Confronting History and Reconciliation: A Review of Civil Society’s Approaches to Transforming Conflict Narratives

In this chapter the work of civil society organizations that focus on confronting history as an avenue to achieving intergroup reconciliation in the aftermath of conflict is reviewed. The chapter sheds light on practitioners’ lay theories and strategies to address history for conflict transformation and reconciliation, and contrasts these approaches to the scholarship in this area. The chapter is based on reviewing 127 civil society projects that focus on confronting history in forty-five countries. It draws parallels between practitioners’ approaches and the research literature and theory on intergroup conflict and discusses scholarly evidence on the assumptions underlying praxis.