A transdisciplinary approach to reconciliation practices and policies by an international team of scholars and scholar-practitioners. When we open the newspaper, watch and listen to the news, or follow social media, we are inundated with reports on old and fresh conflict zones around the world. Less apparent, perhaps, are the many attempts at bringing former adversaries together. Reconciliation in Global Context argues for the merit of reconciliation and for the need of global conversations around this topic. The contributing scholars and scholar-practitioners—who hail from the United States, South Africa, Ireland, Israel, Zimbabwe, Germany, Palestine, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Switzerland, and the Netherlands—describe and analyze examples of reconciliatory practices in different national and political environments. Drawing on direct experiences with reconciliation efforts, from facilitating psychosocial intergroup workshops to critically evaluating official policies, they also reflect on the personal motivations that guide them in this field of engagement. Arranged along an arc that spans from cases describing and interpreting actual processes with groups in conflict to cases in which the conceptual merits and constraints of reconciliation are brought to the fore, the chapters ask hard questions, but also argue for a relational approach to reconciliatory practices. For, in the end, what is important is to embrace a spirit of reconciliation that avoids self-interested action and, instead, advances other-directed care. “This is simply the finest collection of essays on reconciliation processes working at the grassroots and mid-levels of societies I have ever seen. It takes up important issues and moves the discussion forward in each instance.” — Robert J. Schreiter, author of Constructing Local Theologies

Though conflict is normal and can never fully be prevented in the international arena, such conflicts should not lead to loss of innocent life. Tourism can offer a bottom-up approach in the mediation process and contribute to the transformation of conflicts by allowing a way to contradict official barriers motivated by religious, political, or ethnic division. Tourism has both the means and the motivation to ensure the long-term success of prevention efforts. Role and Impact of Tourism in Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation is an essential reference source that provides an approach to peace through tourism by presenting a theoretical framework of tourism dynamics in international relations, as well as a set of peacebuilding case studies that illustrate the role of tourism in violent or critical scenarios of conflict. Featuring research on topics such as cultural diversity, multicultural interaction, and international relations, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, government officials, international relations experts, academicians, students, and researchers.