scholarly journals (Re)making the Social World: The Politics of Transitional Justice in Burundi

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Rubli
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Social World ◽  
Political Will ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Critical Literature

Focusing on political parties, this article highlights divergent conceptualizations of key elements of transitional justice that are part of the current contestation of the dealing-with-the-past process in Burundi. Speaking to the emerging critical literature on transitional justice, this article attempts to look beyond claims that there is a lack of political will to comply with a certain global transitional justice paradigm. In this article, transitional justice is conceived of as a political process of negotiated values and power relations that attempts to constitute the future based on lessons from the past. This paper argues that political parties in Burundi use transitional justice not only as a strategy to protect partisan interests or target political opponents, but also as an instrument to promote their political struggles in the course of moulding a new, post-conflict society and state.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 146-152
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Collective Trauma ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Second World

The conclusion to the book makes the case that there is a connection between the political, social, and cultural transformations of the French Revolution and current debates on transitional justice and collective trauma. It is common to trace current discussions about coming to terms with the past to the Second World War and especially to the aftermath of the Holocaust. This chapter argues that there is a longer and deeper history at play here, one that goes back to the eighteenth century’s Age of Revolutions, to the radical rupture with the past that it postulated, and to the new visions of the social world that it engendered. In other words, the conclusion to the book sheds light on what is distinctly modern about the question of what to do with difficult pasts.

scholarly journals Lustration in Europe and Serbia: The motivation for passing the laws on lustration and their social functions

Sociologija ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-306
Author(s):  
Milan Cakic
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Justice ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Opening Section

The main topic of this article are the motives that led to the adoption of lustration laws in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Serbia, and their social functions. In the opening section, lustration is placed in the wider framework of dealing with the past and two possible approaches to the phenomenon are discussed: to take it as part of the broader process of decommunization, or a measure of transitional justice. In the next section an attempt at defining the concept of lustration is made, with a view to eliminating some ambiguities surrounding it. Subsequently, two partially complementary theoretical models explaining the occurrence, form and severity of dealing with the past and lustration are presented. After that comes the description of the socio-political context at the time of the adoption of lustration laws in the three countries and identification of political and ideological forces that have supported or challenged it. Finally, the article attempts to answer the question whether lustration is a legitimate measure of settling historical justice, overcoming the legacies of socialism, a way to strengthen liberal democracy, or merely a tool in political struggles for power.

‘We have long memories in this area’: Ulster Defence Regiment place-memory along the Irish border

2020 ◽  
pp. 175069802092145
Author(s):  
Joseph S Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Political Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
Place Memory ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Time Away

A large body of literature assumes post-conflict societies can and should mediate public memory towards frames conducive to a reconciled future. However, this article argues that such a drive marginalises survivors of political violence who narrate the past as still-present wounds. The linear temporality of transitional justice presumes an idealised trajectory through time, away from violence and towards reconciliation. However, this idealised temporality renders anachronistic survivors who depend on the prolongation of traumatic pasts for the possibility of political change. Using the case of former Ulster Defence Regiment in Northern Ireland, this article examines this prolongation through the lens of Ulster Defence Regiment survivors’ resistant place-memory along the Southwest run of the Irish border. Through the performative retemporalisation of everyday places and landscapes, survivors demand that their resistant memories and narrative frames of past violence still belong and still have active political resonance in transitional political space.

scholarly journals Presenting unwieldy pasts

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-252
Author(s):  
Katherine Hite ◽  
Daniela Jara
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Late Phase ◽  
The Political ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
The Rich

In the rich and varied work of memory studies, scholars have turned to exploring the meanings that different communities assign to the past, the social mediations of memories, as well as how the memories of subaltern subjects re-signify the relationship between history and memory. This special issue explores the ever present dynamics of unwieldy pasts through what have been termed “the spectral turn” and “the forensic turn.” We argue that specters (which appear in the literature as ghosts, or as haunting) and exhumations defy notions of temporality or resolution. Both trace the social dynamics that redefine the meanings of the past and that voice suffering, expose institutions’ limits, reveal disputes, explore affect and privilege political resistance. They draw from significant intellectual traditions across disciplinary and thematic boundaries in the natural and social sciences, the humanities, art and fiction. Their intellectual subjects range from work that explores the political struggles of confronting slavery and the possibility of reparations in the Americas long after it was formally abolished, to sensitive treatments of graves of Franco’s Spain. We suggest that both the spectral turn and the forensic turn have provided lenses to conceptualize the social life of unwieldy pasts, by exploring its dynamics, practices, and the cultural transmissions. They have also offered a language to communities that mobilize the political strength of resentment, deepened by the late phase of global capitalism and its consequent, deepening inequalities.

Yahweh and His Clio: Critical Theory and the Historical Criticism of the Hebrew Bible

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. D. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Social World ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

Discussion about the reconstruction of the history of ancient Israel seldom interacts with theoretical literature on the nature of history. Modern attempts to write Israel’s history, however, have been shaped by their theoretical underpinnings for the past two centuries. This essay explores the epistemological underpinnings of the historical criticism of the Hebrew Bible, outlines trends in historiographical theory, and assesses the impact newer theories of intellectual cultural history can have on studies of the history of the social world of ancient Israel.

Restoring a just order in post-conflict situations in the light of the social teachings of the Catholic Church

1998 ◽  
Vol 38 (322) ◽  
pp. 75-80
Author(s):  
Giorgio Filibeck
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Political Factor ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Political Will ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Teachings ◽  
Realistic Goal

We should start by noting that, even today, not all post-conflict situations are marked by a return to true peace. A situation of latent conflict often persists, ranging from isolated hostile acts, sometimes terrorist in nature, to sporadic military operations which maintain a climate of aggressivity. In such situations, it may be hard to ensure the security conditions which are so vital to the proper functioning of justice. Effective justice is thus conditioned by an essentially political factor: without a real consensus on ending armed conflict, it is impossible to restore an order in which justice can be seen as a realistic goal. However, if there is no political will to punish those responsible for behaviour that is morally unacceptable, quite apart from being legally criminal, it will be impossible to pave the way for authentic peace.

scholarly journals 17. Criminology and transitional justice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kieran McEvoy ◽  
Ron Dudai ◽  
Cheryl Lawther
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Restorative Justice ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the intersection between criminology and transitional justice. The chapter begins with a critical discussion on the utility of criminological scholarship from settled democracies to the exceptional circumstances of post-conflict or post-authoritarian societies. It then explores a range of debates related to the punishment of offenders in such contexts including the role of prosecutions, amnesties, the reintegration of former combatants, and the role of restorative justice. The chapter next considers the social and political construction of victimhood in transitional contexts including competing notions of the ‘idealized’ victim. The relationship between transitional justice and social control is then examined including the importance of countering denial, the relationship between deviance and memory and the particular contribution of efforts ‘from below’ to counter elites-level narratives on past abuses. The chapter concludes that a criminology of transitional justice provides the basis for revisiting some of the foundational questions on responding to crime and justice in the most challenging of settings—a sobering but intellectually rich research agenda for years to come.

scholarly journals Medijska konstrukcija kolektivnih sjećanja: Tretman prošlosti u polju novinarstva, s osvrtom na postdejtonsku Bosnu i Hercegovinu

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2 2013) ◽  
pp. 39-65
Author(s):  
Mirza Mahmutović
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Media

In this work we critically consider the practice of treating history in the area of journalism respectively media as an distinctive institutional arena of contemporary communities for establishment, maintenance and transformation of common frameworks of understanding and commemorating of certain episodes from the past. We intent to offer plausible explanations regarding the relations between ''culture of remembrances'' and ''culture of reporting''. Article suggests how to approach the often misunderstood history in informative activitiy, which in its field of action and by definition does not have the dimension of history but the dimension of social situation of contemporariness. We also form the key operations and strategies used in shaping the repertoire of journalistic reports on the past. Described practices we study on the example of post-Dayton BiH, analysing media treatment of conflict areas during the recent war history. Legitimisation of ethnic-national visions of the past through the discourse of reporting has been recognised as the dominant way of working in the ''media memory filed''. Two key paradoxes of these practices are highlighted: coexistence of opposite discourses of commemoration and codification of abjection experiences by the same group of significations which have initially inducted the war traumas. We point out at least two conditions which facilitate these paradoxes: ambiguity of the past, concpetion of time which is assumed by post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina as an inherently uncompleted/imperfect country and technologies of culturised steering of trauma, which is being used by regimes of therapeutic/transitional justice'' to cope with disturbing history in post-conflict communities.

scholarly journals NATIONALISM, NATION AWARENESS AND PAST IMAGINATION (A REFLECTIONS OF 65 YEAR HISTORY OF INDEPENDENT INDONESIA)

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Anzar Abdulah
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Birth Process ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dynamic Form ◽  
History Of ◽  
Younger Generation ◽  
The Relationship

Allegations are often made ahead of the Proclamation of Independence of Indonesia, among others, is increasingly fading spirit of nationalism among the younger generation. Allegations are not necessarily true, but it has created a stigma in society. It needs to be clarified by outlining the background of the birth of nationalism and nationalism contextualization in conjunction with modern Indonesian society today. Nationalism is a long process of the dialectic between space, time and social groups, as well as the political process. Although there are its relation with the "birth", nationalism has always been the "birth process". Nationalism is a modern phenomenon, a notion of nationhood was born out of the equation the fate and suffering as a result of colonization, thus was born the solidarity for the nation rise up and liberate themselves from colonialism to freedom and independence. When the standards of nationalism were patriotism and physical struggle, like war of independence first, certainly has a point, that the nationalism awareness of youth today is fading. However, it should be explained that now no longer possible to perform a physical struggle full of heroism like the past, but we now need is the social solidarity that can strengthen the social bonds of nationhood and Indonesianness in charge of this independence nature. This is what needs to be grown and developed because these values are now beginning to fade among the younger generation, the community and the nation's elite. Nationalism is not something static, but full of dynamics. Every era has different conditions and challenges, thus requiring a dynamic form of nationalism. This paper aims to analyze the relationship between nationalism, nation awareness, and the memories of the past as a reflection of history after 65 years of Indonesia Independent. Also as re-introspection ourselves as a nation, how far nationalism that has made us stronger in strengthening of Indonesianness nodes.

Rule of Law, Security, and Transitional Justice in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Societies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Mihr ◽  
Chandra Sriram Lekha
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Security Sector ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
The Many

States are expected to provide both security and justice for their citizens; one needs the other in order to work well. Yet when both are damaged or destroyed by war, state actors and outsiders alike tend to treat them as competing post-conflict priorities. Over the past twenty years, numerous processes have emerged to promote one or both, including “transitional justice”—from courts and truth commissions to community reconciliation—and programs to restore rule of law, reform the “security sector” (SSR) and disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate fighters into society (DDR). The many actors involved have just as many, sometimes competing, operational priorities, knowing that change is urgent, but necessarily long-term. This chapter examines the interaction of transitional justice, rule of law, SSR, and DDR, identifying key concepts, actors, processes, and challenges in pursuing change in each of these areas simultaneously.

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