Since about the 2010s, reconciliation studies has been a new scientific approach in the field of peace and conflict studies. It has commonalities with peacebuilding, conflict transformation, and transitional justice research, and to a lesser extent with academic work on peace psychology, conflict resolution, conflict management, mediation, security studies, memory studies, and trauma and resilience studies.
Definition Reconciliation is generally viewed as a process, outcome, or goal for improving relationships. More specifically, it is a process of creating "normal" and if possible "good" relationships between the parties in response to grave incidents such as wars, civil conflicts, genocides, atrocities, forced displacement, enslavement, dictatorship, oppression, colonialism, Apartheid, and other human rights violations and injustices.Website of Jena Center for Reconciliation Studies. https://www.jcrs.uni-jena.de/154/what-is-reconciliation-about (text by Martin Leiner) In these situations of massive violations of human rights, reconciliation means creating a time and place to address past suffering, integrate, embrace, and share a common future.Lederach, J. P. (1997). Building peace: Sustainable reconciliation in divided societies. United States Institute of Peace Press It is a process of improving relations between and within groups, recognition of social identities and power dynamics, addressing trauma and reckoning with the past.Korostelina, K.V. (2018). Reconciliation in Ukraine: within and across the boundary. In Gardner L. (ed). Societies in Transition. The Former Soviet Union and East Central Europe between Conflict and Reconciliation, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp.105-130 Reconciliation mainly focuses on building or rebuilding relationships and dealing with the past, present and future and is an essential part of Peacebuilding by addressing the root causes of conflict and improving intergroup relations. The definition of reconciliation encompasses a variety of perspectives, open to wide applications and sometimes overlapping interpretations, depending on the actor employing the term.
Reconciliation is a critical part of the peacebuilding process and is intertwined with achieving justice, reducing violence, and conflict transformation. Discussions are still ongoing whether reconciliation is a process, an outcome, an ideal and perhaps utopian goal, or a specific stage or moment in the process of overcoming violent conflict. However, there is a certain tendency to see reconciliation as an overarching concept for the long-term process to create better relationships after violence. Many scholars and practitioners also stress the importance of reconciliation efforts for the cessation of violence in the middle of conflict.Fläming, Susan and Martin Leiner. (2012). "Reconciliation in the Middle of Dispute." Essay. In Latin America between Conflict and Reconciliation, 7–19. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Korostelina, K.V. (2018). Reconciliation in Ukraine: within and across the boundary. In Gardner L. (ed). Societies in Transition. The Former Soviet Union and East Central Europe between Conflict and Reconciliation, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp.105-130 Reconciliation researcher Martin Leiner defines reconciliation studies as the "scholarly description, interpretation and evaluation of processes to develop 'normal' and if possible 'good' relationships between states, groups, organizations, and individuals reacting against past, present or preventing future grave incidents such as Wars, Civil Wars, Genocides, Atrocities, Forced Displacement, Enslavement, Dictatorship, Oppression, Colonialism, Apartheid, and other Human Rights Violations and injustices, and creating a scientific discourse of developing a common future to enable the transformation of conflicts towards the path of peace."Al Dajani, Iyad/Leiner, Martin (eds. (2024)), Reconciliation, Conflict Transformation and Peace Studies, Cham: Springer Stressing the main goal of reconciliation as improved intergroup relations and the building or rebuilding of trust, Professor Karina V. Korostelina defines reconciliation as "a process of management of social identities and reckoning with the past. Reconciliation processes depend on interrelations among conflict, power, social identity, and collective memory/ narratives about history."Korostelina, K.V. (2018). Reconciliation in Ukraine: within and across the boundary. In Gardner L. (ed). Societies in Transition. The Former Soviet Union and East Central Europe between Conflict and Reconciliation, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp.105-130
According to the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy, political reconciliation includes the following practices: "Apologies, Memorials, Truth Telling, Amnesties, Trials and Punishment, Lustration, Reparations, Forgiveness and Participation in Deliberative Processes" Reconciliation is also viewed as a process of building long-term peace between former enemies through bilateral initiatives and institutions across governments and societies.Gardner Feldman, L. (2014). Germany's Foreign Policy of Reconciliation: From Enmity to Amity. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; Korostelina, K.V. and S. Lassig (2013). History Education and Post-Conflict Reconciliation: Reconsidering Joint Textbook Projects. Routledge Other scholars would add at least trauma therapies, encounter programs, and the construction of a common human security structure in order to achieve no repetition.
Within this field, reconciliation studies are characterized by four guiding assumptions:
Relationship. Reconciliation studies are focusing on the question of how trustful and cooperative relationships can be (re)built in the face of grave incidents of violence. This implies a closeness of reconciliation studies to philosophical and scientific anthropologies of humans as relational animals (Hegel 1807, Buber 1923, Rosa 2012, Fuchs 2007, du Toit 2017). This focus on relationships has also practical consequences. For many reconciliation scholars, their field also includes the study of the distortions of relationships before grave incidents are happening. The social construction of enemies, pathologies of communication connected with imaginaries of the other (Kearney 2003), frames for war, missed reconciliation in the initial moments of conflict, certain long-term structural realities of discrimination such as Apartheid, racism, islamophobia, antisemitism, antiziganism, ableism, xenophobia, classism, patriarchate, colonialism, slavery, and different cultural habits of dehumanization and exploitation often indicate needs and possibilities for reconciliation in order to create better relationships before violent incidents occur. Intergroup and Identity Dynamics. Reconciliation not only creates a foundation for peaceful coexistence but also promotes cooperation between conflicting parties based on the management of social identities and addressing a contentious past.Korostelina, K.V. (2024). Memory sites and dynamics of conflict: collective memory, identity, and power. Routledge; Korostelina, K.V. & Benedicto, K. (2020). Understanding reconciliation in Nagorno- Karabakh conflict in the Leiner's framework of reconciliation practices, In Reconciliation, Ethics, Religion, Francesco Ferrari, Davide Tacchini, Binyamin Gurstein (eds.), Festschrift, pp. 83-118 It requires reduction of intergroup threat, relative deprivation, and addressing trauma. It also involves the dissolution of rigid social boundaries and the formation of common and cross-cutting identities; these identities then act as a foundation for stable and peaceful coexistence building on the respect and trust between former enemies. Thus, reconciliation processes are deeply rooted in interconnections between conflict, power, social identity, and collective memory. Inclusiveness. Reconciliation studies often assume that all parties involved in a distortion of a relationship must be integrated into the process of reconciliation and that multiple kinds of processes of reconciliation (such as reconciliation with oneself, with the own group and with others) are intertwined and are happening simultaneously. Reconciliation studies try to overcome limited concepts of reconciliation such as working only on individual I-Thou-relationships between persons or only working in so called "post-conflict settings".Lederach, J. P. (1997). Building peace: Sustainable reconciliation in divided societies. United States Institute of Peace Press; Kriesberg, Louis (2001) Mediation and the Transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Journal of Peace Research 38 (3): 373–392 Transdisciplinary. The factors why reconciliation succeeds or fails are so multiple and complex that transdisciplinary research including a wide range of disciplines is required. Scientific ambition. An important group of reconciliation scholars, the group that founded the International Association for Reconciliation Studies (IARS), aims at the goal of lifting reconciliation studies from the self-reflection of practitioners to a high-level scientific field.
Historical background
History of reconciliation Practices of reconciliation are indispensable for the survival of human communities, because without restoration of relationships after grave incidents - which always happen - community is put into question. These practices can be traced back to animal behaviorDe Waal, Franz (1989) Peacemaking Among Primates. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-65920-1 and have been documented in every so far described human society. They are most salient in intimate relationships, inter- and intragroup relationships, religion and ethics, but also touch other fields of life.
History of the notion of reconciliation The history of the notion of reconciliation and its translations into other languages is still to be written. It can be found in ancient Greek comedy (Aristophanes, Lysistrata, performed 411 BC) with reference to peacemaking in the war between Athens and Sparta, in Apostle Paul's writings (2. Cor 5, 11-21), in legal and economic contexts such as accounting, as a key idea in the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel (cf. Rosza 2005Rózsa, Erzsebet (2005) Versöhnung und System. Zu Grundmotiven von Hegels praktischer Philosophie. jena-sophia. Studien und Editionen zum deutschen Idealismus und zur Frühromantik. Brill/Fink. ) In the 20th century, reconciliation became an often used - and misused - political term. Between others it was misused to legitimize the collaboration with the Nazi occupation in France and to legitimize amnesties for former dictators, but it was also used in a better way as guiding notion for several peace-making initiatives (cf. the NGOs: International Fellowship of Reconciliation, Action Reconciliation Service for Peace), for West Germany's policy of reconciliation after World War II and for the reconciliation processes which took place since the 1990s in South Africa, Rwanda, Northern Ireland and other countries.
History of Scientific Studies about reconciliation From the 1990s on, academic interest in reconciliation started to get traction. From the point of view of many different disciplines and from the experience of practitioners, important studies of reconciliation processes have been presented. The first push for reconciliation as a research topic came from practical work in the field.
Based on his experience of the war in former Yugoslavia, theologian and later professor at Yale, Miroslav Volf published in 1996 Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation.
A year later, the German-Canadian scholar Gregory Baum together with Harold Wells edited the first edition of his book The Reconciliation of People: Challenge to the Churches (1997) promoting the study of reconciliation in both Catholic theology and the WCC.