Memory and Justice

Identity politics are fraught. High school is a prime location where such politics play out and interface with state-dictated norms and values about acceptable social behavior. This article examines identity politics during the Trump era in two far Northern California high schools to better understand the impact on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students. I argue that while the Trump effect allowed hostility towards BIPOC people to be expressed more openly in general, schools can also be sites of resistance to culturecide—the killing of culture—that diminishes the role of minority ontologies and epistemologies in the formation of young people. Yurok and Spanish language courses serve as spaces of heritage language revitalization that challenge White supremacist ideologies embedded in curricula as well as wider US culture.

In a volume containing critical insights on teaching history in the wake of civil war and mass violence, this chapter explores connections between education, identity, and memory post-war Sierra Leone. It explains how, through education systems, past violence can inform nation-building as well as citizen formation in Sierra Leone and similar countries.

Full Spanish translation here.

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This article addresses the divergent cultures of silence and memorialization about the civil wars in Sierra Leone and El Salvador, and examines the role that sites of remembering and forgetting play in crafting post-war citizens. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in each country, the article documents how the culture of silence that pervades Sierra Leone enables a progress-driven ‘looking forward’ without teaching the past, while El Salvador is working on weaving a culture of memorialization into its democratization process.

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Summary: This article examines how citizens use memories of violence in dialogue with a democratizing Turkish state, and explores how memories of violence influence solidarity communities in addition to those who are direct descendants of survivors. In demonstrating the connection between memory and political participation, it identifies and explores in detail three discursive moments where Turkish and Armenian citizens invoke memory in dialogue with one other and with the state.

This article surveys conflict resolution in the Arab world, then turns to sulha, a Palestinian peacemaking process, for an in-depth analysis to distill lessons for Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. Discusses key features of the community-based practice of sulha that could be invoked at the international level: restoration of honor and dignity, reconciliation in the wider community, and public demarcation of the end of violence. The article argues that culture is crucial in fostering mutual understanding in conflict resolution, and that ensuring the basic human right to dignity should be an essential component of international third-party interventions.

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This article explores post-conflict reconstruction in Cambodia through an analysis of both the dangers of liberal peacebuilding and the positive role that capacity-building training plays in war-torn societies. The central question addressed is how insider–outsider dynamics influence Cambodia's post-conflict reconstruction projects, as well as how international workers and Cambodian NGO staff are affected by constructed assumptions of ‘the good life.’ The article offers an overview of Cambodia's history and cultural context to situate its analysis of liberal peace building and foreign donors, as well as the behavioral characteristics of international peace builders operating within Cambodia, and concludes with recommendations for improving future partnerships between insiders and outsiders in Cambodian peace-building projects.

The issues of conflict and peace are of immense relevance in the post-Cold War scenario, which has witnessed an unprecedented rise in violent conflicts locally, yet with global ramifications. Oftentimes the conflicts have been protracted with horrendous consequences. This volume looks at some of the conflicts in Africa and Asia and their political and humanitarian dimensions. The book explores the causes and changing contours of these conflicts with a focus on costs and consequences. By emphasizing on these twin aspects, it brings to the forefront the victimization of common peoples caught in conflict situations.

With a focus on the expectation of reconciliation from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, this article dives into the interrelationship between national reconciliation processes and grassroots peacebuilding in the form of conflict resolution trainings. Noting that retributive justice processes cannot take the place of restorative justice, genuine reconciliation in Cambodia will need to incorporate culturally-based ritual derived from Buddhism in order to be relevant to local people. The Khmer Institute of Democracy (KID), a Cambodian NGO, serves as a case study for the successes and obstacles to local peacebuilding initiatives.

Explores the role of cultural differences and disparities in power in western and indigenous mediation and cross-cultural conflict resolution processes, including analysis of mediation, culture, conflict, and power. Draws on fieldwork in Cambodia in looking at the dynamics of western and indigenous cultures in mediation trainings, where western epistemologies are prioritized.