Making Sense of Violence in Latin America: Social Scientists and Networks of Expertise in Colombia and Mexico

Abstract

The intensity and varied nature of violence in Latin America has confronted social scientists with an urgent object of study. This essay examines how, by studying different processes of violence, social scientists have become embedded in wider networks of expertise spanning across civil society and the state. By participating in these networks, Latin American students of violence have enacted important intellectual and political interventions. I examine how the expert commissions for the study of violence launched by the Colombian state in 1958 and 1987 made landmark contributions to Colombian social sciences and produced representations of the country’s past that amplified calls for the transformation of the political regime as it existed in the 1950s and 1980s. I also analyze how, by putting forth the concept of feminicide to describe the violence faced by women and girls in Mexico, feminist scholars opened the door for holding the state accountable for its inaction against these crimes, paving the way toward reshaping the country’s criminal code and the implementation of social policies that adequately protect women’s lives. Investigating these interventions in the context of wider networks of expertise evidences how the study of violence in Latin America has pushed social scientists out of the ivory tower, moving them to engage other social actors not only as informants but also as partners and allies.