Vital encounters: Violence, multiple (in)securities and the reproduction of ordinary life in Colombia

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between violence, (in)security, and the reproduction of ordinary life, focusing on the significance of mundane survival practices and their connection to the emergence of scenarios of collective action and politicization. Based on the experiences of women from the Colombian Caribbean region, this article explores how ordinary interactions aimed at satisfying individual and urgent needs end up having community-level consequences and amplifying women’s political subjectivity. These interactions, I argue, can be conceptualized as vital encounters – seemingly uneventful encounters with the potential of transcending the short-lived temporality in which they exist, becoming crucial spatial-temporal instances for collective security-making. Conceptually, vital encounters contribute to a nuanced understanding of the manifold dimensions of (in)security that collide and converge in contexts with different manifestations of chronic violence. As such, vital encounters engender a sense of security that transcends crisis-centric paradigms, which tend to gravitate towards a warlike logic that sees security as the neutralization of a military enemy or the protection from armed violence.