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Common history projects can become one of the best vehicles through which to address issues of victimization and violence and create mutual understanding between societies formerly engaged in conflict. As such, developing a history curricula which looks at the processes of formation and re-definition of identity and trauma healing, can open new perspectives on the use of ideological constructs and historic discourses in the processes of peacebuilding and reconciliation.
This book aims to bridge the gap between what are generally referred to as ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches to peacebuilding.
After the experience of a physical and psychological trauma, the period of individual healing and recovery is intertwined with political and social reconciliation. The prospects for social and political reconciliation are undermined when a ‘top-down’ approach is favoured over the ‘bottom-up strategy’- the prioritization of structural stability over societal well-being.
Peacebuilding, Memory and Reconciliation explores the inextricable link between psychological recovery and socio-political reconciliation, and the political issues that dominate this relationship. Through an examination of the construction of social narratives about or for peace, the text offers a new perspective on peacebuilding, which challenges and questions the very nature of the dichotomy between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches.
This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, peace and conflict studies, social psychology, political science and IR in general
