.

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Los héroes invisibles de Colombia

La experiencia de la Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó demuestra que las víctimas de los conflictos armados son también productores y creadores, cuyo conocimiento podría contribuir a una comprensión de construcción de paz con orientación hacia el futuro que beneficiaría a todos los colombianos, escribe Gwen Burnyeat (University College London)