Bryan Mark Urbsaitis

Wounded Healers & Reconciliation Fatigue: the Search for Social Justice & Sustainable Development in South Africa Bryan Mark Urbsaitis

How do NGOs' understandings of reconciliation differ from those of their clients within a larger project of national healing? How do staff at these NGOs balance remembering the past with nation-building and international development when they may be victims themselves? Why do certain groups and individuals continue to feel marginalized so long after liberation? And how might NGOs in South Africa constitute a reconciliation social movement? Wounded Healers argues that while South Africans have been reconciling apartheid-era abuses since 1994, ongoing reconciliation struggles of individuals must not be overlooked within the larger quest for national healing. Focusing on memorialization, missing persons, 30,000R reparation payouts, as well as on the continued oppression of marginalized identity based on culture, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and HIV and AIDS, this ethnographic analysis will appeal to all those interested in post-conflict democratization, NGOs, international development, non-Western communication, conflict & peace-building, communication education, ethnography, cultural anthropology, activism, Africa, and anyone interested in global social justice.