Victims' Communities as Knowledge Producers in Transitional Justice Processes: The Case of Post-conflict Colombia

This chapter analyzes how victims’ communities are producing grassroots knowledge to find missing people who disappeared during the Colombian armed conflict. It explores by what means this particular construction of knowledge is a tool for demanding truth, justice and reparation to support transitional justice processes in the country. Specifically, this chapter focuses on the grassroots project Cartography and Identification of Mass Graves – an initiative based in the subregion of Eastern Antioquia, Colombia. This chapter examines how victims’ activism can be understood as an expression of public sociology in contested societies, highlighting the relationship between peace-building and transitional justice from a sociological perspective. The final aim of this chapter is to comprehend by what method collective actions of solidarity can help to reconstruct social cohesion inside local communities affected by the war.