Violent Accounts : : Understanding the Psychology of Perpetrators through South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission / / Robert N. Kraft.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Kraft, Robert N.,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2014]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Series: Qualitative Studies in Psychology ; 9
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

Violent Accounts presents a compelling study of how ordinary people commit extraordinary acts of violence and how perpetrators and victims manage in the aftermath. Grounded in extensive, qualitative analysis of perpetrator testimony, the volume reveals the individual experiences of perpetrators as well as general patterns of influence that lead to collective violence. Drawing on public testimony from the amnesty hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the book interweaves hundreds of hours of testimony from seventy-four violent perpetrators in apartheid South Africa, including twelve major cases that involved direct interactions between victims and perpetrators. The analysis of perpetrator testimony covers all tiers on the hierarchy of organized violence, from executives who translated political doctrine into general strategies, to managers who translated these general strategies into specific plans, to the staff-the foot soldiers-who carried out the destructive plans of these managers. Vivid and accessible, Violent Accounts is a work of innovative scholarship that transcends the particulars of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to reveal broader themes and unexpected insights about perpetrators of collective violence, the confrontations between victims and perpetrators in the aftermath of this violence, the reality of multiple truths, the complexities of reconciliation, and lessons of restorative justice.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Regarding Perpetrators -- 2. Apartheid and Amnesty -- 3. Understanding Crimes of Allegiance -- 4. Uncovering Truth -- 5. Reconciling Testimony -- 6. Beyond the TRC -- Conclusions -- Appendix -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author