DSR Lecture Series: "Insurgent Religion: Revolutionary Soulcraft and Restorative Justice"
When and Where
Speakers
Description
Insurgent Religion: Revolutionary Soulcraft and Restorative Justice
Since the 2016 Havana Peace Accords, over 12,000 former FARC-EP combatants have entered processes of social and political reintegration in Colombia. While significant institutional infrastructures have emerged for transitional justice, a quieter, more radical transformation is occurring through the lived experiences of "revolutionary soulcraft"—everyday practices of reconciliation between victims and former militants. This lecture shifts the focus from state-led mandates to the cultural and collective justice frameworks of former insurgents. By foregrounding community-based concepts of intercultural justice, this talk reframes restorative justice beyond a legal process, as a pluralistic movement for social transformation rooted in collective imaginaries of the sacred and the possible.
About the speaker
Rebecca Bartel is Associate Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at San Diego State University. Her work traces the entanglements of religion, capitalism, and mechanisms of violence and justice throughout the Americas. She is the author of Card Carrying Christians: Debt and the Making of Free Market Spirituality in Colombia (University of California Press, 2021). Her current research includes projects on border religion, anthropologies of protection, and anti-colonial processes of restorative justice in Colombia.