Innocence and Victimhood

Innocence and Victimhood PDF Author: Elissa Helms
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299295532
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
The 1992–95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina following the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia became notorious for “ethnic cleansing” and mass rapes targeting the Bosniac (Bosnian Muslim) population. Postwar social and political processes have continued to be dominated by competing nationalisms representing Bosniacs, Serbs, and Croats, as well as those supporting a multiethnic Bosnian state, in which narratives of victimhood take center stage, often in gendered form. Elissa Helms shows that in the aftermath of the war, initiatives by and for Bosnian women perpetuated and complicated dominant images of women as victims and peacemakers in a conflict and political system led by men. In a sober corrective to such accounts, she offers a critical look at the politics of women’s activism and gendered nationalism in a postwar and postsocialist society. Drawing on ethnographic research spanning fifteen years, Innocence and Victimhood demonstrates how women’s activists and NGOs responded to, challenged, and often reinforced essentialist images in affirmative ways, utilizing the moral purity associated with the position of victimhood to bolster social claims, shape political visions, pursue foreign funding, and wage campaigns for postwar justice. Deeply sensitive to the suffering at the heart of Bosnian women’s (and men’s) wartime experiences, this book also reveals the limitations to strategies that emphasize innocence and victimhood.

Innocence and Victimhood

Innocence and Victimhood PDF Author: Elissa Helms
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299295532
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book

Book Description
The 1992–95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina following the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia became notorious for “ethnic cleansing” and mass rapes targeting the Bosniac (Bosnian Muslim) population. Postwar social and political processes have continued to be dominated by competing nationalisms representing Bosniacs, Serbs, and Croats, as well as those supporting a multiethnic Bosnian state, in which narratives of victimhood take center stage, often in gendered form. Elissa Helms shows that in the aftermath of the war, initiatives by and for Bosnian women perpetuated and complicated dominant images of women as victims and peacemakers in a conflict and political system led by men. In a sober corrective to such accounts, she offers a critical look at the politics of women’s activism and gendered nationalism in a postwar and postsocialist society. Drawing on ethnographic research spanning fifteen years, Innocence and Victimhood demonstrates how women’s activists and NGOs responded to, challenged, and often reinforced essentialist images in affirmative ways, utilizing the moral purity associated with the position of victimhood to bolster social claims, shape political visions, pursue foreign funding, and wage campaigns for postwar justice. Deeply sensitive to the suffering at the heart of Bosnian women’s (and men’s) wartime experiences, this book also reveals the limitations to strategies that emphasize innocence and victimhood.

Victims and Victimhood

Victims and Victimhood PDF Author: Trudy Govier
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 146040503X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Who is a victim? Considerations of innocence typically figure in our notions of victimhood, as do judgments about causation, responsibility, and harm. Those identified as victims are sometimes silenced or blamed for their misfortune—responses that are typically mistaken and often damaging. However, other problems arise when we defer too much to victims, being reluctant to criticize their judgments or testimony. Reaching a sensitive and yet critical stand on victims’ credibility is a difficult matter. In this book, Trudy Govier carefully examines the concept of victimhood and considers the practical implications of the various attitudes with which we may respond to victims. These issues are explored with reference to a range of complex examples, including child victims of institutional abuse and the famed Rigoberta Menchú controversy. Further topics include the authority of personal experience, restorative justice, restitution, forgiveness, and closure.

Innocence and Victimhood

Innocence and Victimhood PDF Author: Elissa Helms
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299295547
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
The 1992–95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina following the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia became notorious for “ethnic cleansing” and mass rapes targeting the Bosniac (Bosnian Muslim) population. Postwar social and political processes have continued to be dominated by competing nationalisms representing Bosniacs, Serbs, and Croats, as well as those supporting a multiethnic Bosnian state, in which narratives of victimhood take center stage, often in gendered form. Elissa Helms shows that in the aftermath of the war, initiatives by and for Bosnian women perpetuated and complicated dominant images of women as victims and peacemakers in a conflict and political system led by men. In a sober corrective to such accounts, she offers a critical look at the politics of women’s activism and gendered nationalism in a postwar and postsocialist society. Drawing on ethnographic research spanning fifteen years, Innocence and Victimhood demonstrates how women’s activists and NGOs responded to, challenged, and often reinforced essentialist images in affirmative ways, utilizing the moral purity associated with the position of victimhood to bolster social claims, shape political visions, pursue foreign funding, and wage campaigns for postwar justice. Deeply sensitive to the suffering at the heart of Bosnian women’s (and men’s) wartime experiences, this book also reveals the limitations to strategies that emphasize innocence and victimhood.

Gender and Nation

Gender and Nation PDF Author: Nira Yuval-Davis
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446240770
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Nira Yuval-Davis provides an authoritative overview and critique of writings on gender and nationhood, presenting an original analysis of the ways gender relations affect and are affected by national projects and processes. In Gender and Nation Yuval-Davis argues that the construction of nationhood involves specific notions of both `manhood' and `womanhood'. She examines the contribution of gender relations to key dimensions of nationalist projects - the nation's reproduction, its culture and citizenship - as well as to national conflicts and wars, exploring the contesting relations between feminism and nationalism. Gender and Nation is an important contribution to the debates on citizenship, gender and nationhood. It will be essential reading for academics and students of women's studies, race and ethnic studies, sociology and political science.

The Violence of Victimhood

The Violence of Victimhood PDF Author: Diane Enns
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271072296
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
We know that violence breeds violence. We need look no further than the wars in the western Balkans, the genocide in Rwanda, or the ongoing crisis in Israel and Palestine. But we don’t know how to deal with the messy moral and political quandaries that result when victims become perpetrators. When the line between guilt and innocence wavers and we are confronted by the suffering of the victim who turns to violence, judgment may give way to moral relativism or liberal tolerance, compassion to a pity that denies culpability. This is the point of departure in The Violence of Victimhood and the impetus for its call for renewed considerations of responsibility, judgment, compassion, and nonviolent politics. To address her provocative questions, Diane Enns draws on an unusually wide-ranging cast of characters from the fields of feminism, philosophy, peacebuilding, political theory, and psychoanalysis. In the process, she makes an original contribution to each, enriching discussions that are otherwise constricted by disciplinary boundaries and an arid distinction between theory and practice.

Victims and Victimhood

Victims and Victimhood PDF Author: Trudy Govier
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 1770485430
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Who is a victim? Considerations of innocence typically figure in our notions of victimhood, as do judgments about causation, responsibility, and harm. Those identified as victims are sometimes silenced or blamed for their misfortune—responses that are typically mistaken and often damaging. However, other problems arise when we defer too much to victims, being reluctant to criticize their judgments or testimony. Reaching a sensitive and yet critical stand on victims’ credibility is a difficult matter. In this book, Trudy Govier carefully examines the concept of victimhood and considers the practical implications of the various attitudes with which we may respond to victims. These issues are explored with reference to a range of complex examples, including child victims of institutional abuse and the famed Rigoberta Menchú controversy. Further topics include the authority of personal experience, restorative justice, restitution, forgiveness, and closure.

The Order of Victimhood

The Order of Victimhood PDF Author: Sarah E. Jankowitz
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319983288
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
This book explores how the construction and contestation of victims in societies emerging from conflict impact processes of peacebuilding. It locates its inquiry in Northern Ireland where highly politicized, unresolved narratives of violence and a so-called ‘hierarchy of victims’ illuminate inherent paradoxes of victimhood in intergroup conflict. The author critiques how mechanisms designed to address the legacy of conflict often reify exclusive ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ identities and obscure complex harm. Adopting an interdisciplinary lens, the book examines how the image of the ideal victim interacts with intergroup processes in a polarizing and intractable victim-perpetrator paradigm. The analysis of these issues in Northern Ireland suggests that exclusive policies and mechanisms reinforce rather than repair societal divisions, and that inclusive, complex approaches to victimhood are necessary to build sustainable peace. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of peace studies, transitional justice and criminology.

The Rise of Victimhood Culture

The Rise of Victimhood Culture PDF Author: Bradley Campbell
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319703293
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
The Rise of Victimhood Culture offers a framework for understanding recent moral conflicts at U.S. universities, which have bled into society at large. These are not the familiar clashes between liberals and conservatives or the religious and the secular: instead, they are clashes between a new moral culture—victimhood culture—and a more traditional culture of dignity. Even as students increasingly demand trigger warnings and “safe spaces,” many young people are quick to police the words and deeds of others, who in turn claim that political correctness has run amok. Interestingly, members of both camps often consider themselves victims of the other. In tracking the rise of victimhood culture, Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning help to decode an often dizzying cultural milieu, from campus riots over conservative speakers and debates around free speech to the election of Donald Trump.

To Be a Victim

To Be a Victim PDF Author: Diane Sank
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1489959742
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description


The Implicated Subject

The Implicated Subject PDF Author: Michael Rothberg
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 150360960X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
“A pathbreaking meditation . . . shifts the discussion . . . from . . . notions of guilt and innocence to the complexities of responsibility and accountability.” —Amir Eshel, Stanford University When it comes to historical violence and contemporary inequality, none of us are completely innocent. We may not be direct agents of harm, but we may still contribute to, inhabit, or benefit from regimes of domination that we neither set up nor control. Arguing that the familiar categories of victim, perpetrator, and bystander do not adequately account for our connection to injustices past and present, Michael Rothberg offers a new theory of political responsibility through the figure of the implicated subject. The Implicated Subject builds on the comparative, transnational framework of Rothberg's influential work on memory to engage in reflection and analysis of cultural texts, archives, and activist movements from such contested zones as transitional South Africa, contemporary Israel/Palestine, post-Holocaust Europe, and a transatlantic realm marked by the afterlives of slavery. An array of globally prominent artists, writers, and thinkers—from William Kentridge, Hito Steyerl, and Jamaica Kincaid, to Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi, Judith Butler, and the Combahee River Collective—speak show how confronting our own implication in difficult histories can lead to new forms of internationalism and long-distance solidarity. “A significant work by a major scholar . . . .While drawing on a global range of histories and texts, the book never loses focus on the contemporary moment.” —Robert Eaglestone, Royal Holloway, University of London “Offer[s] a fresh vocabulary to confront our personal and collective responsibility in the face of massive political violence, past and present.” —Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University