Transitional Justice for Foxes

Offering a pluralist reading of transitional justice, this book focuses on dealing with value and interest conflicts constructively and encourages diversity in approaches to transitional situations. Using interdisciplinary techniques, it offers an enriched, more systematic perspective on a field that is still undertheorized and misunderstood.

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There is a memorable line by ancient Greek poet Archilochus: 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.' Drawing on this metaphor made popular by Isaiah Berlin, this book sets out to 'think like a fox' about transitional justice in an intellectual environment largely dominated by hedgehogs. Critical of the unitary 'hedgehog-like' vision underlying mainstream discourse, this book proposes a pluralist reading of the field. It asks: What would it mean for transitional justice to constructively deal with conflicts of values and interests in societies grappling with a violent past? And what would it imply to make meaningful room for diversity, to see 'the many' rather than just 'the one'?