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Settling Accounts – Violence, Justice & Accountability in Postsocialist Europe: Violence, Justice, and Accountability in Postsocialist Europe
Author(s): John Borneman (Author)
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication Date: 22 Dec. 1997
- Language: English
- Print length: 218 pages
- ISBN-10: 0691016828
- ISBN-13: 9780691016825
Book Description
As new states in the former Eastern bloc begin to reckon with their criminal pasts in the years following a revolutionary change of regimes, a pattern has emerged: in those states where some form of retributive justice has been enacted, there has been much less of a recourse to collective retributive violence. This text explores the attempts by these aspiring democractic states to invoke the principles of the “rule of law” as a means of achieving retributive justice, that is convicting wrongdoers and restoring dignity to victims of moral injuries. It maintains that democratic regimes require a strict form of accountability that holds leaders responsible for acts of criminality. This accountability is embodied in the principles of the rule of law, and retribution is at the moral centre of these principles.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“As Borneman notes, from Argentina to South Korea, people are struggling with the proper response to past abuse. . . . [Readers} will be rewarded with a subtle, albeit hardly indisputable, notion of ‘retributive justice’ and its value.” ― Foreign Affairs
About the Author
John Borneman is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University. He is the author of After the Wall: East Meets West in the New Berlin, Belonging in the Two Berlins: Kin, State, Nation, and Subversions of International Order: Studies in the Political Anthropology of Culture.
