Clarifying the past : understanding historical commissions in conflicted and divided societies

"Clarifying the Past provides a comprehensive analysis of state-sponsored historical commissions operating in conflicted and divided societies, developing a theoretical and methodological framework within the historical dialogue paradigm, key to understand the work of such commissions. The theoretical and methodological framework is complemented with an extensive empirical analysis of twenty-seven historical commissions that operated in different social and political contexts from 1990s to the present. The detailed examination of these cases gives a broad perspective in to the potential capacities of historical commissions in different settings. Although only sampling the most recent cases, this volume shows how the steady increase of the number of historical commissions indicates that we are not dealing with a marginal phenomenon. The increased recognition of the potential of historical commissions to address the legacies of contested pasts and potential introduction of such commissions to the transitional justice, makes this book highly relevant. This book has been written with the objective to deepen and broaden the existing knowledge on state-sponsored historical commissions. Its intended audiences are scholars and practitioners in the field historical theory, public history, and historical dialogue, transitional justice, peace and conflict studies"-- Includes bibliographical references and index. xii, 257 pages ; 24 cm.