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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Collective Healing To Address Legacies Of Transatlantic Slavery: Opportunities And Challenges, Scherto R. Gill, Garrett Thomson Dec 2021

Collective Healing To Address Legacies Of Transatlantic Slavery: Opportunities And Challenges, Scherto R. Gill, Garrett Thomson

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In this article, we show how pathways to justice and reconciliation pertaining to the transatlantic slavery should begin with collective healing processes. To illustrate this conclusion, we first employ a four-fold conceptual framework for understanding collective healing that consists in: (1) acknowledging historical dehumanizing acts; (2) addressing the harmful effects of dehumanisation; (3) embracing relational rapprochement; and (4) co-imagining and co-creating conditions for systemic justice. Based on this framework, we then examine existing collective healing practices in different contexts that are aimed at addressing legacies of transatlantic slavery. In doing so, we further identify challenges and pose critical questions concerning …


Guest Editorial: Mass Atrocity And Collective Healing: New Possibilities For Regenerating Communities, Scherto R. Gill Dec 2021

Guest Editorial: Mass Atrocity And Collective Healing: New Possibilities For Regenerating Communities, Scherto R. Gill

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This Special Issue brings together five articles from different disciplines. It aims to contribute to the emergent critical voices in research about collective trauma and collective healing by introducing novel perspectives and inviting further debates on the relevant issues evoked. For this reason, the Special Issue focuses on collective healing through a number of prisms. First, it delves into the notions of wounding and trauma, with a view to advance a well-argued theoretical framework for understanding collective healing. Second, it identifies underlying ethical pillars for collective healing, especially the principles of equality and well-being that affirm human dignity founded on …


A Dance Of Shadows And Fires: Conceptual And Practical Challenges Of Intergenerational Healing After Mass Atrocity, Brandon Hamber, Ingrid Palmary Dec 2021

A Dance Of Shadows And Fires: Conceptual And Practical Challenges Of Intergenerational Healing After Mass Atrocity, Brandon Hamber, Ingrid Palmary

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The legacy of mass atrocity—including colonialism, slavery or specific manifestations such as apartheid—continue long after their demise. Applying a temporal intergenerational lens adds complications. We argue that mass atrocity creates for subsequent generations a deep psychological rupture akin to witnessing past atrocities. This creates a moral liability in the present. Healing is a process dependent on the authenticity (evident in discourse and action) with which we address contemporary problems. A further overriding task is to open social and political space for divergent voices. Acknowledgement of mass atrocity requires more than one-off events or institutional responses (the grand apology, the truth …


The Healing Of Historical Collective Trauma, Eugen Koh May 2021

The Healing Of Historical Collective Trauma, Eugen Koh

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Historical collective trauma is embedded in the shared consciousness of a collective, which can be considered as being the collective’s culture. The healing of historical collective trauma is a most complex and challenging task. At the core of it is a collective process of working through painful and overwhelming experiences, which is only possible in a safe and supportive environment. This process involves remembering and making sense of defined events and depends on the possession of a capable and authentic “collective thinking apparatus,” which is proposed here, to be a function of a collective’s culture. The healing of single, …