The Politics of Official Apologies

Erscheinungsjahr 2008
ISBN: 978-0-521-87231-7
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 216 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 410 g

Intense interest in past injustice lies at the centre of contemporary world politics. Most scholarly and public attention has focused on truth commissions, trials, lustration, and other related decisions, following political transitions. This book examines the political uses of official apologies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. It explores why minority groups demand such apologies and why governments do or do not offer them. Nobles argues that apologies can help to alter the terms and meanings of national membership. Minority groups demand apologies in order to focus attention on historical injustices. Similarly, state actors support apologies for ideological and moral reasons, driven by their support of group rights, responsiveness to group demands, and belief that acknowledgment is due. Apologies, as employed by political actors, play an important, if underappreciated, role in bringing certain views about history and moral obligation to bear in public life.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nobles, Melissa (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Nobles, Melissa

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftspolitik, politische Ökonomie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politikberatung
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Konflikt- und Friedensforschung, Rüstungskontrolle, Abrüstung
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Methodenlehre
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Friedens- und Konfliktforschung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Toward a membership theory of apologies; 2. History of national memberships in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States; 3. To apologize or not to apologize: national histories and official apologies; 4. Beyond sentiment? Apologies and their effects; 5. The weight of history and the value of apologies.

Über Autor(innen)

Nobles, Melissa
Melissa Nobles (BA in History, Brown University; Ph.D. in Political Science, Yale University) is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Nobles' teaching and research interests are in the comparative study of racial and ethnic politics and issues of retrospective justice. She is the author of Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (2000), which received the 2001 Outstanding Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, as well as honorable mention of the Ralph Bunche Book Award from the American Political Science Association. Nobles has been a Fellow at Boston University's Institute on Race and Social Division (2000–1) and Harvard University's Radcliffe Center for Advanced Study (2003–4).