Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften Reconciliation in Bloodlands: Assessing Actions and Outcomes in Contemporary Central-Eastern Europe: 3 (Polish Studies in Culture, Nations and Politics)

Product Description Central-Eastern Europe, in the mid-20 th century, was a scene of Holocaust, mass killings, war, deportations and forced resettlements under the competing totalitarian invasions and afterwards. It was also the area where churches, politicians and citizens were engaged in reconciliation between antagonized religions and nations. This book presents several attempts to heal relations between Poles, Jews, Germans, Czechs, Ukrainians, Russians and Latvians as well as between Catholics, Protestants and Mariavites. Re-conciliatory practices of John Paul II and other Catholic leaders as well as Protestant churches are analysed in the first part of the book. Most of the remaining studies are focused on particular localities in Upper Silesia, Cieszyn Silesia, former Polish Livland and on the Polish-Ukrainian borderland. These detailed contributions combine sociological methods with anthropological insight and historical context. The authors are sociologists, psychologists and theologians and this leads to a fully interdisciplinary approach in the assessment of the recent state of inter-group relations in the region as well as in the proposed theory of peacebuilding and reconciliation. About the Author Jacek Kurczewski holds the Chair of Sociology and Anthropology of Custom and Law at the Institute of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw (Poland). The professor’s main areas of interest are sociology and anthropology of law, political representation, and local-level politics. In 1997/98, he was Academic Director at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Oñati (Spain). He is editor of the journal Societas/Communitas.