Time and Temporality in Transitional and Post-Conflict Societies

Natascha Mueller-Hirth, Sandra Rios Oyola

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138631366
• eBook ISBN: 9781351805131
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Implicit conceptions of time associated with progress and linearity have influenced scholars and practitioners in the fields of transitional justice and peacebuilding, but time and temporality have rarely been systematically considered.

Time and Temporality in Transitional and Post-Conflict Societies examines how time is experienced, constructed and used in transitional and post-conflict societies. This collection critically questions linear, transitional justice time and highlights the different temporalities that exist at local and institutional levels through original empirical research.

Presenting empirical and often ethnographic research from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Palestine/Israel, Rwanda and South Africa, contributors use a temporal lens to investigate key issues including: transitional justice institutions, peace processes, victimhood, perpetrators, accountability, reparations, forgiveness, reconciliation and memoralisation.

This timely monograph will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such as political science, international relations, anthropology, transitional justice and conflict resolution. It will also be relevant to conflict resolution and peacebuilding practitioners.

1 Introduction

Temporal perspectives on transitional and post-conflict societies

Natascha Mueller-Hirth and Sandra Rios Oyola

Introduction

After participating in large international comparative research projects on transitional justice in post-conflict societies, in addition to our own trajectories as researchers specialised on the South African and Colombian cases respectively, we found that reflection on time and temporality, although present in some works, was lacking as a systematic perspective in the fields of transitional justice and peacebuilding. This is surprising, given that time is a crucial dimension in the understanding of social transformation and is particularly relevant for addressing questions related to the legacies of violent pasts and the construction of peaceful futures. The idea for this book drew from Mueller-Hirth’s (2017) article on temporalities of victimhood and was developed thanks to the generous response by the contributors to the volume. The backbone of the collection is our belief that by exploring how time is experienced, constructed and used by people and institutions, some central problems in post-conflict societies can be revealed and analysed in a unique way. The volume aims, empirically, to develop a deeper understanding of the role time plays in overcoming violent pasts and, theoretically, to contribute time-sensitive perspectives to the fields of transitional justice and peacebuilding.

Our argument is grounded in the sociology of time, which regards measurements of time and notions of temporality as defined by culture and society and examines how time is used to govern and to construct social meanings (Adam 1990; 2004; Bergmann 1992; Elias 1993; Schwartz 1974; Zerubavel 1981, among others). There is no unique ontological manner of registering time nor of perceiving it. In theories of time, a distinction is often made between social time and inner time (see Adam 2004 for an excellent overview). Social time is linear, measurable, predictable, as well as regular and uniform because, as Zerubavel (1981; 1985) claims, social events reflect particular dominant temporal expectations. By contrast, inner time is multiple and discontinuous; it is a cyclical time in which events recur and repeat themselves. Time typifications such as cyclical/circular vs. linear are also debated in the social sciences, particularly in anthropology where cyclical time is often imposed on traditional or small-scale societies and ‘Western time’ characterised as linear, abstract and sequentially stretched. Munn (1992: 101) has been critical of these ways of typifying time and proposes alternatives such as the image of a leaf, which represents the growth of generations from the originating past and as such involves repetition, successiveness and developmental components. Similarly, Adam (2004: 144–145) suggests that we think of temporal relations as ‘clusters of temporal features’, such as time frames, tempo, timing, sequence and patterns, whose relationships and relative importance are dynamic and contextually dependent.

While spatial metaphors, such as moving forward and leaving the past behind, help us to make sense of the passing of time, these metaphors are not universal. For example, scientists that rely on geological excavations tend to refer to the past in vertical terms, as that which is deep underground (Simonetti 2013). Understandings of time can follow multiple directions, and different notions of temporality may overlap or clash against each other. Despite the complexity and richness in the social study of time, Western normative and teleological notions of time associated with progress and linearity have predominantly influenced scholars and practitioners in the fields of transitional justice, reconciliation and peacebuilding.

Moreover, to recognise that there are non-linear, and potentially multiple, temporalities does not imply that these temporalities cannot be normative or dominant (Bastian 2014: 15). The social science knowledge on time also allows us to better understand its power effects, demonstrating that control over time is a medium of hierarchical power and governance. There are inequalities in how time is used and whose time is valued, and time plays an important role in social methods of inclusion and exclusion (Bastian 2014). Scholars of time have demonstrated a range of ways in which time becomes the object of social control and temporal power relations are shaped. For example, temporal power relations are gendered; women do more unpaid work and more caring work. Caring work in particular has a temporal logic – fluid, relational and cyclical – that can be contrasted with the linearity of market capitalism and male-dominated productive work (Bryson 2007), while the non-linear and unpredictable ‘generativity of child bearing’ is sometimes thought of as ‘feminine time’, or indeed ‘feminine timelessness’ (West-Pavlov 2012: 101–102). Women are most affected by the need to ‘straddle multiple temporalities’ (Everingham 2002, cited in Bryson 2007: 134). Representations of singlehood and marriage, and their associated temporal experiences of waiting, moreover, are gendered (Lahad 2012). Temporality is also understood, and new temporal logics shaped, through sexuality and sexual difference (Halberstam 2005). Moreover, temporalities and temporal relations have been shown to operate through unemployment (Auyero 2012, Harms 2013), chronic illness (Charmaz 1991) and drug addiction (Reith 1999), to name but a few areas of research.

Notions of time and temporality play a crucial role in the study of post-conflict societies as well as in the transitional justice paradigm. Transitional justice aims to address wrongdoings of repressive predecessor regimes in order to combat denial and promote justice, accountability and transparency through strengthening the rule of law (Teitel 2003). More recently, transitional justice mechanisms have also been used in established democracies such as Canada or Australia as a form of redress the unfair treatment of indigenous people through reparations and public apologies.

Transitional justice has been described as ‘Janus-faced’ in the sense that it contributes towards accountability measures that deal with the past as well as mechanisms that seek to assert stable futures.¹ In this regard, Teitel (1997: 2014) states that ‘law is caught between the past and the future, between backward-looking and forward-looking, between retrospective and prospective’. Similarly, Hobbs (2016: 513) argues that transitional justice is different from other forms of justice:

The great significance of the field is its Janus-faced nature. While constitutional redemption is purely forward looking, transitional justice recognises that the past is always with us. In mediating the past, the present and the future, transitional justice understands that political commitment to a more just future can only be secured by acknowledgement of past wrongs and the promise of reparative action.

The terms ‘transitional’ and ‘post-conflict’ have clear temporal referents. The promise of transformation is implicitly built upon a notion of progress, ‘leaving the past behind’ and ‘moving toward democracy’. Following an implicit teleological temporality, the transitional justice discourse considers that a society goes from one stage of violence to another of democracy and peace. Transitional justice mechanisms such as trials, truth commissions and amnesties act as seals that control what is brought from the past, such as previously denied human rights abuse, as well as warranting the locking away of the past through amnesties, vetting and trials. They seek to open the doors for future peaceful societies. This teleology is associated with a bias towards Western-style democracies, in which the term ‘transition’ implies a ‘change in a liberalizing direction’ (Teitel 2000: 13). Transitional justice’s teleological dimension has been criticised for not representing the empirical reality of transitional societies, nor the ‘subjective perspective of members of a given transitional society’ (Murphy 2017: 68; also see Hinton, Chapter 3 in this volume). Similarly, reconciliation is embedded in a discourse of progress, where societies are moving towards peace by healing broken relationships. In this volume (Chapter 2), Valérie Rosoux explores some of the limitations of this temporal perspective for an understanding of reconciliation.

Moreover, this rhetoric requires a clear setting of boundaries between past and present, as well as future. Amid the chaos of lengthy conflicts, or conflicts that have risen out of chronic deprivation and inequality, setting such boundaries for the past or for the beginning of a conflict in the official discourse is a political act in itself. Definitions of the past are achieved through the implementation of temporal margins for truth commissions, as well as setting temporal limitations for defining who can be considered a victim. In the case of South Africa, but also among many Latin American cases, these temporalities established by the law leave victims of colonialism absent from the official narrative of transition and democratisation, and ‘longer temporalities and structural interpretations of the origins of armed conflict disappeared’ from the official and public discourse (Castillejo-Cuellar 2014: 51). Indeed, we might argue that, by designating a country a ‘post-conflict society’, violence is relegated to the past and treated as a temporary episode rather than as an ongoing structural concern.

In the literature on peacebuilding, the concern for time has centred on the timing of efforts of resolution, which includes conceptions of ‘ripeness’: a situation in which ‘substantive answers are fruitless until the moment is ripe’ (Zartman 2000: 225; also see Rosoux, Chapter 2). This approach focuses on models that can estimate the right moment to advance peace negotiations when other solutions are not achievable. Notions of timing have also been influenced by sequentialism, which underscores the necessity of considering the order of interventions in transitional societies in order to reach the desired effect of peaceful transitions. This perspective warns of ‘the dangers of moving quickly toward elections in countries with little democratic history’ (Carothers 2007: 15).

An important response to the hegemonic one-size-fits-all model of the liberal peace has been brought by the so-called ‘local turn in peacebuilding’, which instead emphasises the necessity of empowering local people as the primary authors of peacebuilding (see for example Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013). However, this literature has not explicitly engaged with temporal aspects of peacebuilding, and particularly with the significance of local temporalities that – as several of the contributors to this book demonstrate – shape understandings and practices of violence and peace. Although there has been an interest in issues of timing (Mac Ginty 2016), the lack of attention to specific local understandings of time in the peacebuilding literature seems a missed opportunity.

The time dimensions studied in this book

The contributors to this volume show that a progressive temporality does not necessarily apply to the transitional and post-conflict societies studied and highlight that violence and non-violence are not as easily demarcated. Past and present can seem continuous, rather than being separated clearly as violent/peaceful and democratic, because violence has not ceased or because experiences of marginalisation continue in the ‘post’-conflict era. Violence and suffering are not necessarily temporary ruptures but, for many, conflict, violence and suffering are part of the social fabric (Vigh 2008). Moreover, people’s lived experiences of time do not always conform to a linear temporality: for instance, victims’ traumatic experiences can exist in plural temporalities, answering to the challenge of honouring the past while moving forward.

This collection aims to problematise, through empirical research in a range of contexts, a straightforward, taken-for-granted notion of time in transitional justice and peacebuilding. We have identified several key themes that can be made visible through the lens of time and temporality, which appear and sometimes overlap across the sections and chapters of this volume:

1 tensions, clashes, and negotiations between different temporalities in the context of transitional justice and victims’ and perpetrators’ experiences of lived time;

2 how these different temporalities produce an unequal distribution of power in post-conflict settings, leading to the socio-temporal marginalisation of some in society and to repercussions for processes of reconciliation, reparations and change;

3 the effects of social acceleration on transitional and post-conflict societies; and

4 how collective memorialisation becomes a vehicle to transmit memories of the past through the lenses of the present.

This introduction now develops these four key themes and then outlines the structure of the book and the contributions that comprise the volume.

Multiple temporalities

A number of contributors found a distinction between temporalities shaped by institutions such as those in charge of reparations, trials and truth commissions, and the temporalities corresponding to the lived experiences of people affected by violence. In the Argentinian context (van Roekel, Chapter 5 in this volume), victims’ histories of the last dictatorship and its aftermath were a ‘collective jumble of significant personal episodes that did not follow an established chronological thread of events’; conversely, for military officers, by institutionalising and materialising violence, time was an ‘orderly and fixed business’ with emphasis on the future. In communities in post-war Mozambique (Igreja, Chapter 6), embodied accountability, such as the intrusion of spirits of the dead, pursues liability for serious violations committed over an indeterminate time span and irrespective of the passage of time. These embodied accountability practices can be contrasted with the temporality of global accountability projects, as encapsulated in transitional justice, which involve predetermined time frames and a clear division between past and present.

Importantly, these contributions demonstrate alternative conceptions of time that are used to engage, cope and survive the long-term effects of atrocity and other forms of human rights violations. They highlight that local workings of time shape practices of remembering, reconstruction and accountability. However, although it is crucial for our understanding of societies emerging from conflict and authoritarianism to recognise the existence of these different temporalities, this recognition can have disempowering effects for marginalised people, given the hierarchies and power differentials in the uses and understandings of time.

The idea of the disempowering effect of the notion that certain groups belong to different temporalities is not new. Johannes Fabian (1983: 1), in his analysis of the uses of time in anthropology, exposed that certain time discourses are employed in the description of the ‘other’ and function to create distance in a seemingly neutral manner or in describing certain groups as archaic, tribal or primitive. The ‘temporalising of difference’ can involve the labelling of ‘other’ people, cultures and societies as belonging to the past, which gives rise to associated claims about their irrationality, underdevelopment, rituals, religiosity, and so on (Helliwell and Hindess 2005).

Time and unequal power relations

We can observe this link between time and power in relation to victims/survivors in post-conflict societies, who, after a certain amount of time has passed, are often portrayed as anachronistic, as belonging to a different time, being unwilling to ‘move on’ into the democratic era, or failing to conform to the dominant post-conflict temporality. Victims/ survivors, but also other groups in society, can feel ‘lost in transition’ (Pedersen and Højer 2008) or ‘out of sync’ with the rest of society (Mueller-Hirth 2017: 200). Societal pressure to forget the past or to forgive can result in a denial of their rhythm of possible reconciliation in favour of political reconciliation demanded from governments facing vulnerable transitions, as is investigated by Rios Oyola in relation to Colombia and by Benda with regards to Rwanda in this volume (Chapters 4 and 8, respectively). Benda explores the different versions of future and past used by policy makers in post-genocide Rwanda. Rios Oyola investigates how the temporality of political peace processes influences the temporality of social peace processes, analysing this relationship in terms of social acceleration. Social and political expectations about the timing, duration and pace of people’s victimhood and their willingness to forgive, which reflect linear ‘transitional justice time’ (H...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• 1. Introduction: Temporal perspectives on transitional and post-conflict societies
• PART I: Questioning transitional justice time
• PART II: Coexisting and conflicting temporalities
• PART III: Intergenerational transmission and memorialisation
• Index