International Journal of Conflict and Violence (IJCV - Universität Bielefeld)
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Bringing Justice and Enforcing Peace? An Ethnographic Perspective on the Impact of the Special Court for Sierra Leone
Full text linkThe Special Court for Sierra Leone was set up in 2002 to try those who bear the greatest responsibility for actrocities perpetrated during a decade-long civil war in the country. This would, according to Court officials and observers, bring justice to the victims of the war and contribute to peace. Based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in Sierra Leone between 2010 and 2012, this article challenges those assumptions by exploring the viewpoint of ordinary Sierra Leoneans. The impact of the Special Court on the lives of ordinary people is rather small, first and foremost because they have a different understanding of what justice constitutes and who is able to provide it. This resulted in low expectations of the Court from the beginning. Moreover, the relevance of transitional justice fades in the context of daily challenges and remaining injustices. While the Special Court is viewed more positively as contributing to the peace, transitional justice institutions should engage more critically with the local context they operate in
Economic Prosperity as “Narcissistic Filling”: A Missing Link Between Political Attitudes and Right-wing Authoritarianism
Full text linkAn expanded analysis of the origin of the correlation with economic deprivation found in the authors’ representative surveys of right-wing extremist attitudes (such as racism, anti-Semitism, and chauvinism), focusing on the underlying dynamics in Germany and the historical aspect of National Socialism. The growing prosperity of the West German “economic miracle” of the 1950s served a psychosocial “filling function” to block the narcissistic damage caused by confrontation with past crimes and the sense of the nation’s loss of greatness. As this prosperity vanishes for many people during the current economic crisis, the filling comes out and the narcissistic wound opens up. What emerges is both what lies underneath and what has been serving as a defense against it, which involve authoritarian dynamics. Initially, the metaphor of “narcissistic filling” will be developed through our analysis of group discussions conducted as part of our qualitative study (of 2008). The developed hypotheses will thereafter be introduced to our following representative survey (of 2010) and confirmed by means of quantitative methods
Contesting International Norms of Transitional Justice: The Case of Timor Leste
Full text linkA discussion of the interplay of different concepts of justice and reconciliation in United Nations peace operations in Timor Leste and in the Timorese political leadership. Drawing on research into norm diffusion and concepts of localization and norm contestation to understand how societies deal with their violent past under the auspices of international actors in UN peace operations, the analysis challenges the UN’s functionalistic concept of transitional justice as a precondition to state- and nationbuilding in post-conflict societies. As the case of Timor Leste demonstrates, the Timorese leadership has been successful in promoting its own concept of justice and reconciliation, leading to a localized version of state- and nationbuilding that openly contests international approaches
Transitional Justice and the Quality of Democracy
Full text linkTransitional Justice is a long-term process which seeks to address severe human rights abuses of the past through measures such as trials, commissions of inquiry, memorials, apologies, reforms of the legal or security sector, school textbook reforms, and reconciliation projects. These measures are usually applied by governments, but can also be initiated by civil society groups, such as victim groups, or the international community, for example the European Union or the UNHCR. Transitional justice measures are seen as catalysts for coming to terms with the past and establishing new, stable, and often democratic societies. As such, the measures are linked to the performance and efficacy of democratic institutions in the context of their accountability and responsiveness, transparency, and level of citizen participation. Thus, transitional justice is a process that aims to reconcile divided and conflict-torn societies by re-establishing (democratic) institutions. These measures can be catalysts to leverage institutional performance
Guest Editorial: Qualitative Research on Prejudice
Full text linkCentral topics and challenges for current social research on prejudice and discrimination are outlined and discussed with special regard to how such research may benefit from a stronger focus on qualitative and mixed methods perspectives. Such a methodological approach is described as particularly fruitful in dealing with the context-sensitive flexibility and fragmentation of prejudiced behavior; the special role of ideological patterns of justification in such expressions of prejudice; and the normative character and reflexivity of prejudice research itself. The contributions to this issue are then presented against the backdrop of this theoretical and methodological framework
How Racist Violence Becomes a Virtue: An Application of Discourse Analysis
Full text linkThis discourse analytic study examines how violence can be constructed as an honourable course of action, using the example of a leaflet circulated in the loyalist Donegall Pass area of Belfast urging the removal of the minority Chinese population. Starting from the assumptions that racism is an ideological practice that naturalises social categories and devalues members of some of them so that their subjugation and exclusion is legitimised (Miles and Brown 2003; Billig 2002), and that violence is a human activity imbued with meaning through discourse, we applied guidelines set out by Parker (1992) to consider language as a social practice that achieves specific discursive effects by constructing its objects in a particular way. Two interrelated discourses were identified: a community-focused discourse construed the Chinese immigrants as morally and culturally bereft and negated their worth, while a martial discourse focused on defending the locality against foreign invasion. An examination of themes in loyalist culture revealed ways in which the text reconstructed resonant fears, and we argue that the way the in-group constructs its character defines the racist construction of the other
Guest Editorial: Intimate Partner Violence as a Global Problem: International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Full text linkThis editorial introduces the Focus Section on Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) as a worldwide problem, which brings together six papers that are truly international and interdisciplinary. They provide insights into IPV from nine different cultures – China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Northern Ireland, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States – from scholars in the fields of psychology, gender studies, political science, and economics. The first three papers look at how widespread the experience of IPV is among different groups of women, examine selected risk factors associated with heightened vulnerability to victimization, and discuss consequences of intimate partner victimization. Another two papers place the problem of IPV in the wider context of societal perceptions and attitudes about victims and perpetrators of IPV in different countries, whereas the last paper examines the role of individual differences in the management of emotions in the escalation or de-escalation of relationship conflict. In combination, the papers highlight the interplay between the macro level of social and cultural norms condoning the use of violence, the micro level of family relations and construction of couple relationships, and the individual level of attitudes and behaviors that precipitate IPV
The Meaning of Anti-Americanism: A Performative Approach to Anti-American Prejudice
Full text linkA contribution to the ongoing debate on how anti-Americanism can be adequately conceptualized and how such prejudice can be distinguished from legitimate criticism, arguing that part of these conceptual problems arise from a too narrow focus on defining anti-Americanism and the use of standardized empirical operationalizations. Such approaches exhibit severe limitations in grasping the flexibility of the phenomenon in everyday discourse and often underestimate or ignore the interpretive aspect involved in identifying utterances as anti-American prejudice. Alternatively, a performative approach is proposed, understanding anti-Americanism as a network of speech acts bound by family resemblance rather than identical features. In combination with qualitative empirical research methods such a conceptualization is especially suited to account for the flexible, situated use of anti-American utterances. At the same time it grants reflexivity to the research concept, in the sense of a close description of the scientific application of the notion of anti-Americanism. Two empirical examples from an interview study on anti-American speech in Germany illustrate the potential of such an approach, providing an insight into how anti-Americanism is incorporated into the construction and expression of racist and revisionist national identifications in everyday discourse
Introduction: Transitions from Violence. Analysing the Effects of Transitional Justice
Full text linkTransitional justice refers to processes of dealing with the aftermath of violent conflicts and human rights abuses in order to provide for a peaceful future. It makes use of a number of instruments and mechanisms – including tribunals, truth commissions, memory work, and reparations – which aim at uncovering the truth about past crimes, putting past wrongs right, holding perpetrators accountable, vindicating the dignity of victim-survivors, and contributing to reconciliation. The objective of this focus section is to critically assess the potential of transitional justice, its achievements thus far, any conflicting goals, and the inherent or external obstacles that limit its influence and reach. Through empirical case studies from across the globe it paints a multi-faceted picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the approach
Self-efficacy in Anger Management and Dating Aggression in Italian Young Adults
Full text linkAn examination of the influence of self-efficacy regarding anger management on psychological and physical dating aggression using an agentic perspective of individual functioning. The investigation applied both the individual perspective (Study 1) and the interactional perspective (Study 2). The sample comprised 470 Italian young adults (223 females) (mean age across genders = 19.10; ds = 1.30) in study 1, and 62 couples in study 2 (mean age for males = 22.34; ds = 2.59; mean age for females = 19.58; ds = 1.50). The first study found that individuals’ efficacy regarding anger management affect dysfunctional behaviors toward the partner via couple conflict. The second study found that one partner’s efficacy regarding anger management affected couple conflict, which in turn affected the other partner’s psychological aggression. Results are discussed within an agentic framework of human development, where young adult partners are proactive agents of their own and their partners\u27 behaviors, contributing actively to their intimate relationship adjustment rather than just re-acting to their partners’ behaviors