Pardo Pedraza, Diana | Department of Anthropology | Columbian College of Arts & Sciences

Explosive and affective legacies of warfare. Practices & politics of humanitarian demining. Ethnographic theory. (Post)conflict & development ecologies in Latin America and Colombia.

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

I am a social anthropologist interested in exploring (de)militarized landscapes, post-conflict environmental politics, and multispecies relations of aid and care. My book manuscript, “Landscapes of Suspicion: Minefields, Humanitarian Demining, and Peace Laboratories in Colombia,” is an ethnography of a technical and political experiment along the enduring aftermath of improvised landmines. It follows military deminers, rebel explosive experts, war-affected campesinos [small farmers], humanitarian practitioners, and mine detection dogs as they collaborate to (re)enable rural life and assay the material possibility of peace. On the threshold of nominal peace, everything becomes possible, yet nothing is certain. Political longings and pressures are keenly felt. In these at once potential and unsettled fields, suspicions are a ubiquitous presence. They remain, are recast, and emerge anew. This book explores how these unlikely demining collaborators navigate the unstable territorial and political landscapes brought forth by warfare and reconfigured through humanitarian interventions.

Classes

(ANTH 3702) Anthropology of Latin America
(ANTH 3991/6591) Anthropology of Environmental Politics
(ANTH 2502/6504) Anthropology of Science and Technology

Publications

Articles

2024 Ordinary Warfare and Militarized Landscapes. A Syllabus. Critical Ethnic Studies Journal. 8 (2). Fall 2023. LINK
2023 Sensory Co-laboring: Mine Detection Dogs and Handlers in Humanitarian Demining in Colombia. Environmental Humanities 15 (3): 30–51. LINK
2023 Ethical Disconcertment and the Politics of Troublemaking: Land mines, Humanitarian Demining and Ecologies of Trouble in Rural Colombia. American Ethnologist 50 (3): 462–73. LINK
2023 Explosiveness: Territories of War and Technoscientific Practices in Colombia. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. 28 (3): 239-250. Co-authored with Julia Morales Fontanilla. LINK
2023 Response to commentaries to explosiveness: Territories of war and technoscientific practice in Colombia. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. 28 (4): 360-361. Co-authored with Julia Morales Fontanilla. LINK
2023 Introduction to The Domestication of War. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 9 (1). Co-authored with Xan Chacko, Jennifer Terry, and Astrida Neimanis. LINK
2023 Making Peace Possible Amidst Minefields. Hot Spots, Fieldsights, July. LINK
2022 Landscapes of Suspicion: Minefields and Cleared-Lands in Rural Colombia. Theorizing the Contemporary, Fieldsights, January. LINK
2021 Aprender a tocar bien. Boletina Anual # 9, Escuela de Estudios de Género, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Facultad de Ciencias Humanas. September. LINK
2020 Artefacto Explosivo Improvisado: Landmines and Rebel Expertise in Colombian Warfare. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 3 (1): 472–92. LINK
2020 On Landmines and Suspicion: How (not) to Walk Explosive Fields. Environment & Planning D: Society & Space, Forum. LINK
2017 Ethics, Collaboration, and Knowledge Production: Digital Storytelling with Sexually Diverse Farmworkers in California. Lateral 6 (1). Co-authored with Tania Lizarazo, Elisa Oceguera, David Tenorio, and Robert McKee Irwin. LINK

Book Chapters

2023 Q de Quiebrapatas. In Belicopedia. Edited by Daniel Ruiz Serna and Diana Ojeda. Bogotá, Colombia. Universidad de los Andes. LINK
2017 The Amputated Body: Ghostly and Literal Presence. In Territories of Conflict: Traversing Colombia through Cultural Studies. Edited by Andrea Fanta Castro, Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola, Chloe Rutter-Jensen, New York: University of Rochester Press. LINK

Book Reviews

2023 War as an Environment: Domesticity, Bitterness, and Multispecies Attachments to Life. Current Anthropology 64 (3): 352–53. LINK
2022 Legacies of War: Violence, Ecologies, and Kin by Kimberly Theidon. Anthropological Quarterly 95 (4): 497–504. LINK

Special Issues

2023 Co-editor (with Xan Chacko, Jennifer Terry, and Astrida Neimanis) of The Domestication of War.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 9 (1). LINK

Education

Ph.D., 2019, Cultural Studies, University of California, Davis, USA

M.A., 2010, Cultural Studies, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia

B.A., 2009, History, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia

Diana Pardo Pedraza