This chapter examines the evolving engagement of the Syrian diaspora in Germany with justice processes through the lens of post-revolutionary diasporic consciousness. It focuses on the intersection between accountability for the Assad regime’s atrocities and the broader struggle against structural oppression and political exclusion in exile. Syrians living in the diaspora face a dual struggle. They address Syria’s violent past while grappling with marginalisation in host countries. Disillusionment with Universal Jurisdiction frameworks, coupled with anti-migration policies, has led to a shift towards grassroots and artistic practices that better reflect lived realities. As a result, Syrian justice efforts simultaneously mobilise and demobilise elements of different transitional justice approaches, rather than following a linear progression or standardised logic. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2019 and 2024, the chapter argues that the intersecting identities and positionalities of Syrian migrants shape intersecting justice struggles, reframing justice as a transnational, multi-faceted pursuit of recognition, inclusion, and agency.

Friendship is a consequential relationship for child development and well-being. This chapter examines recent research on three major themes related to children’s friendships. We begin by reviewing findings from several long-term longitudinal studies documenting the diverse and multifaceted impacts of childhood and adolescent friendship competencies and experiences on later adjustment. We also highlight how these long-term longitudinal studies have allowed researchers to test and refine theoretical perspectives about how early family and peer relationships facilitate the development of skills and understandings that set the stage for social competence and positive adjustment later in development. With this as background, we review theory and research on the processes and provisions that characterize children’s friendships, and then describe important contextual factors that affect children’s friendships, with a particular focus on the school context and how contextual factors can facilitate or undermine the development and maintenance of cross-group friendship.

Businesses have a long-standing record of involvement in severe human rights violations, a trend that continues today and is likely to persist, and that is often aggravated during periods of conflict. However, corporate actors have mostly been excluded from transitional justice mechanisms, and corporate accountability remains an elusive element of transitional justice. In this context of impunity, scholars have called for the inclusion of economic actors in transitional justice processes and for stronger links between the transitional justice and business and human rights (BHR) fields. Focusing on Colombia, this chapter explores the mobilisation of victims’ organisations during and after the Peace Agreements, highlighting their pivotal role in shaping transitional justice and BHR debates and contesting corporate impunity. It underscores the need for context-sensitive, legally binding accountability mechanisms, and argues that addressing corporate complicity in conflict is not only essential for achieving justice but also a demand rooted in victims’ lived experiences, offering valuable insights for the intersection of transitional justice and BHR.

While the international legal issues related to the search for disappeared persons have received considerable attention, limited research has been conducted on how participation in the search impacts victims’ lives. In particular, we argue that the importance of victim recognition needs to be inserted into these discussions, and our understanding improved about what types of institutional and social responses are needed to ensure effective and victim-oriented search processes. Our chapter utilises the concept of ‘recognition relationships’ with reference to two cases: Colombia and El Salvador. Our discussion illuminates the ways in which a focus on recognition relationships captures the dynamics of power, mobilisation, and participation which are central to any successful and just search process.

Despite variation in their social needs and experiences, all humans require social connections to thrive. When humans lack fulfilling connections, they experience loneliness. However, while seemingly simple, loneliness is a multidimensional construct arising from varied social deficiencies and leading to varied psychological experiences. This chapter reviews the literature on loneliness, describing what it is, why we experience it, its prevalence and consequences, and what is being done globally to address it. In doing so, we highlight the considerable impacts of loneliness on individuals and society, its complexity, and the opportunities for future work. We close acknowledging the significant advancements made in loneliness research over the past several decades and highlight how this knowledge is being mobilized to advance the prevention and treatment of loneliness. In doing so, we hope this chapter serves as a useful starting point for understanding the problem of loneliness and the challenge of addressing it.

In situations of aparadigmatic transitions, where formal transitional justice mechanisms do not exist, or may only partially exist, ‘victims’ are typically the most active drivers behind a range of intersecting justice struggles. Based on the author’s fieldwork in Kabul with war victims since 2008, this chapter underlines the importance of a bottom-up and victim-centred approach towards memorialisation and accountability efforts. This approach emphasises participation, agency and empowerment. In particular, it elaborates on the meaningfulness of methodologies used in the Theatre of the Oppressed to engage, raise awareness, and create participatory forums for war victims in Afghanistan from 2009 to August 2021. These methodologies offer various perspectives on understanding the protagonism of victims, and require us to embrace and recognise different approaches to engaging in the justice process.

The current chapter focuses on basic properties of communication that inform the ways that the study of communication and the study of relationships intersect. These properties include interdependence (the idea that messages simultaneously influence and are influenced by messages that precede and follow them), reflexivity (the notion that communication creates and is constrained by structure), complexity (the concept that communication conveys multiple messages and functions at different levels of analysis), ambiguity (the notion that any given message has various meanings), and indeterminancy (the idea that messages can have multiple and diverse outcomes on relationships). Research on relationship narratives, message features, multiple goals, and message processing, among other topics, is reviewed and challenges for researchers who study communication and relationships are discussed.

In this chapter I focus on the nature of theories in the social sciences, some philosophy of science behind the validation of theories (e.g., falsifiability, approaches to deciding the value of evidence for/against a theory), and some issues to consider with respect to the research process and theory development and evaluation. I discuss the value of deconstructing theories to assess their core and auxiliary assumptions and determine aspects of a theory that have yet to be examined. I also discuss modern approaches to assess the evidentiary value of this body of research. I suggest that in our interdisciplinary field, researchers should consider generating hypotheses, as well as research explorations, through carefully evaluating and questioning the assumptions of the theories typically applied in the study of personal relationships. This discussion includes the use of modern approaches such as computational models. The overarching theme of the chapter is that as a field we need to evaluate and develop our theories using some recommendations put forward for decades combined with recently developed techniques in order to advance our theories beyond vague verbal statements that are interesting yet not precise to theories that allow for more consistent deductions of specific hypotheses.

What is the effect of one’s personality on one’s close relationships? In this chapter, we review the literature on this topic, focusing especially on the personality dimensions of self-esteem and the Big 5 traits of neuroticism and agreeableness. We review empirical studies of each of these three traits as predictors of (a) interpersonal processes and (b) relationship outcomes, including relationship satisfaction and dissolution. We also summarize any existing theoretical perspectives on these associations, including the most complete theoretical account offered for the influence of any of these traits on relationships—namely, the Self-Esteem-Infuses-Relationships-through-Trust (SIRT) model. We expect that two core assumptions of the SIRT model would be fundamental to theoretical accounts concerning any personality dimension’s influence on relationships. Specifically, (a) any trait?s influence must exert its influence through a causal chain of mediators, and (b) one of the essential mediators is behaviors between partners. Finally, we also evaluate how complete theoretical accounts concerning neuroticism and agreeableness that are likely to be offered in the future are likely to differ from or be similar to the account for self-esteem offered by the SIRT.

This chapter explores how victims have participated in unofficial transitional justice efforts involving non-state armed groups. Using the memoir of Seamus Kearney in the Northern Ireland context as a case study, we critically examine how victims participate in what we argue to be ‘quiet’ transitional justice efforts. Our discussion centres around two interlinked foci: the story told about how Kearney unofficially engaged with the Irish Republican Army in the pursuit of acknowledgement and truth; and how his memoir represents a participatory space where he leads in narrating the experience of ‘quiet’ transitional justice. Arguing that his memoir is, and contains, evidence of victim-led transitional justice, we juxtapose Kearney’s agency in the ‘quiet’ transitional justice process with his more passive role within formal truth recovery mechanisms. In doing so, we expand the transitional justice imagination on the place and role of victims beyond their engagement with formal mechanisms.

This chapter addresses intimate relationships of Black populations, as well as the sociocultural and economic contexts in which they are embedded. The authors underscore the heterogeneity of Black populations both in, and outside of, the United States. How racial discrimination is experienced, and the impact of that experience, differs across Black populations – underscoring heterogeneity. While some research suggests that racial discrimination contributes to negative relationship dynamics, other work suggests that when some individuals experience racial discrimination their partners engage in supportive behaviors. Despite declines and delays in marriage, many U.S.-born Blacks are still pursuing marital unions and are happily married (Skipper & Taylor, 2021; Skipper et al., 2021). This is likely a function of relational resilience, or even the Black Advantage Vision as many U.S. Black couples adapt and strive in spite of seemingly unsurmountable stressors over which they have little control.

Relationship development and growth have long drawn the interest of relationship scholars. This chapter focuses on the theoretical frameworks that have guided inquiry. We begin by explicating the term relationship development, including different ways researchers have studied it. Traditional theories (e.g., relational dialectics, relationship stage models, social exchange, social penetration, relational turning points) are described, alongside recently developed perspectives on relationship development and growth (e.g., relational turbulence theory, the relationship trajectory framework). The chapter also discusses current research associated with the theories and how this scholarship informs our understanding of the initiation of relationships and how relationships develop over the lifespan. Special attention is paid to the development and maintenance of marginalized relationships. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research, including the need to assess the ability of current theories to describe development in different relationship contexts (e.g.., friendships, courtship, families) and in different communication contexts (e.g., online, offline).

The integration of technology into human rights practice in Latin America has been marked by scepticism and practical challenges. This chapter traces the origins of technology’s intersection with human rights in the region, beginning in the late 1980s in the Southern Cone, as grassroots actors responded to state repression and creatively used technology to document violations. It explores the bundle of risks and opportunities that human rights practitioners faced when using technology in creative ways to confront human rights challenges. It identifies three main obstacles to integration: a legal-centric approach to human rights, a language barrier given the English-language predominance in the tech sector, and wariness of technology. The text highlights some breakthroughs, deriving from bottom-up adoption of technology, and provides discrete examples of local innovation. The chapter concludes by stressing the ongoing need to adapt and better harness technological advances in Latin America while also learning from local experiences.

While victim participation in transitional justice has often been subject to critique, victim movements have also actively expanded and reshaped the field, using its framework to advance increasingly diverse justice struggles. This introductory chapter adopts the lens of ‘victims-as-protagonists’, emphasizing the central role that victim-survivors have played in shaping transitional justice from its inception. It explores the macro-level dynamics that have amplified focus on victims’ roles in scholarship and policy, and maps key strands of existing literature. Against this backdrop, the chapter introduces a new conceptual framework of ‘generations of victim participation’, offering a more comprehensive account of how victims’ agency has shifted throughout three discernible phases: from grassroots activism, to institutional participation, and multi-faceted forms of resistance. Rather than presenting a linear progression, this framework foregrounds the overlapping and intersecting strategies through which victims pursue justice today, and how this calls for a rethinking of transitional justice’s boundaries and methodologies.

Aggression in an intimate relationship violates commonly held expectations that a romantic partner will be loving and supportive. Partner aggression erodes the quality of a relationship and can cause people to experience significant psychological distress and pain. This chapter critically examines research on features of aggression in relationships, how partner aggression is regulated and maintained, and interventions and efforts to address partner aggression. We aim to convey the current state of research on partner aggression and suggest new directions for research.