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Recent military interventions in Rwanda, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, amongst others, have placed conflict again at the forefront of international debate. Yet the theoretical analysis of conflicts and of their social and psychological impacts has predictably lagged behind such tumultuous events. Moreover, while scholarship in the areas of strategic studies, international relations and peace studies has addressed the issues in terms of "conflict resolution" and "post-conflict reconstruction", little or no attention has been given to crucial interrelations between conflict and culture. Bringing together international experts from disciplines as diverse as Political Sci...
This book investigates the power of art to enhance human development and to initiate positive social change for individuals and societies recovering from conflict. Interventions aimed at reinforcing social justice and bringing communities together after conflict are often accused of being top-down, or failing to consider all groups and contexts within a society. The use of participatory arts can help to address these challenges by fostering community engagement, social cohesion, influencing public policy, and ultimately, advancing social justice. Arts-based methods can be particularly effective at reaching youth communities, providing voice and political agency to young people who are often ...
This book brings together a variety of perspectives to explore the role of literature in the aftermath of political conflict, studying the ways in which writers approach violent conflict and the equally important subject of peace. Essays put insights from Peace and Conflict Studies into dialog with the unique ways in which literature attempts to understand the past, and to reimagine both the present and the future, exploring concepts like truth and reconciliation, post-traumatic memory, historical reckoning, therapeutic storytelling, transitional justice, archival memory, and questions about victimhood and reparation. Drawing on a range of literary texts and addressing a variety of post-conf...
The contemporary conflict scenarios are beyond the reach of standardized approaches to conflict resolution. Given the curious datum that culture is implicated in nearly every conflict in the world, culture can also be an important aspect of efforts to transform destructive conflicts into more constructive social processes. Yet, what culture is and how culture matters in conflict scenarios is contested and regrettably unexplored. The Handbook of Research on the Impact of Culture in Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding is a critical publication that examines cultural differences in conflict resolution based on various aspects of culture such as morals, traditions, and laws. Highlighting a wide range of topics such as criminal justice, politics, and technological development, this book is essential for educators, social scientists, sociologists, political leaders, government officials, academicians, conflict resolution practitioners, world peace organizations, researchers, and students.
Angkor, Cambodia’s only World Heritage Site, is enduring one of the most crucial, turbulent periods in its twelve hundred year history. Given Cambodia’s need to restore its shattered social and physical infrastructures after decades of violent conflict, and with tourism to Angkor increasing by a staggering 10,000 per cent in just over a decade, the site has become an intense focal point of competing agendas. Angkor’s immense historical importance, along with its global prestige, has led to an unprecedented influx of aid, with over twenty countries together donating millions of dollars for conservation and research. For the Royal Government however, Angkor has become a ‘cash-cow’ of...
"Post-conflict cultures are defined by the different ways (practices, texts, behaviours, rituals) in which they re-write, re-constitute, and work through their contrasting, abused, competing memories and traumas. Bringing together academic experts and leading practititioners from avariety of cultural, literary and sociological disciplines, The genres of post-conflict testimonies investigates how cultures are influenced and transformed after conflict by looking at testimony as a particular practice of representation. The book examines the many genres of testimonies which have not only been used, but also created and re-created, when the urgent need is to bear witness to violence."--Back cover.
The human cost in any conflict is of course the first care in terms of the reduction, if not the elimination of damage. However, the destruction of archaeology and heritage as a consequence of civil and international wars is also of major concern, and the irreversible loss of monuments and sites through conflict has been increasingly discussed and documented in recent years. Post-Conflict Archaeology and Cultural Heritage draws together a series of papers from archaeological and heritage professionals seeking positive, pragmatic and practical ways to deal with conflict-damaged sites. For instance, by showing that conflict-damaged cultural heritage and archaeological sites are a valuable reso...
At a time of dramatic struggles over monuments around the world, this book examines monuments that have been erected in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) since 1996. Examining the historical precedents for the high rate of monumentbuilding, and its links to ongoing political instability and national animosity, this book identifies the culture of remembrance in BiH as symptomatic of a broader shift: a monumentalisation and privatisation of history. It provides an argument for how to account for the politics of contemporary nation-state formation, control of space, trauma and revisions of history in a region that has been subject to prolonged instability and crisis. This book will be of interest to scholars in contemporary art, museum studies, war and conflict studies, and European studies.
Ireland and the Balkans have come to represent divided and (re)united communities. They both provide effective microcosms of national, ethnic, political, military, religious, ideological and cultural conflicts in their respective regions and, as a result, they demonstrate real and imaginary divisions. This book will specifically focus on the history, politics and literature of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, while making comparative reference to some of Europe’s other disputed and divided regions. Using case-studies such as Kosovo and Serbia; Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Russia and Belarus; Greece and Macedonia, it examines ‘space’, ‘place’ and ‘border’ discourse, the topography of war and violence, post-war settlement and reconciliation, and the location and negotiation of national, ethnic, religious, political and cultural identities. The book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of cultural studies, history, politics, Irish studies, Slavonic studies, area studies and literary studies.
The concept of social transformation has been increasingly used to study significant political, socio-economic and cultural changes affected by individuals and groups. This book uses a novel approach from the gender perspective and from bottom up to analyse social transformation in Nepal, a country with a complex traditional structure of caste, class, ethnicity, religion and regional locality and the experience of the ten-year of People’s War (1996-2006). Through extensive interviews with women in post-conflict Nepal, this book analyses the intended and unintended impacts of conflict and traces the transformations in women’s understandings of themselves and their positions in public life...