School of Social and Political Science

Description

Colombia and Britain both held referendums in 2016—in Colombia on a peace accord, in Britain on Brexit—leaving enduring identity divides, and fostering widespread narratives about each society being more divided than ever. "Stories of Divided Politics" is a five-year project, selected as an ERC Starting Grant (2023) and guarantee-funded by UKRI, which seeks to understand how different individuals and organisations in both countries attempt to build bridges between politically divided sectors, with an emphasis on the role of stories and storytelling. 

The project is anchored in the anthropology of politics, which studies the role of culture in people’s political opinions, ideologies and identities, and in everyday experiences of political conflict; and draws also on political science studies of polarisation, which examine broader pictures of societal divisions. The project is conducting long-term ethnographic studies in both countries, following the work of bridgebuilding practitioners – individuals and organisations who seek to build bridges in different ways across complex political divides – to document and analyse this filigree relationship-building work, which is often emotionally taxing and receives little public recognition. As well as carrying out participant observation at bridgebuilders' events around each country, the project will also co-convene dialogues and workshops with bridgebuilding practitioners, co-constructing findings and analyses with them, and creating a network of bridgebuilders who can share knowledge and experiences and learn from each other. 

The project aims to re-shape academic and popular understandings of how people live with political divisions and build bridges across them, by adding nuance and complexity to current theories about divided societies, developing a framework for comparative research on political divisions, and informing global policies on the increasingly urgent problem of polarisation and the many kinds of violence and hostility it can engender, as well as offering analyses and recommendations about how to work with polarised sectors.