Book Notes
Waging War, Making Peace is a collection of essays that examines, through anthropological case studies, the necessity and efficacy of reparations in post-conflict and transitional societies. The editors, as well as many of the individual authors, distinguish anthropology’s focus on individuals and groups from the traditional legal focus on state responsibility. Through the examination of case studies in Nicaragua, Peru, Morocco, the United States, Diego Garcia, Belize, Guatemala, Cyprus, and Israel-Palestine, the editors make three crucial points: reparations “must be construed more broadly” to include offerings other than monetary compensation and to include group, as well as individual, harms; the victims-survivors hemselves must be intimately involved as individuals and communities in determining appropriate
reparations; and anthropology as a field, along with other social science disciplines, has much to offer the legal human rights world in designing programs that effect long-term peace.
