Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences
UBC
May 31-June 8, 2008
Vancouver, BC
Tri-Part Session sponsored by the
Society for Socialist Studies
Thursday June 5, 2008, 9:00-10:30, 10:45-12:15, and 1:00-2:30
Anthropology & Sociology Building Room 205
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, B.C. Canada
In Search of a Language of Reconciliation
Session organizer: Sima Aprahamian, Ph.D. ([email protected])
Sociology-Anthropology & Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia
University,Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Papers are based on studies of alternatives to the conflict-resolution
model now being used. In particular papers were sought that have a
critical view on the current attempts by international bodies & the U.S.
in particular to situate genocide in the context of conflict resolution.
Papers were also sought that explore paths or ways to bring closure and a
sense of justice, as well as explorations of possibilities of
communication and dialogue between or among ethnic, religious, national or
other groups in contexts of post-war, post-conflict, post-genocide
situations. Also papers that explore the applications (and
mis-applications) of Truth and Reconciliation commissions.
PANEL ONE
Discussant: Dorota Glowacka, Ph.D. (Kings College, Dalhousie, Halifax. NS)
Barabara Coloroso and a new possible language of reconciliation
Sima Aprahamian, Ph.D. ([email protected]) Sociology-Anthropology
& Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec,
Canada
The paper examines the current language used in post-conflict,
post-genocide contexts. The idea for the paper and panel emerged after a
discussion with a Ethiopian of C. Gibbs novel, Sweetness in the belly. The
reaction in Ethiopia was that it only presented the Harare perspective.
This paper will explore the possibility of a language of reconciliation
that Barbara Coloroso, the educator, provides.
Rupture and Redress: The Geopolitical barriers to Genocide Reparations
R.S. Ratner ([email protected]) Sociology, University of British
Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
and Andrew Woolford ([email protected]) Sociology, University
of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MN, Canada
This paper will examine some of the conceptual and empirical obstacles to
obtaining genocide reparations, cross-culturally and in individual cases,
including those instances in which the application of the term `genocide
is moot. Emphasis will be placed on the ways in which globalization and
neoliberal rationalities of governance have created new opportunities for
pursuing reparations (e.g., by spreading the
actuarial and juridical logic of compensatory justice), while
simultaneously placing limits on the form reparations might take (e.g., by
discouraging reparative payments that might disrupt national or global
economies). We end the paper by evaluating the
possibilities for "transformative" reparations within current geopolitical
contexts.
PANEL TWO:
Organizer: Sima Aprahamian
Tricks or Treaty? An Examination of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace
Accord
Aditya Dewan, PhD. ([email protected]) Sociology-Anthropology, Concordia
University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
The Government of Bangladesh made a peace treaty with the Jana Samhati
Samiti (JSS) and signed the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord December
2, 1997. The JSS, a political organization (or party), represents a dozen
indigenous peoples’ groups in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of eastern
Bangladesh. The Shanti Bahini, armed wing of the JSS, waged guerrilla
warfare1972-1997 against the army for regional autonomy, land and human
rights. The CHT peace accord brought no peace for the indigenous people in
the CHT. The government violated its own promise by not implementing the
peace accord until today. Instead, the peace accord helped the government
suppress indigenous peoples’ rights through continuous settlement of
Bengalis from the plains and displacement of native villagers from their
ancestral lands. This paper will survey the post-peace Accord social,
economic and political situation in the CHT.
Attitudes towards Reconciliation in Iraq
Aysegul Keskin ([email protected]), Kent State University,Kent, OH, USA
Post-Baathist Iraq seemed to provide a unique case study for Truth and
Reconciliation Commisioins to settle differences between former members of
the Party and communities affected by its policies. Despite TRC plans
based on the South African model, the Coalition Provisional Authority
(CPA) instead embarked on a policy of De-Ba.athification and disbanding
the Iraqi military. The Arab League efforts to hold a reconciliation
conference in 2005 failed as .reconciliation., for the Kurdish and Shi.a
parties in power meant negotiating with the Ba.athists. Prime Minister
Maliki later adopted a plan for .National Reconciliation,. opposed by the
Ba.athists and insurgency groups. Reconciliation in both cases ultimately
failed. This paper examines literature on TRC and reconciliation in the
Middle East, and how it could still function in an Iraqi context.
Individual Autonomy and the Kurdish Question: De-Politicizing National
Cleavages
Erol Ulker ([email protected]) History, University of Chicago, Chicago,
IL, USA
For Austro-Marxist intellectuals Otto Bauer and Karl Renner, the
individuality principle is a radical critique of the conviction that every
nation should form its own territorial state – an unnecessary condition
for the existence of nation whose realization as a cultural community is
part of emancipation in a classless society. Implications of this critique
for today.s ethnic conflicts bear in particular on the Kurdish question of
Turkey, in search of a new discursive field that may integrate struggles
for Kurdish rights with justice and emancipation. Fixation on territorial
claims is an obstacle to achieving integration. Recognizing and promoting
Kurdish national claims, the individuality principle has the potential to
constitute a new reference point for cooperation and solidarity among the
Kurds and the Turks in their struggle for justice.
PANEL THREE:
Compassionate Listening: Building Trust One Oral History at a Time
Marion Gerlind, Ph.D. ([email protected]) Gerlind Institute for Cultural
Studies, Oakland, CA, USA
While conducting oral histories with female working-class and rural Jewish
survivors of the European Holocaust, I had to face my role as a child of
the generation of German perpetrators and collaborators. This presentation
discusses the process in which narrators and interviewer are able to
overcome mistrust and engage in (im)possible conversations. I reflect on
the significance of mindful listening which I am currently exploring in
interviews with working-class and rural German Christians who have not
recorded their war stories. My aim is to integrate legacies of
victimization and collaboration into a complex, gender- and
class-conscious analysis of genocide.
Confronting the parts torn apart: Armenian pilgrimages to Anatolia
E-mail: Carel Bertram ([email protected]) University of California
Armenian pilgrims are "returning" to Turkey in search of the houses,
villages and towns of their families, bringing back stories of Armenian
daily life to their place of origin. This adds a focus of what was lost
to a focus on how it was lost. Unexpectedly, by meeting residents of
their old homes and towns, pilgrims help overcome a collective Turkish
amnesia. For when locals understand that these are shared stories of a
shared culture, the success of genocides, with their goal of erasing not
only a people, but the normalcy of their past, is interrupted.
Attempts to Resolve Ethnic Conflict in the Canadian Multicultural Context
Nellie Hogikyan, Ph.D. ([email protected]) ([email protected]) Centre
Interuniversitaire d.tudes sur les lettres, les arts et les traditions,
CLAT, UQM Montral, Qubec, Canada
Recent minority cultural productions, in the context of the post-genocide
traumatic transmission, are trying to understand and re-appropriate such a
heritage to bring closure to a troubling question that has haunted four
generations. Focussing on Araz Artinian.s The Genocide in Me (NFB, 2005)
and Atom Egoyan’s Ararat (Alliance, 2002), I will offer an analysis of the
strategies that the third and fourth generation Canadians of Armenian
origin use in an attempt to create a dialogue with the inheritors of the
Turkish Ottoman legacy of denial, holding the current generations of
Turkish men and women as being responsible, but not guilty for the history
of their nation.