A Different Form of Intervention? Revisiting the Role of Researchers in Post-war Contexts

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-184
Author(s):  
Daniela Lai
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Intervention Research ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Military

This chapter deals with Daniela Lai's argument on the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which explains how some forms of distance between researcher and researched are created by academic research and seen as a form of intervention. It focuses on the consequences of research-as-intervention and intervention by academia that shape the very field it sets out to research. It also discusses how the over-research of certain areas of Bosnian society are experienced due to academic biases that lead to distancing. The chapter looks into another form of distancing that concerns communities, groups, and topics that are sidelined by intervention research for not being the focus of the military and political interventions. It also addresses why there are people, places, and problems that are absent and distant from fieldwork-based research in most over-researched post-conflict societies.

State-run celebration of Liberation Day in Czechoslovakia (based on audiovisual sources)

2019 ◽  
pp. 251-268
Author(s):  
Timur Gimadeev
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Military

The article deals with the history of celebrating the Liberation Day in Czechoslovakia organised by the state. Various aspects of the history of the holiday have been considered with the extensive use of audiovisual documents (materials from Czechoslovak newsreels and TV archives), which allowed for a detailed analysis of the propaganda representation of the holiday. As a result, it has been possible to identify the main stages of the historical evolution of the celebrations of Liberation Day, to discover the close interdependence between these stages and the country’s political development. The establishment of the holiday itself — its concept and the military parade as the main ritual — took place in the first post-war years, simultaneously with the consolidation of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Later, until the end of the 1960s, the celebrations gradually evolved along the political regime, acquiring new ritual forms (ceremonial meetings, and “guards of memory”). In 1968, at the same time as there was an attempt to rethink the entire socialist regime and the historical experience connected with it, an attempt was made to reconstruct Liberation Day. However, political “normalisation” led to the normalisation of the celebration itself, which played an important role in legitimising the Soviet presence in the country. At this stage, the role of ceremonial meetings and “guards of memory” increased, while inventions released in time for 9 May appeared and “May TV” was specially produced. The fall of the Communist regime in 1989 led to the fall of the concept of Liberation Day on 9 May, resulting in changes of the title, date and paradigm of the holiday, which became Victory Day and has been since celebrated on 8 May.

Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification, and the Americans, 1945-1953. By David Monod. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2005. Pp. xiv+325. $45.00. ISBN 0-8078-2944-7.

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 350-352
Author(s):  
Pamela M. Potter
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
American Military ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Research Interviews ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Military

The impetus among Germany's cultural elite to mark the end of World War II as a “zero hour” has been analyzed mainly as a German phenomenon, with considerably less attention to the role of the occupying forces in fostering that mentality. Settling Scores offers a long-awaited analysis of the American Military Government's precarious navigation in the music world, one of the most sensitive cultural areas for both the conquerors and the conquered. Most histories of twentieth-century German music and culture suffer from a basic misunderstanding of this tumultuous time and uncritically accept many of the prejudices it engendered. As this study demonstrates, the notion of a musical “zero hour” is one such misconception, for the imperfect projects of denazification and reeducation left the musical world of the post-war period largely indistinguishable from its pre-war existence. Based on thorough archival research, interviews with eyewitnesses, and a wide range of literature, this highly readable and engaging history reveals in detail the successes and failures of the Military Government's ambitious agenda to root out the musical “Führers” of the Third Reich and to transform music from a tool of nationalist aggression to one of democratic tolerance.

scholarly journals Examining the Role of Economic Actors in Post-war Reintegration Processes: Case of Sierra Leone.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 158-167
Author(s):  
MaryAnne Iwara
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Planning Strategy ◽  
Social Contracts ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Aid Dependency ◽  
Post War ◽  
Corporate Social ◽  
National Governments

This paper examines post-conflict peacebuilding activities in Sierra Leone by critically looking at the role of economic actors in the reintegration process of its post-war Disarmament Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) initiative. The civil war that lasted for 11 years in Sierra Leone, put doubts on the national governments ability to effectively provide both victims and perpetuators, the necessary protection and assistance needed to fully assume responsibilities within the communities. Because of this, poverty was further entrenched, thereby increasing the countries susceptibility to return to conflict. Though reintegration processes are continuous, integrative and involve exhaustive budgetary commitments, the process, in Sierra Leone was short-termed, not well coordinated and took time to begin delivering. With the United Nations, World Bank and the weak national government leading the process, financing was often insufficient or late, in combination with the lack of a coherent planning strategy; all these factors contributed to lapses in socio-economic profiling, skills and vocational training and spread disillusionment and resentment among ex-combatants and victims. Using content analysis, the paper argues that, post-war countries need active, equitable and profitable economic sectors if they are to graduate from conflict and from post-conflict aid-dependency. Moreover, as social contracts and corporate social responsibility to communities they govern and operate in, economic actors must create enabling environments and, generate jobs to support legitimate local capacities. The utility of this paper lies in the idea that for any post-conflict country to attain long-term social and economic development, reintegration programme design and activities, must holistically incorporate critical economic actors.  

Bosnian voices from the bottom of the well: Genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity and victims’ right to remedies

2021 ◽  
pp. 026975802110464
Author(s):  
Alma Begicevic
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Close Family Member ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One

Human rights advocates call for reparation as an important step to acknowledge and repair historical injustice and mass harms. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, victims of war continue to seek monetary reparation for non-pecuniary damages caused by genocide: murder, injury to human body and dignity, and harms inflicted upon a close family member. They seek legal remedies using national, foreign, and international human rights judicial venues. Drawing from qualitative, ethnographic research data and archival documents, the article examines legal claims and public discourse regarding reparation and makes a case for a reconceptualization of reparation by including victim voices. The article concludes that despite being absent from the post-conflict victims’ reparation programs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, monetary reparation has assumed a social valuation attribute. On the one hand, it is a victim’s call for retributive, legal conceptions of justice – that someone who escaped international and national criminal justice programs pays. On the other hand, it is a tool to draw attention to Bosnian victims’ present civil and political exclusions that came with the international post-conflict peace treaty. While the post-war reconstruction focused on international trials, democratization, restorative justice, and state building programs, it also restricted socio-economic and cultural rights by redefining the citizenship and dismantling the welfare state. Reparation is a debt owed to victims.

Role of Leaders in Post-Conflict Societies

2018 ◽  
pp. 278-286
Author(s):  
Goran Simic
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Un Security Council

When Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić was attacked on the 11th of July 2015 in Srebrenica on the day of the commemoration and burial of the victims of the genocide committed in that town in 1995, he characterized it as an assassination attempt. Furthermore, he stated that “hand of peace” that he was offering was rejected once more from the “Bosnian” side. Of course, he didn't mention that he, in the previous six months, together with Serbia's ally, Russia, advocated that the UN Security Council rejects the resolution that would call all sides to accept the final decisions of the ICTY and draw necessary lessons in regard of commemoration of the 20 years from the Srebrenica Genocide. He didn't mention that he is, along with the leaders of Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, among those negating the Srebrenica Genocide (sarcastically calling it “grave crime”). He also did not mention his inflammatory rhetoric in the Parliament of Serbia in 1995 when during the events in Srebrenica he said “If you kill one Serb, we will kill 100 Muslims.”

Of Justice and the Grave: The Role of the Dead in Post-conflict Uganda

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 819-843 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaymelee Kim ◽  
Tricia Redeker Hepner
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Northern Uganda ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Mass Graves ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
War Survivors ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Post War

In the aftermath of war, survivors’ definitions of justice are often in tension with those of governments and international actors. While post-war northern Uganda has been the site of high-profile prosecutions of Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, our research in rural Acholiland highlights how survivors define justice largely in terms of material compensation for both the living and the dead. These priorities are linked to the omnipresence of improperly buried human remains as evidence of physical and structural violence. Mass graves, burials in former displacement camps, and unidentified remains become focal points around which survivors articulate ongoing socioeconomic suffering and demands for redress. A ‘thanatological approach’ that centres the role of the dead and critically explores the possibilities presented by forensic science in a transitional justice context reveals survivors’ prioritisation of reparative and restorative justice despite the international and national focus on retributive justice through institutions like the icc.

scholarly journals The Mobilization for Spatial Justice in Divided Societies: Urban Commons, Trust Reconstruction, and Socialist Memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina

2021 ◽  
pp. 088832542110051
Author(s):  
Chiara Milan
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
Spatial Justice ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Community Ties ◽  
Post War ◽  
Urban Commons

The article contributes to the urban studies literature and the study of social movements in divided societies by disclosing the distinctive features and mobilizing potential that the notion of urban commons retains in a war-torn society with a socialist legacy. Specifically, it investigates how urban space and urban commons are reclaimed in a post-conflict and post-socialist country such as Bosnia and Herzegovina. By using Sarajevo as a case study, the article explores several grassroots initiatives undertaken by local urban activists to reappropriate cultural buildings and public space in the city. The study discloses that in a post-conflict and post-socialist society urban commons can bear a unifying potential as acts of commoning favor trust reconstruction processes and strengthen community ties. While the erosion of social ties and the legacy of the war might not encourage mobilization for the commons, the reference to socialist-era practices and language can represent a vantage point to advocate in favor of collective governance. Throughout their actions, urban activists instrumentally referred to the historical experience of socialism to develop a discourse that resonates with the domestic cultural environment. The article points also to a generational difference amongst activists in their references to Yugoslav state socialism. While long-time activists strove to critically reappraise it, the younger ones born in the immediate post-war period appear to hold a more superficial and ambivalent historical knowledge of the socialist heritage, to which they had only partial access and no lived experience.

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