Striving for Peace through Personal Narratives of Genocide and War

Presents personal narratives of people suffering from genocide and intractable war and uses these as tools for promotion of peace.

Julia Chaitin (Author), Elad Avlagon (Author)

9781009313063, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 February 2025

236 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.498 kg

Personal narratives of genocide and intractable war can provide valuable insights around notions of collective identity, perceptions of the 'enemy,' intergenerational coping with massive social trauma, and sustainable peace and reconciliation. Written in an accessible and narrative style, this book demonstrates how the sharing of and listening to personal experiences deepens understandings of the long-term psychosocial impacts of genocide and war on direct victims and their descendants in general, and of the Holocaust and the Jewish–Arab/Palestinian–Israeli context, in particular. It provides a new theoretical model concerning the relationship between different kinds of personal narratives of genocide and war and peacebuilding or peace obstruction. Through its presentation and analysis of personal narratives connected to the Holocaust and the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, it provides a deep exploration into how such narratives have the potential to promote peace and offers concrete ideas for further research of the topic and for peacebuilding on the ground.

Preface
1. Personal Narratives in the Context of Genocide and War
2. Collective Identity, Perceptions of the Enemy, and Personal Narratives
3. Coping, or Not, with Genocide and War
4. Conceptualizations of Positive Peace and Reconciliation
5. Personal Narratives of Genocide and War and Their Connections to Peacebuilding or Peace Obstruction: Our Theoretical Model
6. Personal Narratives connected to the Holocaust
7. Personal Narratives in the Jewish-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Contexts
8. Personal Narratives in the Jewish-Jewish Conflict Context
9. Personal Narratives of Genocide and Intractable War: Research Implications
10. Personal Narratives of Genocide and Intractable War: Concrete Ideas for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Social, group or collective psychology [JMH]