Lisa Strömbom - Böcker

This is a book about the power of memory in fractured societies and initiatives that resist pressures to simplify history. It traces the intricate pathways of local dialogue initiatives in three of the world's most emotionally charged conflicts: Colombia, Israel-Palestine, and Northern Ireland.There, the past is always contested terrain—it is present, alive and deeply political. The book draws on agonistic peace theory, which proposes continued contestation, discussion and disagreement - in non-violent, constructive forms - as the most productive way to transform violent conflicts.Focusing on how local organisations can work to facilitate dialogue about conflict memory, the analyses rely on interview-based case studies where organisations working on bringing people together to juxtapose their memories of these conflicts are probed. The results underline that safeguarding dialogue spaces, stimulating counter-hegemonic forces and the circulation of memory between memoryscapes at different scales are crucial enabling factors for successful agonistic memory work.

Very rarely has peace and conflict studies been combined with public administration research. Divided Cities Governing Diversity brings together theories from conflict resolution, public administration, and urban studies to present new theoretical and empirical insights from nine in-depth case studies. The authors employ the city as a prism to shed light on the com¬plex, multidimensional processes of conflict, segregation, democratization, and governance. They use the city as a diagnostic site for exploring the role of public administration and civil servants in resolving contested issues in divided societies. The researchers analyse nine multifaceted cases: Toronto, Copenhagen, Malmö, Mostar, Cape Town, Belfast, Jerusalem, Nicosia and Mitrovica all cities at different stages of conflict and stability and with disparate legacies. The contributors map the tools, strate-gies, and understandings of conflict resolution to be found in each city, and in so doing break new empirical and theoretical ground.