Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence

The rise of collective violence and genocide is the twentieth century's most terrible legacy. Writing with informed, searching prose of the extraordinary drama of the truth commissions in Argentina, East Germany, and most notably South Africa; war-crime prosecutions in Nuremberg and Bosnia; and reparations in America, Minow looks at the strategies and results of these riveting national experiments in justice and healing.

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Costs of Intractable Conflict

The twentieth century was the deadliest in all of human history. With eight million Jews murdered and one million Rwandans, it was named "the age of genocide." However, human casualties merely scratch the surface of the true cost of conflict. This essay discusses the human, economic, social, and political costs of intractable conflict.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Damaged or Destroyed Relationships

People on opposite sides of a long-running conflict tend to distrust or even hate each other. This takes an emotional toll on both parties and prevents them from working together in the future.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror

"Death squad is the first work to focus specifically on the anthropology of state terror. It brings together an international group of anthropologists who have done extensive research in areas marked by extreme forms of state violence and who have studied state terror from the perspective of victims and survivors." -- from Website

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Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?

"The purpose of this book is to reveal the difference between history and pseudohistory by using Holocaust denial as a classic case study in how the past may be revised for present political and ideological purposes." -- from Website

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Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration of Ex-Combatants

Disarming and demobilizing military forces (especially militias) and successfully reintegrating the former warriors into a peaceful society is one of the major challenges of a post-violence or "post-conflict" peacebuilding stage of a violent conflict.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Humiliation

Humiliation is reducing to lowliness or submission. It is theorized to be a major cause of violent and intractable conflicts. The humiliation of the German people after World War I, for example, is frequently seen as a cause of World War II.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Land and Property Rights in the Peace Process

Land and property rights disputes can be very difficult to resolve, especially in transitional societies where land ownership is murky. Often two (or more people) say they own a particular piece of land, and all the evidence of ownership has been destroyed. Systems must be established to resolve competing claims that are seen to be fair and effective.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Liberia on the Brink...of Peace

"Liberia, for all of its progress, remains largely defined by the civil war that ravaged it for 14 years. This small West African country of 3.5 million people, after all, was once infamous for child soldiers, blood diamonds, and Charles Taylor -- the country's former president now on trial for crimes against humanity in neighboring Sierra Leone." -- from Website

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Linguistic Genocide in Education, or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights?

In this powerful, multidisciplinary book, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas shows how most indigenous and minority education contributes to linguistic genocide according to United Nations definitions. Theory is combined with a wealth of factual encyclopedic information and with many examples and vignettes. The examples come from all parts of the world and try to avoid Eurocentrism. Oriented toward theory and practice, facts and evaluations, and reflection and action, the book prompts readers to find information about the world and their local contexts, to reflect and to act.

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Lustration

The term "lustration" derives from the Latin for "purification." In this essay, it refers to a means by which some countries deal with a legacy of human rights abuses.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Narratives and Story-Telling

Stories have been vital to all cultures throughout history. Recently, they have been purposefully employed as tools to promote empathy between adversaries and to help people heal from past trauma.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Nation Building

The general public sees nation-building programs as those in which dysfunctional or "failed states" are given assistance. This essay looks at the history of nation building and how it has been interpreted differently over the years.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Refugees

Conflict can cause people to flee an area, either because of intolerable living conditions or forceful expulsion. Such situations can lead to more conflict when refugees try to return home.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Social Psychological Dimensions of Conflict

These dimensions include emotions (fear, distrust, hostility) as well as processes such as framing, stereotyping, and scapegoating. These factors significantly influence the way a conflict is perceived and responded to.

Beyond Intractability Essay

The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79

In this riveting book, the first definitive account of the Khmer Rouge revolution, a world renowned authority on Cambodia shows how an ideological preoccupation with racist and totalitarian policies led a group of intellectuals to impose genocide on their own country. This edition includes a new preface recounting the fatal disintegration of the Khmer Rouge army, the death of Pol Pot, the United Nations' foray into the struggle to bring his surviving accomplices to justice, and the damning new evidence they could face.

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The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

"We have made some real progress, which I will describe in this talk, in getting apparent consensus at the highest levels of government that there is something wrong with the view that it's no one's business but their own if states murder or forcibly displace large numbers of their own citizens, or allow atrocity crimes to be committed by one group against another on their soil. But when it comes to getting that understanding deeply embedded in the consciousness and practice of states everywhere, and -- it seems -- into the minds of even university professors everywhere, we still have some distance to go." -- from Website

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Trauma Healing

When conflict results in physical or psychological abuse, people can become traumatized. Trauma causes victims to continue to suffer, to be almost frozen in time.This essay details the effects of trauma and offer suggestions for healing.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Victimhood

In the early 1930s, millions of Ukranians died under Stalin's violent policy of forced collectivization. The depth of pain, fear, and hatred that continued to characterize the Ukrainian attitude toward Russians is typical of all victimized people. This essay examines the causes and consequences of a sense of victimhood.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Women and Intractable Conflict

Women tend to be victimized more and gain less from intractable conflict than do men. Thus, women may be in a particularly strong position to work for peace.

Beyond Intractability Essay