5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Bystanders are those who lived through a violent or repressive period, but who were neither perpetrators nor victims of crimes. Michael Rothberg (2019) expands this conceptualization to include the concept of ‘implicated subject,’ as an umbrella term beyond the binary of victim/perpetrator or the triad perpetrator-victim-bystander. The term refers to people who 'occupy positions aligned with power and privilege... contribute to, inhabit, inherit, or benefit from regimes of domination, but do not originate or control such regimes.'

One of the normative assumptions of Transitional Justice is that truth promotes solidarity between victims and the rest of civil society while simultaneously questioning the role of bystanders/implicated subjects. For this to be possible, it is necessary for bystanders/implicated subjects to participate in the processes that address the legacy of violence and conflict. This session focuses on examining the different roles, discourses, and emotions associated with bystanders/implicated subjects in transitional and post-conflict societies, paying attention to the factors that affect, facilitate, or complicate the involvement of bystanders/implicated subjects in processes of social transformation and collective action.