Doctoral Dissertation Research: Effects of Transitional Justice Processes in the Aftermath of Argentina's Dirty War

纽约大学博士生Venkatesan Natarajan将在Sally Merry博士的指导下，对内战后的过渡时期司法进程和国家建设进行人类学研究。他将通过透镜来看待这些现象，即构建对政治暴力负有责任的人的类别，以及被认定为负有责任的人理解、处理和谈判这种标签的方式。如今，世界上许多国家都开展了过渡时期正义和国家建设运动，要了解这些运动如何以及是否成功，需要对受影响的人进行深入的地方研究。Natarajan将在“肮脏战争”（1976-1983）后的阿根廷布宜诺斯艾利斯和图库曼市开展这项研究。研究者将重点放在两个对立的社会群体，他假设这两个群体都有助于战后社会的建设。第一类是军人，他们把独裁统治的历史作为国防的一部分来讲授，并继续把自己理解为国家的捍卫者。 第二类是收养战争期间政治上“失踪”的妇女所生子女的家庭，其中许多家庭也来自军队。一些养父母继续与他们抚养的孩子保持联系，而另一些养父母则与他们抚养的孩子断绝了一切联系。两组的样本均将纳入研究。研究方法将包括长期参与观察、收集生活史、收集和分析社会网络数据、结构化和半结构化访谈以及分析档案人权和媒体报道。 这项研究的结果将有助于从社会科学的角度了解各国在政治暴力之后恢复和重建的过程。这项研究很重要，因为它将有助于更广泛地讨论在内战结束后关闭的可能性。 它还将有助于了解过渡时期司法方法是否是各国在重建社会生活时使用的最适当模式。 资助这项研究也支持社会科学家的教育。

New York University doctoral student Venkatesan Natarajan, supervised by Dr. Sally Merry, will undertake anthropological research on transitional justice processes and nation-building in the aftermath of civil war. The lens through which he will view these phenomena is the construction of categories of people held responsible for political violence, and the ways people identified as responsible understand, deal with, and negotiate this labeling. Transitional justice and nation-building movements are now found in many nations of the world, and understanding how and whether they are successful requires intensive local-level research with those affected.Natarajan will carry out this research in post-"Dirty War" (1976-1983) Argentina, in the cities of Buenos Aires and Tucuman. The researcher will be focus on two contrasting social groups, both of which he hypothesizes contribute to the construction of post-war society. The first group are military personnel, who teach the history of the dictatorship as one of national defense, and continue to undestand themselves as the defenders of the nation. The second group are the families, many of them also from the military, who adopted children born to women who were politically "disappeared" during the war. Some adoptive parents continue to maintain ties with the children they raised, whereas other adoptive parents and the children they raised have cut off all contact. Samples of both groups will be included in the study. Research methods will include long-term participant observation, the collection of life histories, collection and analysis of social network data, structured and semi-structured interviewing, and analysis of archival human rights and media reports. Findings from this research will contribute to social scientific understanding of the processes through which nations recover and rebuild themselves in the aftermath of political violence. The research is important because it will contribute to broader discussions about what possibilities exist for closure in the aftermath of civil war. It also will help to understand whether the transitional justice approach is the most appropriate model for nations to use as they go about rebuilding social life. Funding this research also supports the education of a social scientist.