Post-conflict Societies Research Articles

Collective violence and construction of peace culture in the Basque Country: two experiences of memory, recognition and forgiveness

Post-conflict societies must confront the past and build a culture of peace. Two interventions are presented here in the context of the Basque Country after the cessation of violence. The first, an intervention with the participation of victims of terrorism, where participants (N = 280 Mage = 19.83 SD = 1.29) were assigned to intervention and control groups. Results showed that participation in the programme produced more favourable attitudes towards intergroup forgiveness, intergroup empathy, and the mediating effect of self-transcending emotions. Second, the Citizenship Processes programme of memory and recognition (N = 31 Mage = 19.48 SD = 3.91). Results showed an increase in forgiveness, intergroup empathy and a change in outgroup emotions from before to after the intervention. The impact of both programmes was medium-high and the relevance of combining narratives that avoid competitive victimisation and promote peaceful intergroup attitudes is discussed.
 Received: 14 September 2021Accepted: 22 November 2021

Collective violence and the culture of peace: researching the social psychology of memory and social reconciliation

This monograph aims to disseminate the results of various research studies carried out in the field of social and community psychology. The studies focus on efforts to build a culture of peace in post-conflict contexts and societies that have suffered collective and socio-political violence, with multiple and persistent human rights violations. Six studies on the psychosocial effects of transitional justice rituals from Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Basque country, Chile, and Ecuador compose this issue. This issue presents a series of results regarding the effects of reparation rituals and Truth Commissions, combining different methods and analysis strategies, including general population surveys, newspaper and social media content analysis, community intervention assessments and qualitative documentary analysis. Finally, two review books were included. First, a Peace Psychology Book that explores the implications and difficulties faced by societies that have experienced large-scale collective violence. Second, the problem of human rights violations and how to confront them, socio-political conflicts and the building of a culture of democracy and peace in Latin America are transversal axes of the chapters of this second book.

The Purposes of History Education in the Context of “Flourishing Life”, “Powerful Knowledge” and Political Reconciliation

Stretching beyond its theoretical field, the debates about the purposes of history education are of great importance to curriculum writers and classroom practitioners. The content selection from a broad field of history is connected to what educators deem an overarching purpose of education. With this in mind, this paper aims to examine the purposes of teaching history against the background of the two general theories of education, namely – the theories of a flourishing life and powerful knowledge. While the theory of a flourishing life encourages the development of personal autonomy, allowing individuals to make successful choices, the theory of powerful knowledge examines the importance of traditional academic knowledge for individual success. The paper will also use the context of post-conflict societies, to reflect on the question of possible purposes of history education.

Notes from Belgrade: Social Anthropology for Archaeology Students in a Post-Conflict Society

Social anthropology courses, some elective and some mandatory, for archaeology students at the Department of Archaeology, University of Belgrade, commenced only after 2003. Since Serbian society opened itself from its isolation, the key challenge has been to teach new generations who have grown up during the civil wars in Former Yugoslavia to recognize broader perspectives on human cultures, universalities, and differences. Anthropology has been consequently utilized as a prominent tool for cultural relativism, multiculturalism, ‘Otherness’, and reflexive thinking. However much these facets have all proved necessary, they seem to have fallen to the wayside in ‘post-truth’ world. It has therefore become unclear in teaching how to address the phenomenon. This paper aims to critically discuss anachronous traditions in social and physical anthropology in combination with new challenges of the biologisation of social identities in archaeology and social anthropology.

Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping as a Transformative Justice Concept: Civilian Protection and Everyday Justice in the Bangsamoro

This article explores the prospect of theorizing unarmed civilian peacekeeping as a transformative justice concept. Utilizing the principles of transformative justice theory as a framework of analysis, it finds that unarmed civilian peacekeeping produces an environment of everyday justice, thereby contributing to transformative peacebuilding. Crucial to this proposed concept of everyday justice is the ability of an unarmed civilian peacekeeping approach to form a link between the elite-level negotiating panels in a peace process and the grassroots constituency in a postconflict society. The case of voluntary and mandated nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in the Bangsamoro peace process in Mindanao is used to corroborate these conceptual suggestions.

Building sustainable peace through environmental cooperation in the island of Ireland: modelling transboundary conservation

ABSTRACT As Brexit becomes reality, concerns are growing over environmental degradation due to differences in environmental policies on both sides of the border. At the same time, post-conflict peace occupied by neoliberal ideas remains fragile. However, there is no research that explores the nexus between environmental cooperation and peacebuilding in the Irish context. To narrow this loophole, first, this essay engages with the theory of environmental peacebuilding and sheds light on the role of environmental cooperation as an instrument for peacebuilding in post-conflict societies. Then, it proposes three models for environmental peacebuilding that likely fit in the Irish context. While not singling out one most feasible model, the paper concludes that the island of Ireland already has institutional arrangements and resources to implement any of the proposed models. Building a sustainable peace requires an approach to not only facilitate good relationships between divided human communities, but also resolve the human-nature conflict.

Ethnic Bias after Ethnic Conflict: Preferential Voting and the Serb Minority in Croatian Elections

ABSTRACT In spite of growing interest in democratization and electoral competition after ethnic conflict, we know little about the impact of ethnic violence on voter choice in post-conflict societies. This article uses an original dataset of local-level electoral results, communities’ exposure to war violence, and candidates’ ethnicity derived from names in contemporary Croatia to uncover the relationship between local post-conflict ethnic distribution, ethnic violence, and the electorate's ethnic bias. Our analysis points to the presence of ethnic bias that is determined by local interethnic balance and exposure to war violence – particularly for communities populated by the Serb minority.

Sites of violence and their communities: critical memory studies in the post-human era

“Sites of Violence and their Communities” presents the results of a research project that brought together scholars and practitioners of memory work in an attempt to critically reinterpret the links between sites, their (human, and non-human) users, and memory. These interdisciplinary discussions focused on overlooked, repressed or ignored sites of violence that may benefit from new approaches to memory studies, approaches that go beyond the traditional focus on communication, symbolism, representation and communality. Clandestine or contested sites, in particular, pose challenging questions about memory practices and policies: about the status of unacknowledged victims and those who witnessed their deaths; about those who have inherited the position of “bystander”; about the ontology of human remains; and about the ontologies of the sites themselves, with the natural and communal environments implicated in their perdurance. Claude Lanzmann – one of the first to undertake rigorous research on abandoned, uncommemorated or clandestine sites of violence – responded to Pierre Nora’s seminal conception with his work and with the critical notion of “non-lieux de mémoire.” Methodologies emerging from more traditional as well as recently introduced perspectives (like forensic, ecological, and material ones) allowed team members to engage with such “non-sites of memory” from new angles. The goal was to consider the needs and interests of post-conflict societies; to identify and critically read unofficial transmissions of memory; and to re-locate memory in new contexts – in the grassroots of social, political and institutional processes where the human, post-human and natural merge with unanticipated mnemonic dynamics.

Natural resource sector reform and human security in post-conflict societies: Insights from diamond mining in Sierra Leone

State- and peacebuilding strategies increasingly feature reforms of natural resource governance that strive to ensure that the management of natural resources is legal, transparent and beneficial for lasting peace and development. In the past, legal and institutional reforms were mostly oriented towards the state level and rarely took into account the impacts of natural resource governance on the wellbeing of individuals and communities affected by natural resource extraction. More recently, the importance of positive outcomes for local communities in extractive areas is gaining traction among governance actors. This article proposes a human security lens to analyze the effects of reform initiatives. A human security approach enables researchers and policymakers to be sensitive to the intended and unintended consequences of governance measures and their impact on vulnerable populations. Based on in-depth field research, this article examines the human security implications of five types of reform measures in post-conflict Sierra Leone’s diamond sector, both in large-scale and artisanal diamond mining. The authors conclude that the reform measures have, so far, not substantially improved the human security of artisanal mineworkers or local communities.

Books Received

A. Aseeva, From Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Social Liability: A Socio-Legal Study of Corporate Liability in Global Value Chains (Hart Publishing, 2021)N. Bhuta, et. al. (eds), The Struggle for Human Rights: Essays in honour of Philip Alston (Oxford University Press, 2021)B. Cali, L. OBianku and I. Motoc, Migration and the European Convention on Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2021)U. Capdepón and R.F. Layús, The Impact of Human Rights Prosecutions: Insights from European, Latin American, and African Post-Conflict Societies (Leuven University Press, 2020)S. Casey-Maslen, The Right to

Kosovo Specialist Chambers Jurisdiction and the International Criminal Court

Abstract The establishment of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers as a local war crimes court is coming as a challenge to the overall authority and jurisdiction claimed by the International Criminal Court. These two courts are at the same time divided and connected in so many aspects. Kosovo war crimes have been dealt in the past by icty, unmik, eulex courts and now a specially made ksc. The ksc as being a local court is still practically having above it the icty and the Mechanism which inherited the icty but also the possible application of the icc. We will compare the ksc to other courts having local jurisdiction in Kosovo with an aim to understand if the ksc is an exception or a rule from now on in certain post-conflict societies. The exclusion of the icc from adjudicating in Kosovo is a challenge and potential solution to other post-conflict societies, and they can apply its various forms and practices and overall ignore the icc in the future. Although icc is the only international criminal court it is not the only specialised court dealing with war crimes now. The ksc and icc overall struggle for jurisdiction have been also shadowed by the global political struggle for primacy, leaving these and many other local and international institutions without a real power, functioning in a framework of and for various political aims. The special characteristics and mandate ksc has makes it worth researching in order to better understand the icc and the overall understanding of International War Crimes courts/Tribunal worldwide today and in the future.

The nexus between post conflict societies and their capacity to respond to the ebola epidemic in Mano River Union

The Ebola crisis in the Mano River States and inadequate state responses to the outbreak heightened the challenges post conflict societies face during emergencies. There have been enough literature discussing the issues of Ebola especially in the Mano River Union; however, there is little discussion on the capacity of the Mano River Union to respond to the Ebola epidemic. Against this background, the study sought to investigate the nexus between post conflict societies and their capacity to respond to the Ebola epidemic in the Mano River Union. A non-empirical qualitative case study approach involving extensive review of secondary data in the form of books, journals, internet sites and conference papers was adopted. The results showed that all the countries in the sub-region were unprepared for the outbreak. Even though some countries had disaster management divisions, none had any disaster management plans in place hence the Ebola Virus Disease and its subsequent crisis could not have been anticipated. Following the findings, a strong case has been made for countries in the sub-region to have disaster management plans and other early warning and resilient systems in place in place to reduce the scale of the outbreak and the high number of deaths.

Crime After Conflict

Overwhelming statistical evidence shows a correlation between conflict and crime rates, both at a structural and individual level. This is assumed by many to mean that conflict is responsible for rises in crime. This article describes an alternative approach: that conflict is conducive to organised criminality, but does not necessarily cause it. By demonstrating examples from post-conflict societies, it is shown that the causal nexus of conflict and crime is actually security, development and governance. This effect is particularly pronounced where violent crime is concerned, but the inconsistent and often contextual nature of such crime renders any attempt to draw conclusions difficult. By framing peacebuilding efforts around conflict, and prioritising the neoliberal democratic model of the Global North as a cure to security and development shortcomings, crime is actually further enabled as the symptoms of criminality are not addressed. By returning the focus to security, development and governance, critical discussion may be able to cut through the noise and provide practical solutions to the crime epidemics characteristic of post-conflict environments.

Hot interpretations of difficult heritage: the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre in China

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the construction of national heritage through the interpretation of sites and events, with a particular focus on hot interpretation at difficult heritage sites. Design/methodology/approachThis paper examines the processes of difficult heritage interpretation at the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre over the past 30 years, and examines the resulting political implications.FindingsAligning with contemporary national social and political agendas, heritage interpretation at the Memorial Hall actively serves as an authorised educational tool. Despite the hot interpretation techniques used to stimulate the emotional impact of visitor experiences, this particular traumatic past has been utilised in nation building practices that legitimise specific histories and form a national image on an international stage.Research limitations/implicationsHeritage interpretation of difficult history will benefit from open dialogue and assessment of the past from multiple perspectives. This requires all stakeholders to work together to develop interpretation strategies that acknowledge and prioritise the needs of post-conflict societies. Without this form of open dialogue and reflection, the official claims of heritage interpretation achieving reconciliation between conflicted peoples remain superficial. Originality/valueThis study offers a novel contribution to the discussion of heritage interpretation. The results shed light on the cultural processes surrounding state interpretation of traumatic pasts for specific political uses. The study suggests ways in which heritage sectors and authorities can achieve social goals, such as public education, reconciliation and peacebuilding, through such processes of heritage interpretation.

Transformation – Overcoming the Limits of Liberal Peace and Transitional Justice in Deeply Divided Societies: Reconciliation in Liberal Peace Theory

This article explores the tension between the theoretical conceptualisations of liberal peace, transitional justice and reconciliation by focusing on power sharing as a liberal peace institution-building mechanism. Power sharing is based on the premise that identities in conflict in deeply divided societies are difficult, if not impossible, to change. The article outlines the limitations of liberal peace by demonstrating how the implementation of power-sharing arrangements creates a political reality in which conflict patterns are further entrenched, thus hindering the prospects of conflict transformation. In order to address the limitations of liberal peace, the article draws on models of transformative justice to highlight the growing need for a new conceptualisation of reconciliation as a political and transformative concept, in which both justice and reconciliation are recognised as intrinsic goals for post-conflict societies. Thus, the re-establishment of political structures and institutional reforms is envisaged not only as a tool to promote political stability, but as a means of facilitating transformation in conflict patterns in the political and social spheres.

Political mobilization and its impact on voter turnout: A survey experiment in Iraq

This article clarifies how political mobilization affects voter turnout in a post-conflict society by analyzing the Iraqi case using survey data. Voter turnout was high in post-war Iraq. However, the voter turnout in the fourth election, held in May 2018, declined by 20 percentage points from the previous one in 2014, mainly because of widespread political distrust due to corruption among political elites and their embezzlement of public funds, neglect of the people, and the breakdown of social services after the intensive operation against the so-called Islamic State (IS). Political mobilization during electoral campaigns usually encourages voters to go to polling stations. Notwithstanding, amid widespread political distrust in a post-conflict society, how does political mobilization affect voters’ behavior in elections? To answer this research question, we conducted a survey experiment during the 2018 electoral campaign to scrutinize the effects of political mobilization on voters in Iraq. Through quantitative analysis of the survey data, we demonstrated that voters are more likely to refrain from visiting polling stations if they are mobilized by political parties during a campaign. Thus, political mobilization discourages voters from participating in elections when there is extensive political distrust.

Unequal access to redress for women ex-combatants in Zimbabwe: an intersectional analysis

ABSTRACT Women played a range of complex roles during the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe between 1961 and 1980. However, although the Zimbabwean post-independence government made attempts to promote gender equity following the liberation struggle, women ex-combatants continue to experience unequal access to redress compared to their male counterparts. Part of the reason for this is that they were not considered as a specific social group in post-independence policies. Discussions at Lancaster House in 1979 addressed redress for ex-combatants broadly but neglected to pay attention to women and their unique experiences in the struggle and in the post-independence context. In addition to this, it is not only gender, but also issues of social class and ethnicity that have shaped the political and socio-economic position of women ex-combatants in post-independence Zimbabwe. Using an intersectional lens, this article examines the experiences of Zimbabwean women ex-combatants, taking into consideration their class, sexuality, gender and ethnicity. It argues that gender on its own is inadequate to account for unequal access to redress. Rather, other social categories such as, but not limited to, social class and ethnicity should be investigated in order to understand the struggles faced by women ex-combatants in post-conflict societies in order for all to have equal access to justice and redress.

Grand challenges in developing countries: Context, relationships, and logics

Grand challenges in developing countries: Context, relationships, and logics

IMPACT OF INTEGRATION OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN LOST ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE VISUALIZATION IN POST-CONFLICT SOCIETIES

Abstract. Technological developments in architectural visualization and advancements in digital applications that uses Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) platforms allows integration of digital technologies in heritage visualization more than ever before. Particular advantage of the integration of these digital technologies could be seen in the lost architectural and urban heritage visualization. Since these buildings or historic towns do not exist or simply altered in a way that the historical aspects of these heritage places could not be captured anymore, these digital technologies generates a valuable platform in order to experience these non-existing buildings as they were many years ago.One of the major objectives of this research was to assess the contribution of recapturing lost architectural heritage for cross cultural understanding, place-identity and heritage relationship. In order to assess this research question, participants were selected as population exchange descendants of 1923, that took place between Turkey and Greece. As one of the primary port of deportation and as major cultural and economic centres of early 1920s, Izmir and Thessaloniki provided valuable research area with their similar historical developments that resulted by the loss of many heritage buildings. Accordingly interviews, focus group studies and participant observation has been performed with conservation decision makers and population exchange descendants by using various digital models of lost historic buildings from Izmir and Thessaloniki. This allowed a comparative analysis of the impact of the use of digital technologies as part of heritage visualization of lost buildings.This paper aims to discuss the significance of using various digital technologies while visualizing lost architectural heritage in the particular case of post-conflict societies.

School partnerships in a post-conflict society: addressing challenges of collaboration and competition

In societies emerging from conflict, education plays an important part in instituting peace and reconciliation, and school leaders are key to this. This paper examines the complexity of school leadership in Northern Ireland. Despite the peace agreement of 1998, Northern Ireland’s communities are still deeply divided, and this is reflected in education. The school leaders who were interviewed as part of this research work within school partnerships as part of ‘shared education’ projects which involve schools working together and with twin aims of improving both educational and reconciliation outcomes for young people. The challenges that school leaders face when working in partnership in post-conflict societies have not been given the attention they deserve in the literature, so this work is significant in that it brings a focus on how school leaders can best be empowered to be agents of change, in turn empowering pupils. While the context is Northern Ireland, the outcomes from this study will be of wider interest and significance for school leaders facing similar challenges in other divided situations.