War Narratives in Post-conflict Societies

War Narratives in Post-conflict Societies PDF

Author: Michal Mochtak

Publisher:

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781032282831

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"This book studies war narratives and their role in the political arenas of post-conflict societies, with a focus on the former Yugoslavia. How do politicians in post-war societies talk about the past war? How do they discursively represent vulnerable social groups created by the conflict? Does the nature of this representation depend on the politicians' ideology, personal characteristics, or their record of combat service? The book answers these questions by pairing natural language processing tools and large corpora of parliamentary debates collected in three southeast European post-conflict societies (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia). Using the latest advances in computer science, the book explores patterns in the war discourse of the political elites of these countries and discusses how politicians talk about war in terms of common narratives and shared frameworks. Mapping over twenty years of parliamentary debates, the book presents a new perspective on the role of the legacies of war in public space and develops theoretical arguments about reconciliation in post-conflict societies. The wars of the 1990s and the breakup of Yugoslavia have created three totally different settings for remembering the past conflicts in these countries, despite their common history. It is a story of victorious battles (Croatia), past grievances (Bosnia-Herzegovina) and denial (Serbia), showing the different flavours of past wars in various national contexts that are symptomatic of many post-conflict societies in different parts of the world. This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, South-Eastern European politics, discourse analysis, and International Relations"--

War Narratives in Post-Conflict Societies

War Narratives in Post-Conflict Societies PDF

Author: Michal Mochtak

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-02-29

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1003857116

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This book studies war narratives and their role in the political arenas of post-conflict societies, with a focus on the former Yugoslavia. How do politicians in postwar societies talk about the past war? How do they discursively represent vulnerable social groups created by the conflict? Does the nature of this representation depend on the politicians’ ideology, personal characteristics, or their record of combat service? The book answers these questions by pairing natural language processing tools and large corpora of parliamentary debates collected in three southeast European post-conflict societies (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia). Using the latest advances in computer science, the book explores patterns in the war discourse of the political elites of these countries and discusses how politicians talk about war in terms of common narratives and shared frameworks. Mapping over 20 years of parliamentary debates, the book presents a new perspective on the role of the legacies of war in public space and develops theoretical arguments about reconciliation in post-conflict societies. The wars of the 1990s and the breakup of Yugoslavia have created three totally different settings for remembering the past conflicts in these countries, despite their common history. It is a story of victorious battles (Croatia), past grievances (Bosnia-Herzegovina), and denial (Serbia), showing the different flavors of past wars in various national contexts that are symptomatic of many post-conflict societies in different parts of the world. This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, southeastern European politics, discourse analysis, and international relations.

Everyday Boundaries, Borders and Post Conflict Societies

Everyday Boundaries, Borders and Post Conflict Societies PDF

Author: Renata Summa

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-10-01

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 3030558177

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This book provides an in-depth analysis of border and boundary enactments in post-war and “deeply divided” societies. By exploring everyday places in post-conflict societies, it critically examines official narratives of how ethno-national divisions arise and are sustained. It challenges traditional accounts regarding the role that international intervention has in producing and/or weakening boundaries in such societies, while questioning clear-cut distinctions between the local and the international.

History Education and Conflict Transformation

History Education and Conflict Transformation PDF

Author: Charis Psaltis

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-08-29

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 3319546813

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This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This volume discusses the effects, models and implications of history teaching in relation to conflict transformation and reconciliation from a social-psychological perspective. Bringing together a mix of established and young researchers and academics, from the fields of psychology, education, and history, the book provides an in-depth exploration of the role of historical narratives, history teaching, history textbooks and the work of civil society organizations in post-conflict societies undergoing reconciliation processes, and reflects on the state of the art at both the international and regional level. As well as dealing with the question of the ‘perpetrator-victim’ dynamic, the book also focuses on the particular context of transition in and out of cold war in Eastern Europe and the post-conflict settings of Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine and Cyprus. It is also exploring the pedagogical classroom practices of history teaching and a critical comparison of various possible approaches taken in educational praxis. The book will make compelling reading for students and researchers of education, history, sociology, peace and conflict studies and psychology.

Violence after War

Violence after War PDF

Author: Michael J. Boyle

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2014-04-15

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 1421412586

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Developing a better understanding of the dynamics of violence in post-war states can lead to a more durable peace. The end of one war is frequently the beginning of another because the cessation of conflict produces two new challenges: a contest between the winners and losers over the terms of peace, and a battle within the winning party over the spoils of war. As the victors and the vanquished struggle to establish a new political order, incidents of low-level violence frequently occur and can escalate into an unstable peace or renewed conflict. Michael J. Boyle evaluates the dynamics of post-conflict violence and their consequences in Violence after War. In this systematic comparative study, Boyle analyzes a cross-national dataset of violent acts from 52 post-conflict states and examines, in depth, violence patterns from five recent post-conflict states: Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, East Timor, and Iraq. In each of the case studies, Boyle traces multiple pathways through which violence emerges in post-conflict states and highlights how the fragmentation of combatants, especially rebel groups, produces unexpected and sometimes surprising shifts in the nature, type, and targets of attack. His case studies are based on unpublished data on violent crime, including some from fieldwork in Kosovo, East Timor, and Bosnia, and a thorough review of narrative and witness accounts of the attacks. The case study of Iraq comes from data that Boyle obtained directly from U.S. Central Command, published here for the first time. Violence after War will be essential reading for all those interested in political violence, peacekeeping, and post-conflict reconstruction.

Stories of Civil War in El Salvador

Stories of Civil War in El Salvador PDF

Author: Erik Ching

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2016-08-26

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1469628678

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El Salvador's civil war began in 1980 and ended twelve bloody years later. It saw extreme violence on both sides, including the terrorizing and targeting of civilians by death squads, recruitment of child soldiers, and the death and disappearance of more than 75,000 people. Examining El Salvador's vibrant life-story literature written in the aftermath of this terrible conflict--including memoirs and testimonials--Erik Ching seeks to understand how the war has come to be remembered and rebattled by Salvadorans and what that means for their society today. Ching identifies four memory communities that dominate national postwar views: civilian elites, military officers, guerrilla commanders, and working class and poor testimonialists. Pushing distinct and divergent stories, these groups are today engaged in what Ching terms a "narrative battle" for control over the memory of the war. Their ongoing publications in the marketplace of ideas tend to direct Salvadorans' attempts to negotiate the war's meaning and legacy, and Ching suggests that a more open, coordinated reconciliation process is needed in this postconflict society. In the meantime, El Salvador, fractured by conflicting interpretations of its national trauma, is hindered in dealing with the immediate problems posed by the nexus of neoliberalism, gang violence, and outmigration.

Post-Conflict Literature

Post-Conflict Literature PDF

Author: Chris Andrews

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-20

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1317425057

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This book brings together a variety of perspectives to explore the role of literature in the aftermath of political conflict, studying the ways in which writers approach violent conflict and the equally important subject of peace. Essays put insights from Peace and Conflict Studies into dialog with the unique ways in which literature attempts to understand the past, and to reimagine both the present and the future, exploring concepts like truth and reconciliation, post-traumatic memory, historical reckoning, therapeutic storytelling, transitional justice, archival memory, and questions about victimhood and reparation. Drawing on a range of literary texts and addressing a variety of post-conflict societies, this volume charts and explores the ways in which literature attempts to depict and make sense of this new philosophical terrain. As such, it aims to offer a self-conscious examination of literature, and the discipline of literary studies, considering the ability of both to interrogate and explore the legacies of political and civil conflict around the world. The book focuses on the experience of post-Apartheid South Africa, post-Troubles Northern Ireland, and post-dictatorship Latin America. The recent history of these regions, and in particular their acute experience of ethno-religious and civil conflict, make them highly productive contexts in which to begin examining the role of literature in the aftermath of social trauma. Rather than a definitive account of the subject, the collection defines a new field for literary studies, and opens it up to scholars working in other regional and national contexts. To this end, the book includes essays on post-1989 Germany, post-9/11 United States, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Sierra Leone, and narratives of asylum seeker/refugee communities. This volume’s comparative frame draws on well-established precedents for thinking about the cultural politics of these regions, making it a valuable resource for scholars of Comparative Literature, Peace and Conflicts Studies, Human Rights, Transitional Justice, and the Politics of Literature.

Reconstructing Conflict

Reconstructing Conflict PDF

Author: Scott Kirsch

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1317070321

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Reconstruction - the rebuilding of state, economy, culture and society in the wake of war - is a powerful idea, and a profoundly transformative one. From the refashioning of new landscapes in bombed-out cities and towns to the reframing of national identities to accommodate changed historical narratives, the term has become synonymous with notions of "post-conflict" society; it draws much of its rhetorical power from the neat demarcation, both spatially and temporally, between war and peace. The reality is far more complex. In this volume, reconstruction is identified as a process of conflict and of militarized power, not something that clearly demarcates a post-war period of peace. Kirsch and Flint bring together an internationally diverse range of studies by leading scholars to examine how periods of war and other forms of political violence have been justified as processes of necessary and valid reconstruction as well as the role of war in catalyzing the construction of new political institutions and destroying old regimes. Challenging the false dichotomy between war and peace, this book explores instead the ways that war and peace are mutually constituted in the creation of historically specific geographies and geographical knowledges.

War: How Conflict Shaped Us

War: How Conflict Shaped Us PDF

Author: Margaret MacMillan

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1984856146

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Is peace an aberration? The New York Times bestselling author of Paris 1919 offers a provocative view of war as an essential component of humanity. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “Margaret MacMillan has produced another seminal work. . . . She is right that we must, more than ever, think about war. And she has shown us how in this brilliant, elegantly written book.”—H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World The instinct to fight may be innate in human nature, but war—organized violence—comes with organized society. War has shaped humanity’s history, its social and political institutions, its values and ideas. Our very language, our public spaces, our private memories, and some of our greatest cultural treasures reflect the glory and the misery of war. War is an uncomfortable and challenging subject not least because it brings out both the vilest and the noblest aspects of humanity. Margaret MacMillan looks at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight. War: How Conflict Shaped Us explores such much-debated and controversial questions as: When did war first start? Does human nature doom us to fight one another? Why has war been described as the most organized of all human activities? Why are warriors almost always men? Is war ever within our control? Drawing on lessons from wars throughout the past, from classical history to the present day, MacMillan reveals the many faces of war—the way it has determined our past, our future, our views of the world, and our very conception of ourselves.

History Education and Post-Conflict Reconciliation

History Education and Post-Conflict Reconciliation PDF

Author: Karina V. Korostelina

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-04-02

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1135100322

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This book analyses the role of history education in conflict and post-conflict societies, describing common history textbook projects in Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Far East and the Middle East. Ever since the emergence of the modern school system and the implementation of compulsory education, textbooks have been seen as privileged media. The knowledge they convey is relatively persistent and moreover highly selective: every textbook author must choose and omit, condense, structure, reduce, and generalize information. Within this context, history textbooks are often at the centre of interest. There are unquestionably significant differences regarding homogeneity or plurality of interpretations when concepts of history education are compared internationally. This volume conducts a comparative analysis of common history projects in different countries and provides conceptual frameworks and methodological tools for enhancing the roles of these projects in the processes of conflict prevention and resolution. This book is timely, as issues of history education in conflict and post-conflict societies are becoming more popular with the increased realisation that unresolved disagreements about historical narratives can, and often do, lead to renewed conflict or even violence. This book will be of interest to students of peace studies and conflict resolution, political science, history, sociology, anthropology, social psychology, and international relations in general.