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Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia
Examines the conditions that have led to protracted violence in Colombia.
225 pages, Paperback
First published March 21, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 25, 2016
Seeing as no one else has read (or maybe just not reviewed) this book, I figured I'd take a couple minutes to provide a review.
Bottom-line up front: Read if you are doing academic research on Colombia, particularly the conflict between the government and the FARC. Otherwise, there are more readable histories and analyses that would better hold your interest while conveying much of the same overall information.
I read this book while conducting research for my Master's thesis on Colombia. Richani provides a thorough look at the various factors that affect Colombian society and politics and that have resulted in a conflict-laden history prior to and since Colombia's independence. Richani presents the argument that the conflict over the past 50 years between the government and various guerrilla groups, paramilitaries, and now neoparamilitaries, has been because of the development of a war system in Colombia, using the war-system theory as the main argument of the book. Overall, I think Richani's war-system theory is an interesting one, and he uses several anecdotal case studies (Italy, Angola, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) for comparison, applying the theory to these conflicts as well. However, as the author notes, he doesn't conduct any original research on these other case studies, begging the question of whether the war-system theory can actually be applied to most, if not all, conflicts as a holistic theory, or if its utility ends with the examination of the Colombian conflict.
From a technical aspect, this book was painful to read. As with many academic pieces, it is dry and burdensome to read. Making matters worse, there were countless grammatical errors, forcing me to reread sentences to understand what the author was trying to say. Another round or two of editing would have been very beneficial to improving the quality of this book. Finally, and this may just be my personal preference, but there was no concluding chapter that neatly summarized the 250 pages of material I had just finished reading and organizing it into a neat, logical summation. I found the concluding paragraph, which tried to transition from discussing the civil war in Nepal back to Colombia, ineffectual. I was left asking the question, "so what?"
So, overall, I gave it 3 stars, mostly because of the direct relevance on my thesis research, and the overall detail provided in the book. If I was reading this for pleasure, I would have given only 1 or 2 stars, as the technical errors and the overall dry, academic nature of the book provided a veritable challenge for me to overcome and finish reading it.
Bottom-line up front: Read if you are doing academic research on Colombia, particularly the conflict between the government and the FARC. Otherwise, there are more readable histories and analyses that would better hold your interest while conveying much of the same overall information.
I read this book while conducting research for my Master's thesis on Colombia. Richani provides a thorough look at the various factors that affect Colombian society and politics and that have resulted in a conflict-laden history prior to and since Colombia's independence. Richani presents the argument that the conflict over the past 50 years between the government and various guerrilla groups, paramilitaries, and now neoparamilitaries, has been because of the development of a war system in Colombia, using the war-system theory as the main argument of the book. Overall, I think Richani's war-system theory is an interesting one, and he uses several anecdotal case studies (Italy, Angola, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) for comparison, applying the theory to these conflicts as well. However, as the author notes, he doesn't conduct any original research on these other case studies, begging the question of whether the war-system theory can actually be applied to most, if not all, conflicts as a holistic theory, or if its utility ends with the examination of the Colombian conflict.
From a technical aspect, this book was painful to read. As with many academic pieces, it is dry and burdensome to read. Making matters worse, there were countless grammatical errors, forcing me to reread sentences to understand what the author was trying to say. Another round or two of editing would have been very beneficial to improving the quality of this book. Finally, and this may just be my personal preference, but there was no concluding chapter that neatly summarized the 250 pages of material I had just finished reading and organizing it into a neat, logical summation. I found the concluding paragraph, which tried to transition from discussing the civil war in Nepal back to Colombia, ineffectual. I was left asking the question, "so what?"
So, overall, I gave it 3 stars, mostly because of the direct relevance on my thesis research, and the overall detail provided in the book. If I was reading this for pleasure, I would have given only 1 or 2 stars, as the technical errors and the overall dry, academic nature of the book provided a veritable challenge for me to overcome and finish reading it.
February 10, 2017
A must for anyone who wants to better understand the history of Colombia in conflict.
June 28, 2007
I used this book in my college thesis. Richani breaks down the Colombian armed conflict into a situation where opposing forces have locked themselves into a struggle which, to a large degree, justifies their own existence. The overall system has therefore evolved to keep the violence going.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews