This book is a social scientific assessment of contemporary crucial inter-faith and inter-ethnic relations in Central-Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism. It puts special emphasis on successes and failures of deliberate actions, aiming at mutual reconciliation and integration of local communities.

Central-Eastern Europe, in the mid-20th 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.

Autorentext

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.

Inhalt

Contents: Jacek Kurczewski: Bloodlands à la longue durée - Introduction - Joanna Kurczewska: Anthropology in Service of Reconciliation - Iwona Jakubowska-Branicka: Hate Narrations - Aneta Gawkowska: Love Speech as Action. John Paul II Teaching and Practice - Pawel Spiewak: Reconciliation with the Absent: Poles and Jews in Democratic Poland - Michal Bilewicz/Anna Stefaniak/Marta Witkowska: Polish Youth Confronting the Jewish Past: Antagonistic History and Pathways to Reconciliation - Henryk Czech: Reconciled Diversity - Contribution of the Opole Catholic Church to the Reconciliation of Ethnic Groups, Traditions and Cultures - Józef Szymeczek: Polish Protestants in Trans-Olza Cieszyn Silesia Towards the Polish-German and Czech-German Reconciliation - Aniela Rózanska: Young People of Cieszyn Silesia in Interfaith Dialogue - Aleksandra Herman: The Reconciliation Through A Marriage: A Comparative Study of Marital Selection in Two Polish Bi-denominational Communities - Halina Rusek/Andrzej Kasperek: Memory Sites versus Antagonism and Reconciliation: The Case of Polish-Czech Relations - Vladislav Volkov: Latvian-Russian Relations in Daugavpils Since 1991 - Malgorzata Fuszara: Kresowianie: The Polish Expellees' Perspective on Reconciliation - Dariusz Wojakowski: Past, Conflicts and Seeking of Reconciliation on the Polish-Ukrainian Borderland - Krzysztof Czyzewski: The Culture of Coexistence in the longue durée. On Practising the Ethos of the Borderland - Jacek Kurczewski: Compelled to be Neighbours: A Small Polish Town in Former Germany - Jacek Kurczewski: Reconciliation in the Bloodlands - Concluding Remarks.