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Over the years, internationally-minded archivists have had to consider the possibility of taking custody of archives from another country because the archives are at risk in their country of origin. The risks may take many forms, but archives in war-zones and other disaster areas, and archives at environmental risk (including risks of climate change) provide striking examples. The removal of archives from one country to another is always likely to be controversial, however, and even...

For several decades, Japan kept in place significant self-imposed constraints on its security policy even as its economy grew tremendously. While it has been argued that Japan refrained from enacting security policy change because of strong domestic pacifist or anti-militarist sentiments, recently, radical policy changes have nonetheless taken place. How can these changes be understood? The existing explanations typically see them as a response to objectively existing or constructed external...

La movilización de todos los recursos durante la Guerra Civil Española alcanzó también el ámbito de la Cultura y la Gestión del Patrimonio. Si bien son más conocidas iniciativas relacionadas con el Museo del Prado o la Biblioteca Nacional, desde el principio se tuvo en cuenta la creación de un Archivo de la Guerra, donde se reunirían todos los testimonios escritos de todas aquellas unidades militares o asociaciones políticas que lucharon en defensa de la República. Este archivo, después de...

El descubrimiento y posterior proceso de recuperación del Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional de Guatemala supone una de las mayores experiencias exitosas de mayor alcance en América Latina en el uso de los archivos como instrumentos de apoyo a la defensa de los derechos humanos y a la construcción de los procesos de memoria histórica. pero la situación en la que hoy se encuentran los documentos producidos por la Policía Nacional entre 1881 y 1997 puede definirse claramente como de encrucijada.

Japan’s kyōkasho mondai (history textbook controversy) is at a crossroads. This article tries to exemplify it through the analysis of three issue areas at three levels (international, domestic, and societal). Internationally, the study looks into the failure of much anticipated joint history writing projects with China (2006–2010) and South Korea (2002–2005, 2007–2010). Domestically, this study problematises the recent politicisation of the textbook adoption system through the analysis of...

UNESCO’s ‘Memory of the World’ Programme promotes the preservation, universal access and public awareness of the world’s significant documents as the common heritage of all humankind. The inscription of the ‘Documents of Nanjing Massacre’ into the ‘Memory of the World’ Register in 2015 reflects an increasingly globalised concern in the post–Cold War era over the remembrance of war and atrocity. Yet it has reignited the tension between Japan and China, resulting in strong pressure on UNESCO to...

On China's web, networked actors ranging from state agencies to private Internet users engage in highly active online discourse. Yet as diverse as this discourse may be, political content remains highly regulated, particularly on issues that affect the legitimacy of the ruling party. A prominent issue in this regard has been modern Chinese history, particularly the "national humiliation" that Japan inflicted on China's populace during events like the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. This article asks...

A pesar de que la violencia política desatada por Sendero Luminoso y el Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru contra el Estado Peruano (1980-2000) marcó profundamente nuestra historia, las políticas públicas de memoria y conmemoración de estos años son aún incipientes. No sorprende que la concreción de un proyecto estatal como el Lugar de la Memoria, la Tolerancia y la Inclusión Social (LUM) en Lima, capital de la República peruana, tuviera que responder a distintos retos, políticos,...

Resumen La impunidad de las violaciones de derechos humanos cometidas en el marco de la actividad empresarial ha sido motivo de preocupación para numerosos organismos internacionales en los últimos decenios. Desde las recomendaciones de la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos, organismo pionero en esta preocupación, han sido numerosos los instrumentos internacionales que se han elaborado sobre el tema. Pero son los Principios rectores sobre las empresas y los...

This paper investigates how the production of police records was linked to the policies of repression and violence during Guatemala’s civil war. We provide empirical evidence from the Historical Archive of the Guatemalan National Police that the police used language, terminology and codes to record deaths in ways that produced silences about the level of violence during the height of repressive military rule. Using a dataset derived from a statistically valid sample of police records...

The centrality of atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese collective memory has been often perceived by the country’s neighbours, i.e. the People’s Republic of China and South Korea, as a pillar of the country’s (alleged) ‘victim consciousness’ and amnesia in regard to the suffering inflicted on others. For this reason, the matter of how Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s fate is discussed on the pages of joint teaching materials is an interesting puzzle. The article uses two...

This article contributes to the relational IR literature on identity politics and Sino-Japanese relations. Theoretically, we develop Rumelili's framework for studying modes of differentiation by incorporating the sectoral characteristics of key discourse signs. Empirically, we apply this framework to the construction of Self and Other in the official Japanese security discourse regarding the Senkaku Islands dispute from 2010–2014, a period of dispute climax that is meaningful for studying...

Why do interstate relations deteriorate and become conflictual, even under conditions where one might expect improved ties? The article seeks an answer to this question through a case study of the deterioration in Sino-Japanese relations in the twenty-first century, which took place despite the existence of several factors that might be thought likely to have led to an improvement. Existing theoretical approaches cannot fully explain this puzzle. The article argues that such deteriorations...

This paper explores the idea of “recuperative memory” with respect to the process of coming to terms with the past after the fall of the Romanian Communist regime in 1989. Its method is to examine the mechanisms used by recuperative memory in order to re-appropriate the past and emphasize the inherently mediated and multifaceted nature of this process. Using various examples from oral testimonies, autobiographical writings, literary works, and cinema, the paper argues that the role of...

Recent thinking and practice in transitional justice suggest that victims and societies hold indivisible, perhaps even simultaneous, rights to truth, justice and reparations after gross human rights violations. This article analyses the advantages and drawbacks of such holistic approaches to transitional justice, through a case study of Chile’s second official truth commission, the ‘Valech Commission’. The article illustrates the politics of ongoing contestation about authoritarian era crimes...