In this working paper, TraCe researchers from various fields (including the social sciences and the humanities, history, media studies, and linguistics) reflect on “memory before violence.” Initiating an interdisciplinary dialogue about the temporalities of violence and memory, the authors focus on different case studies across the globe. The working paper suggests turning around the temporal perspective on the memory-violence nexus. It asks how collective memory unfolds its agency not only after, but also before acts of political violence. What memory dynamics are at play when it comes to producing violence in the future—or when it comes to making future violence more (or less) likely to occur? The aim of this paper is to address the temporal intricacies of the violence-memory nexus, paying particularly close attention to the distinctive dynamics unfolding in specific cases. In six case studies, we address “memory before violence”—in Brazil, in Canada, in Uganda and Kenya, in Russia and Ukraine, and in Germany.
This working paper focuses on the changing discourse and unfolding politics of redress surrounding mass crimes committed during colonization processes. After decades of silencing the violence inherent in colonialism and its lasting consequences whether within post-colonial states, settler colonial states or in international relations recent years have witnessed acknowledgements of colonial atrocities as genocide. Truth commissions were established to uncover the histories of dispossession, displacement, cultural oppression, enslavement, and mass killings in colonization processes. The study of colonialism, furthermore, has raised the question whether settler colonialism should be characterized as an inherently genocidal project. The authors present drivers and paths of this discursive transformation as well as the unfolding politics of recognizing the violence of colonial history. They draw on their research in the cases of Australia, Canada, and Namibia to address these moments of transformation. The paper’s goal is to follow said discursive changes with an eye to their meaning for the broader aim of overcoming systemic violence, indifference, and injustice in (post-)colonial settings.
The last ten years have seen an emerging debate about targeted violence against social activists, with a focus on the killings of human rights defenders, environmental activists, and representatives of civil society organizations broadly speaking. Whereas violence against civilians in (civil) war contexts is an established field of study, research on this type of violence – which is being observed mainly outside of conventional armed conflict settings in countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Honduras or the Philippines is much less developed and rather fragmented. In this TraCe Working Paper, the authors bring together existing data and research to identify what they know – and do not know – about the targeted, lethal violence against civil society activists, including its characteristics and causes. In doing so, they also discuss the question of whether and to what extent this phenomenon can be considered as reflecting a transformation of the (violent) repression of civil society actors. Throughout the paper, the authors draw on cross-national and comparative research on the one hand, and existing studies on the specific case of Colombia on the other, since this is the case for which the best data and most systematic and in-depth research exists. In this paper, though, we are not interested in analyzing the recent wave of assassinations of social activists in Colombia per se, but in discussing insights from Colombia as relevant contributions to the broader, comparative debate.
Since the 1990s, truth commissions have been installed in post-conflict or post-authoritarian settings to further transitional justice, though the range of situations in which they are established has multiplied over the past two decades. Most recently, settler colonial states have tasked commissions to unravel historical colonial violence and its lasting effects in the present. Canada was the first to do so in 2008 and has since been used as a model for other countries. As this move is comparatively new, there is no exhaustive research on the processes these developments may trigger or new possibilities they may open up. This prompted the interest in the arguments for or against the creation of such a commission in a given public context. The focus of this working paper is on Sweden, because it was the last Nordic state to take this step. In November 2021, likely taking the experiences from its neighbouring countries into consideration, the Swedish government decided to install a truth commission. The aim of this paper was to identify dominant agents that influence the public discourse on the Sámi Truth Commission in Sweden, as well as to understand their demands and arguments.
Die Geschichte politischer Gewalt ist zugleich eine Geschichte ihrer Rechtfertigung und Kritik: Seit jeher wird politische Gewalt von Theorien und Praktiken ihrer (De-)Legitimation begleitet. Das gilt nicht nur für die nationale, sondern auch für die inter- und transnationale Politik. Politische Akteure verweisen in ihren Kriegsrechtfertigungen stets auf Normen der internationalen Ordnung. Das ist aus unserer Sicht Teil des politischen Handelns und keineswegs, wie häufig behauptet wird, „billiges Geschwätz“. Der Kriegslegitimations-Diskurs und die internationale Ordnung stehen in einem dialektischen Wechselverhältnis. Sie sind ko-konstitutiv. Damit stellt sich zugleich die Frage, wie sich im Verlauf der Geschichte das Wechselverhältnis von Kriegsrechtfertigungen und internationaler Ordnungsbildung gewandelt hat. Überwiegt hierbei die Wiederkehr des ewig Gleichen oder lassen sich Brüche identifizieren, die auf eine Transformation der internationalen Ordnung verweisen? Dieser Frage gehen wir im vorliegenden Text anhand einer genealogischen Skizze des Verhältnisses von Kriegslegitimation und internationaler Ordnungsbildung in Geschichte und Gegenwart nach.
Simon, Hendrik/Brock, Lothar (2023): Transformation(en) der Gewaltrechtfertigung? Zum Verhältnis von Kriegslegitimation und internationaler Ordnungsbildung in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Frankfurt/Main, TraCe Working Paper No. 2., DOI: 10.48809/PRIFTraCeWP2302.
Political violence in its many forms – from riotous protests to war between states – remains ever-present and has immense moral and political implications. However, the overall development of political violence remains poorly understood. Examining existing research, authors identify three general positions: political violence has either declined, escalated, or taken different forms. They provide a basic framework to better group existing approaches, examine available findings, and to enable the design of further research to better understand the development of political violence.
Daase, Christopher/Driedger, Jonas/Mannitz, Sabine/Kroll, Stefan/Simon, Hendrik/Wolff, Jonas (2022): Transformations of Political Violence? A Research Program, Frankfurt/Main, TraCe Working Paper No. 1., DOI: 10.48809/PRIFTraCeWP2201.
Canada is among the settler colonial states that confront their violence history and its present implications, inter alia with systematic research and evidence based policy recommendations: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRCC) of Canada issued a report about its 7-years’ long work in 2015, and the Canadian government declared the willingness to push through what the TRCC recommended as calls to action, to foster post-colonial peace in the country. But what does that actually imply in a country that was built on the deep intrusions of settler colonialism? How have state institutions reacted to the call?
Kopp, Rita Theresa/Mannitz, Sabine (2022): Approaches to Decolonizing Settler Colonialism: Examples from Canada, PRIF Working Papers No. 58, Frankfurt/M, DOI: 10.48809/PRIFWP58.
