Research in Peace and Reconciliation Series

Asia, so often seen from a Eurocentric perspective as exotic, other and different, is now manifestly an economic and political powerhouse. Shaped by the West, it is now playing its part in shaping the West.The third volume in the RIPAR series on "Societies in Transition" turns its focus on reconciliation to Asia-Pacific. Case studies are drawn from New Zealand, Australia, Korea, Japan, Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and China, including comparative case studies from Central Asia, East Asia and Germany and the U.S.Contributions by Jude Lal Fernando, Leo D. Lefebure, Martin Leiner, Liu Liangjian, Seiko Mimaki. Ann-Sophie Schöpfel, Sentot Setyasiswanto, Christoph Sperfeldt, Deborah Stevens, Bo-Hyuk Suh, Priyambudi Sulistiyanto, Farrah Tek, Phillip Tolliday, Annette Weinke and Maung Maung Yin.

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezechiel 36:26). This biblical image, particularly significant for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, gives insight into the central issues of this book: how a greater readiness to reconcile can take place among individuals and groups who experience the "suffering of the other," even in the midst of a protracted conflict such as the Israeli-Palestinian one. This book offers a collection of essays written by the team members of a transdisciplinary DFG project between Jena University, Ben Gurion University, Tel Aviv University, and the Wasatia Academic Institute.

Since the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions have been faced with multiple upheavals of interethnic violence, bloody secessions and ethnic cleansing. Up to the present, both regions are confronted with unresolved border, minority and security issues, matters of recognition, protracted traumata and claims for justice. After the fall of the iron curtain, simmering ethnic tensions turned into hot wars that created new states, new power-political hierarchies and a heritage of violence. Reaching back to the early 1990s, several international and national transitional justice measures have been applied to face these heritages and lay the foundations for a common future. For the former Yugoslavia, they range from broad criminal trials to a series of restorative justice mechanisms; in the North and South Caucasus they encompass numerous mediation measures and primarily restorative justice efforts. The present volume is concerned with strategies of conflict resolution and prevention subsumed under the concept of reconciliation. It aims at understanding the socio-emotional root causes of political cleavages and daily realities of (post-) conflict societies, especially regarding the impact of competing narratives and unprocessed pasts on exclusive identities and strategic political choices. Applying reconciliation theory, insights from collective memory and transitional justice to a series of selected field studies, it sheds light on the origins of interethnic violence, aims at finding explanations for the fact that many of the above-mentioned conflicts have become intractable and discusses the chances and challenges for transforming interests, emotions, perspectives, roles and identities between and within the respective societies.

This volume examines the role of identity formation and stages of sequencing of the steps of reconciliation – which is an enduring rather than ad an ad hoc phenomenon. RIPAR 4 asks for both the challenges to it from the domestic and international systems and the actors involved, as well as for the role of »history,« »memory« and »remembrance« either as catalysts for or obstacles to reconciliation. The analyzing of the connection among the past, the present and the future in actual or prospective reconciliation embraces all these topics and questions.Influenced by the crisis in the former Sovjet Union following the March 2014 Russian annexation/integration of Crimea and the movement of Russian soldiers into Eastern Ukraine to aid Ukrainian separatists the essays in this volume were written in 2015. »Reconciliation« is a frequently ill-defined term. As an aspiration in this volume it encompasses three senses: an incipient, thin and minimal form amounting to passive, peaceful coexistence after enmity; a more elaborate, intermediate and engaged form that is captured by the term rapprochement; and a thick or fuller form denoting active friendship, empathy, trust, magnanimity and, ultimately, amity. Beyond the definitional goal, the volume addresses ten themes. Firstly, reconciliation is being questioned as a process and/ or a terminal condition. A view is made on the requirements for the transition from conflict to a reconciliatory process, and the obstacles to beginning a process of reconciliation. Its »soft« and »hard« expressions inter alia in emotional and political dimensions are also subject of the author's interest. The observations about conflict and cooperation offered in this volume wish to add significantly to the burgeoning literature of reconciliation. These essays demonstrate that we need a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives to grapple with conflict and to promote reconciliation.

In the last decades, many countries in Latin America underwent a transition from dictatorship to democracy. Truth commissions were an essential instrument of uncovering politically motivated crimes and serious human rights violations. However, in many cases truth came without justice, perpetrators were not held accountable, and the reparations policy was rather restrictive. The authors of this volume address the issue from a transdisciplinary perspective. On the one hand, they focus on a past that is shaped by fierce conflicts but also by attempts of fostering reconciliation in the middle of conflict. On the other hand, they address a reconciliation that still lies in the future and has to do with justice.Their first part offers a collection of case studies that approach the topics of reconciliation and conflict resolution during and in the aftermath of dictatorship and civil war from different perspectives and academic disciplines. Their second part is dedicated to experiences with reconciliation, conflict resolution and migration from a global and comparative perspective.Several contributors reflect the Hölderlin perspective of "reconciliation in the middle of dispute". Other contributions aim to deepen our theoretical understanding of reconciliation by exploring the diversity of interpretations of the concept itself and elaborating the specific benefit of reconciliatory approaches for a sustainable peace. Two authors offer an in-depth analysis of particular conflicts, and one article deals with the influence of religion and culture on the social role of Brazilian migrants in Japan.

The second volume of the trans-disciplinary series "Research in Peace and Reconciliation" looks at ways of dealing with the past in Sub-Saharan Africa in recent decades and highlights the variety of peaceful strategies and processes. It asks to what extent this variety fosters the development of alternative methods for the transformation of violent conflict.The contributions focus on different African countries and regions as Chad, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. They take into account the influence of particular cultural contexts on processes of reconciliation. In doing so, they emphasize the importance of religions, rites, and tribal customs as well as the complex legacy of colonialism. They also look at the presentation of the topic in Western media.Many thanks go to the Ernst-Abbe-Foundation (Jena) for its generous support of the publication.