Introduction: Ways of Knowing Atrocity: A Methodological Enquiry into the Formulation, Implementation, and Assessment of Transitional Justice

Abstract

Transitional justice comprises a broad set of responses to violence committed during periods of confl ict, repressive rule, or occupation. 1 Over the last thirty years, criminal trials, truth commissions, memorialization projects, and restorative justice processes have been implemented with increasing frequency across the globe, creating a rapidly expanding area of human rights practice. Within this domain, international criminal trials have emerged as the predominant approach, described in recent scholarship as "a key componentperhaps the most powerful component-in the broader universe of transitional justice." 2 Coinciding with this well-documented resort to law, there is a critical turn in the scholarship as transitional justice processes come under growing scrutiny. 3 Scholars criticize criminal trials and truth commissions as initiatives that further the reproduction or, according to some, the imposition of Western norms, leading to observations of cultural miscommunication or imperialism. 4 Driven by a similar impetus, challenges are raised against the evidentiary foundations of both * Special thanks to Prabha Kotiswaran for her diligent work as part of the editorial team for this special issue. 1 There is a large body of scholarship on transitional justice, a term coined in the early work of Ruti G. Teitel, Transitional Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) and Neil J. Kritz, Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes (United States Institute of Peace, 1995). The term initially referred to the use of law, be it criminal, constitutional, civil, or administrative, to facilitate the move from violence to peace, or autocracy to democracy. More recently, "transitional justice" has been invoked to refer to a broad set of legal and non-legal responses to particular types of violence during periods of political change.

The performance and persistence of transitional justice and its ways of knowing atrocity

“…As scholars, policy makers and practitioners, it ‘is in giving words to the unspeakable that we can start to understand it, but that we also, as interlocutors, shape the nature of that which we name’ ( Palmer et al, 2015 : 177). Like the broader peacebuilding endeavour in which transitional justice is embedded ( Sriram, 2007 ), actors working on and for transitional justice often assume that knowledge will lead to change; that the more we know about how to implement justice the more just our societies will become; that the more we know about how to address trauma and healing the more reconciliation will be possible.…”

“…. [of] different ways of knowing ’ ( Palmer et al, 2015 : 174). To apply this to human rights work, ‘the abuse occurs in a physical sense, but the way or the form in which it is accounted, represented, and interpreted influences how it is known’ (p. 176).…”

“…To apply this to human rights work, ‘the abuse occurs in a physical sense, but the way or the form in which it is accounted, represented, and interpreted influences how it is known’ (p. 176). This work recognises that the knowledge generated and used in transitional justice processes is always incomplete ( Palmer et al, 2015 : 174–175). This is partly because of the requirements of the law itself.…”

Friedens- und Konfliktforschung in der Schweiz: ein facettenreiches Patchwork

“…So wurden globale Partnerschaften zu friedenspolitischen Fragen zwischen Forschenden in der Schweiz und in Ländern wie Ägypten, Elfenbeinküste, Ghana, Guatemala, Indien, Indonesien, Nigeria, Sambia und Südsudan ermöglicht. Geforscht wird zum Beispiel zu ethnischen Machtbeziehungen und Konflikten in fragilen Kontexten (Kapesa et al 2016;Mukunto 2016;Vogt 2018), zur Wissensproduktion in der Friedensförderung (Palmer et al 2015;Logo 2018) K oder zur Gender-Dimension von sozialen Konflikten, bewaffneter Gewalt und der Friedensförderung (Zalewski et al 2017;Rigual 2018).…”

“…Zugleich erschwerte diese "Nähe am Objekt" die Produktionsbedingungen für die kritische Reflexionsleistung. Während zuweilen bewusst der Nexus zwischen Theorie und Praxis untersucht und die Rolle der Friedensforschung auf einer Metaebene analysiert wird (Goetschel und Hagmann 2009;Goetschel und Pfluger 2014;Palmer et al 2015), bilden solche Studien eher die Ausnahme als die Regel.…”