Customer Reviews

Human Rights in Political Transitions: Gettysburg to Bosnia

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For my newest research project, I have been reading fairly extensively in the literature on how societies emerging from oppressive regimes deal with the legacies of political violence and human rights abuses. This book is one of best collections on the issue I've read. There are two major strengths that make this book stand out. The first is the historical breadth. By looking at not only the Latin American cases, or South Africa, but including the American Civil War and the Nuremburg trials, the editors present us with a larger, more encompassing view of the issues at stake than one usually finds in such works. This breadth should also help keeping any one group from being too smug that at least *they* weren't involved in such abuses, as several contributions make clear, for example, the US role in human rights abuses in Latin America. The second strength is that the essays are written by a combination of academics and human rights activists. This offers the reader a blend of theoretical insights and overviews, while also providing grounded case studies, where we can see the theory in action, so to speak. The contributions of the human rights activists keeps the academics from appearing to discuss merely abstract concepts, and the academics (usually) provide a wider framework for what the activists are telling us. I do have a few minor gripes, but they are minor. Some of the academics seem to forget that there are living, breathing people involved in these issues. Abstractions may be useful, but one shouldn't forget they must ultimately link to people, or risk being worse than useless. And the other gripe is simply that I would have liked to see more engagement with the post-Soviet issues, but that is a personal bias. In short, this book is highly recommended. It it suggested reading for anyone interested in how people and governments around the world are trying to come to terms with one of the most disgraceful legacies of the 20th century.