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Discourse, normative change and the quest for reconciliation in global politics

Online ISBN:
9781781705872
Print ISBN:
9780719088025
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Book

Discourse, normative change and the quest for reconciliation in global politics

Published online:
26 September 2013
Published in print:
1 March 2013
Online ISBN:
9781781705872
Print ISBN:
9780719088025
Publisher:
Manchester University Press

Abstract

This book offers a new and critical perspective on the global reconciliation technology by highlighting its contingent and highly political character as an authoritative practice of post-conflict peacebuilding. After retracing the emergence of the reconciliation discourse from South Africa to the global level, the book demonstrates how implementing reconciliation in post-conflict societies is a highly political practice which entails potentially undesirable consequences for the post-conflict societies to which it is deployed. Inquiring into the example of Sierra Leone, the book shows how the reconciliation discourse brings about the marginalization and neutralization of political claims and identities of local populations by producing these societies as being composed of the ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ of past human rights violations which are first and foremost in need of reconciliation and healing.

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