PART I
COLLECTIVE TRAUMA: AN INTRODUCTION
1. Introduction to Trauma, a Capacious Social Concept
2. Impaired Meaning Making, Trauma’s Meta-Effect
3. Some Distinctive Aspects of Collective Trauma
PART II
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ARMENIAN-TURKISH RELATIONSHIP
4. The Tangled Roots of Homeland and Identity
5. The Riddle of Ottomanism
6. The Unlikely Alliance against the Sultan
7. The Final Path to Imperial Ruin
8. Five Men’s Traumatisation before they Acquired Power
9. The Armenian Genocide
PART III
VIOLENT ENTITLEMENT CARRIED INTO ARMENIAN-AZERBAIJANI RELATIONS IN
TRANSCAUCASIA
10. Enemies or Allies? Armenian–Azerbaijani Relations,
1850–1915
11. A Kaleidoscope of Armenian–Muslim Relations in the Intense
Dynamics of Transcaucasia and Baku in 1917
12. Bolshevik Decrees and Anarchy in the Borderlands, Late
1917–Early 1918
13. How World War I Ended in Transcaucasia: Betrayal, New
Republics, Race Murder
14. Baku, 1917–1918: More Conflict, its Seeds Planted for
Transmission
15. World War I’s End in Eastern Transcaucasia: War Fever Sparks
the Turan Quest and Race Murder
PART IV
ANALYSING AND PROCESSING COLLECTIVE TRAUMA: IS A DIFFERENT FUTURE
POSSIBLE?
16. How People Make Meaning in General, and Illustrated by an
Armenian and a Turk
17. Meaning Making with Trauma and Relative Powerlessness in the
Armenian People as a Whole
18. Meaning Making with Trauma and Relative Power among Turks
Conclusion: Processing Collective Trauma Collectively: Will We?
This book offers an innovative perspective on conflict, looking at the impact of collective trauma.
Pamela Steiner is Senior Fellow, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University.
The author’s statement that 'I decided to write this book when I
believed I had a fresh and useful perspective to share,' perfectly
encapsulates the importance and value of the book you are holding
in your hands. Steiner examines, perhaps for the first time, the
role collective trauma played among three peoples – Armenians,
Azerbaijanis and Turks – and in their mutual relations. She shows
how this collective trauma and those that followed are not only the
product of their yet unresolved conflicts, but also serve as major
stumbling blocks for a better future in the region. For them, the
Armenian genocide is like an inescapable psychic maze of trauma,
one in which they are trapped and unable to see beyond. If there is
indeed a way out of this labyrinth, Steiner's work will serve as a
torch, lighting the way.
*Taner Akcam, Professor of History, Clark University*
Pam Steiner has written a pathbreaking study of collective trauma,
providing a compelling analysis of a concept that scholars and
practitioners often invoke but until now have not fully understood.
By using extensive data from the Armenia-Turkey-Azerbaijan case, Dr
Steiner demonstrates how crucial it is for effective policy
prescription to be based on conflict analysis with deep historical
and psychological elements. This book will revolutionize how
conflict analysis is done, as it gives both urgency and guidance
for why and how a ‘walk through history’ must be conducted.
*Eileen Babbitt, Professor of Practice of International Conflict
Management, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts
University*
Collective trauma displays a compounding character that multiplies
the impacts of its many dimensions and confounds the work of
post-conflict healing. Pamela Steiner guides her readers through a
trauma-informed understanding of what she calls the 'frozen
ethno-national conflicts' that haunt modern Armenian, Turkish, and
Azerbaijani relations. As the Great Granddaughter of Henry
Morgenthau and an experienced facilitator of conflict resolution,
Steiner adds personal and professional linkages to the case studies
she addresses and the insights she offers regarding the
complicating power that collective trauma adds to this complex
history and situation.
*Henry F Knight, Former Director of the Cohen Center for Holocaust
and Genocide Studies, Keene State College*
Pam Steiner offers a fresh and enlightening perspective on
otherwise well-known events and conflicts. Collective Trauma and
the Armenian Genocide constitutes an important contribution to the
understanding of conflicts and the difficulties in resolving them.
Steiner has painstakingly researched a wide array of sources and
professionally analyzed the role of collective trauma in the
apparent intractability of two conflicts, Turkish/Armenian and
Armenian/Azeri. Rather than attempting to seek a reconciliation of
two seemingly irreconcilable positions in each by trying to find a
middle point, Steiner has used the concept of collective trauma to
humanize and integrate the problems of both sides. She has done so
by manifesting much empathy and genuine concern for the human
experience of everyone concerned. Steiner has also provided a most
useful list of steps that can be taken to overcome the impact of
the traumas that have compromised the judgment of the traumatized
groups.
*Gerard Libaridian, Former Alex Manoogian Chair in Modern Armenian
History, University of Michigan*
A powerful and deeply moving contribution to the field of conflict
resolution. Using her unique collective trauma lens, Steiner, while
probing deeply into the traumatic underbelly of the tormented
relationship between Armenia and Turkey, provides a powerful
framework for understanding and diagnosing the nature of all
intractable conflict. In a world becoming increasingly polarized,
this compelling book offers a much-needed vision for how human
beings might begin to heal the deep, historic wounds that keep so
many communities divided and imprisoned.
*Hugh O’Doherty, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, John F Kennedy
School of Government, Harvard University*
A deep, insightful exploration of the psychological dimensions of
one of the pivotal events in the history of the 20th-century and
its relevance to us today.
*Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University*
In this unique, groundbreakingly multidisciplinary, and
exceptionally valuable book, Dr Pamela Steiner provides a lucid
history of the long, complex, murderously intractable antagonism
between Armenians and Turks and Azerbaijanis. More ambitiously, she
also integrates recent international research on individual
psychology, collective trauma, reconciliation and peace building as
foundations for a comprehensive understanding of the underlying
dynamics of other intergenerational cycles of atrocity, trauma,
humiliation, denial and revenge, which remain so depressingly
prominent in global politics. And all of this is combined with
vivid, often sobering, illustrations from her own professional
experience as a psychologist and psychotherapist with regional
peace activists.
*Paul Schulte, Senior Visiting Fellow, Centre for Defence Studies,
King's College London*
A close Arab Israeli friend once told me: 'the Middle East has
always devoured its children'. In this thoroughly researched and
deeply engaging book, Collective Trauma and the Armenian Genocide,
Pam Steiner, an experienced psychotherapist and peace negotiator,
illustrates the truth of this statement in her history of
Armenian-Turkish-Azerbaijani relationships over the past 180 years.
Tragically, it shows how not only individuals, but whole ethnic
groups derive a deep sense of collective meaning from past injury,
and that a quest for justice (or revenge) can sustain, and even
nurture, national identities from generation to generation. This
book can make a significant contribution to any discussion about
how collective historical trauma can be laid to rest, so that
communities can re-focus their energies on building a better future
for themselves and their children.
*Bessel van der Kolk, Founder and Chair, Trauma Research
Foundation*
[T]his book will be valuable reading even for people not deeply
interested in Turkey. It is a great account of the grandeur of the
collapse of empire, the frenzied machinations to hold on to power
and assets, the pernicious interplay between aspirations in peace
and aggression in war, and the persistence of the trauma
narrative.
*Jennifer Leaning, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human
Rights, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University
(from the foreword)*
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