Re-Making Kozarac: Agency, Reconciliation and Contested Return in Post-War Bosnia

ISBN-13: 9781349954643 / Angielski / Miękka / 2018 / 214 str.

Sebina Sivac-Bryant

Recenzje

"Re-Making Kozarac fills a significant gap in the scholarship about post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina where, despite the profusion of academic studies about the political system, reconciliation and victimhood, case studies focusing on the grass-roots community level remain scarce. ... it offers valuable lessons for researchers as well as practitioners in the fields of post-conflict peacebuilding and transitional justice as it shakes ingrained assumptions about victimhood, trauma and reconciliation." (Sarah Correia, LSE Review of Books, blogs.lse.ac.uk, February, 2017)
"Sebina Sivac-Bryant's anthropological study focuses on the postconflict society in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Specifically, the author reconstructs the return process of Bosniaks to their former hometown Kozarac. ... Sivac-Bryant makes an important contribution to the understanding of postconflict societies. ... she has succeeded in compiling a very relevant work on postconflict societies." (Manuela Brenner, Südosteuropa, Vol. 65 (4), 2017)

Spis treści

Introduction.- Chapter 1. The Army of the Dispossessed.- Chapter 2. Return.- Chapter 3. A Community of Mourners: Collective and Personal Rituals of Loss.- Chapter 4. Omarska.- Chapter 5. KOZARAC.BA: Online Community as a Network Bridge.- Chapter 6. Economic Sustainability in a Land of Corruption.- Conclusion. On Return as Redress.

O autorze

Sebina Sivac-Bryant is an anthropologist specialising in human responses to challenging situations. Born in Kozarac, Bosnia-Hercegovina, she lived in Zagreb, Limerick and London after being expelled from her home town in 1992. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from University College London, UK.

Blurb

This book explores agency, reconciliation and minority return within the context of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. It focuses on a community in North-West Bosnia, which successfully reversed the worst episode of ethnic cleansing prior to Srebrenica by fighting for return, and then establishing one of the only successful examples of contested minority return in the town of Kozarac. The book is a result of a longitudinal, decade-long study of a group of people who discovered a remarkable level of agency and resilience, largely without external support, and despite many of the people and institutions who were responsible for their violent expulsion remaining in place. 

Re-Making Kozarac considers how a community's traumatic experiences were utilised as a motivational vehicle for return, and contrasts their pragmatic approach to local compromise with the ill-informed and largely unsuccessful international projects that try to cast them as powerless victims. Importantly, the book offers critical reflections on the interventions of the trauma and reconciliation industries, which can be more harmful than is currently realised. It will be of great interest to scholars of criminology, anthropology and international relations.