Book contents
- Navigating Local Transitional Justice
- African Studies Series
- Navigating Local Transitional Justice
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Maps
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Agency in Times of Transitional Justice
- 2 Navigating Violence, Peace and Justice
- 3 Deconstructing Fambul Tok’s Discourse and Practice
- 4 Participant Experiences with Fambul Tok’s Program
- 5 Unrecognized Mechanisms, Normality and Everyday Realities in Transition
- 6 Activating Justice
- Appendix A: Informant Interview List
- References
- Index
- African Studies Series
6 - Activating Justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 July 2023
- Navigating Local Transitional Justice
- African Studies Series
- Navigating Local Transitional Justice
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Maps
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Agency in Times of Transitional Justice
- 2 Navigating Violence, Peace and Justice
- 3 Deconstructing Fambul Tok’s Discourse and Practice
- 4 Participant Experiences with Fambul Tok’s Program
- 5 Unrecognized Mechanisms, Normality and Everyday Realities in Transition
- 6 Activating Justice
- Appendix A: Informant Interview List
- References
- Index
- African Studies Series
Summary
This chapter concludes by revisiting the literature on local transitional justice to demonstrate the importance of looking at social structures and individual agency to better understand these processes and programs. I will elaborate on how recognized mechanisms in Sierra Leone were, in fact, both physically and psychologically distanced from people’s everyday priorities, further begging the question for whom these institutions implemented and why? Therefore, engaging with transitional justice mechanisms is both conceptually and practically privileged. This goes beyond simply critiquing transitional justice mechanisms to interrogate its conceptual and institutional foundations. The alternative ways people engaged with and outside of these programs demonstrate how people enacted transitions and justice on their own, often individual terms, both in relation to the conflict and other, more contemporary issues. Therefore, justice is not something to be done to or for people, as is often how the discourses have been framed with individuals as passive participants for whom justice is being served; rather, justice is something you can mobilize and do for yourself to address individual and communal needs.
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- Navigating Local Transitional JusticeAgency at Work in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone, pp. 158 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023