Book launch of first ReconTrans volume

Trading Justice for Peace? is now available open access. Free download here: https://books.aosis.co.za/index.php/ob/catalog/book/174

The chapters in this volume reveal the challenges, complexities and nuances of rectifying past and present injustices in order to transform societies. For a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to be considered trustworthy by those who have suffered, it cannot compromise justice for the sake of peace that is nothing more than a ‘cheap, deceptive’ reconciliation. (Regan, Solomons and Guðmarsdóttir, p. 273)

Trading Justice for Peace? brings to fruition a research partnership between VID Specialized University, the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, and the VST, Canada, including scholars and practitioners from South Africa, Canada, and across Nordic countries. The volume was presented by the co-editors on May 5th at the research conference “Reconciliation without the majority?” convened at VID Oslo, Norway. Watch the book launch event here (timeslot 5:28:00 – 6:00:00).

Contents

Introduction
Trading justice for peace? Perils and possibilities
Demaine Solomons, Paulette Regan, Sigríður Guðmarsdóttir

Part One: Negotiating truth, justice and reconciliation: TRC mandates, processes and legacies

Chapter 1
Negotiating the meaning of ‘TRC’ in the Norwegian context
Tore Johnsen

Chapter 2
Canada’s TRC: An ‘unsettling’ Indigenous-centred relational justice and reconciliation model
Paulette Regan

Chapter 3
Reconciliation recommended: On the anchoring of TRC proposals
Kjell-Åke Nordquist

Chapter 4
Reconciliation as an outcome rather than an intention
Stanley Henkeman

Part Two: No reconciliation without justice: Indigenous rights, resurgence, self-determination and territorial lands

Chapter 5
Justice twenty-one years post-TRC! Can a theology of reconstruction assist us to regain our focus on reconciliation and justice?
Christo H. Thesnaar

Chapter 6
When justice has borders: Some reflections on national borders in relation to the TRC in Norway
Lovisa M. Sjöberg, Mikkel N. Sara

Chapter 7
Prospects and challenges for reconciliation: Implementing the TRC calls to action
David B. MacDonald

Chapter 8
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: An invitation to boldness
Sheryl Lightfoot

Part Three: Re-storying national histories: Counter-narratives of social memory and justice

Chapter 9
Narrative and truth and reconciliation
John Klaasen

Chapter 10
Reburial of Sami human remains as ritualised reconciliation
Daniel Lindmark

Chapter 11
Records as instruments of truth, justice and reconciliation – Disrupting colonialism in archival praxis
Elizabeth Shaffer

Part Four: Histories of violence and trauma: negotiating identity, responsibility and accountability for redress and reconciliation

Chapter 12
Steve Biko as a ‘Christian’: A contribution to ethnic and racial reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa
Eugene Baron

Chapter 13
Social justice, white beneficiaries and the South African TRC
Wilhelm Verwoerd

Chapter 14
Unsettling ‘perpetrators’: Comrade memories of complex violence and the South African TRC
Kim Wale

Chapter 15

Building thin sympathetic engagement to foster truth commission success
Joanna R. Quinn

Conclusion
Forging transnational pathways for reconciliation
Paulette Regan, Demaine Solomons, Sigríður Guðmarsdóttir